Product Description

When British climber David Fletcher decided to explore the remote Hayes group of mountains in Alaska, he was warned about soloing so far from rescue. Never could he have imagined he was about to enter into a battle as fierce as Captain Ahab's with the great whale. This book tells the true story of Fletcher's encounter with the most feared creature in the Alaskan wilderness - a 10-foot high furious mother grizzly bear, whose cub he had accidentally killed in a moment of panic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #732801 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
"- 'Survival adventures don't come much hairier...fans of mountaineering and extreme sports will find..this true story intensely thrilling.' Daily Mail

About the Author
David Fletcher is a mountaineer who spent seven years in the Royal Marines, and now lives in Hull, with his family. He tells his elemental story with a stark total recall and an intensity of emotion which defies the reader to put the book down until it is finished.

Customer Reviews

One of the worst books I have ever read.
This is the first review I have submitted, I felt I had to, to warn others so here goes: Its terrible a badly written cimbing story with the bear added to dress it up, Its write up and the story line sounded like a great read but I found it so far fetched it was far from enjoyable,even with my basic climbing knowledge I could pick holes right through this story, and it supposed to be true, Could you imagine an experienced climber making camp inside a crevasse on an unstable glacier right after a section of this glacier as the writter puts it "suddenly explodes" just missing him. need I add more, it must be very very roughly based on a true story,

So far fetched it could be a Sly Stallone movie!
Having spent a fair amount of time in Canada and studying grizzly bears I was intrigued by this story. Basically he heads of into Alaska and is stalked by a bear after he accidentally kills a cub.

The book reads like a schoolboy's diary (he even takes time out to start mini-avalanches for fun) and doesn't really set the scene at all well. However, my biggest criticism is that the story is so far fetched I found myself laughing rather than being engrossed by the hunt and the chase. He endows this bear with the same sort of tenacity as the robot in Terminator and I was beginning to think that sooner or later it would track him into a smelting plant and would meet its death in molten steel! The 'real' conclusion isn't too far from this - I almost expected the words "I'll be back" to be uttered by the bear as it disappeared below the ice.

I was waiting for the final chapter to read like a 'B' movie -'back home in England I was in Sainsburys when my mortal foe appeared from the chiller cabinet - damn the bear must have hidden in that shipment of Alaskan Salmon.......'

If you want to read a book about bears buy by Bear Attacks by Stephen Herrero; if you want to read a book about climbing then read Deep Play by Paul Pritchard; but if you want to laugh with incredulity then you can have my copy of this!

Great adventure page turner
A really enjoyable book. I like books that simply describe amazing experiences without the waffle, this book does exactly that. Exciting, well written and true. Amazing.