'A book grows rather like a snow crystal. One doesn't write it from start to finish but, in greater or less degree, all at the same time ... that is why my book is not in chronological order; for everything is of the present, held in the moment when thought captures it.'
Kurt Diemberger's Summits and Secrets is a mountaineering autobiography like no other. Writing anecdotally, Diemberger provides an abstract look into his life and climbing career that is both fascinating and awe-inspiring to navigate.
Known for surviving the 1986 K2 disaster - an account described in harrowing detail in his award-winning book The Endless Knot - Diemberger provides a captivating insight into his earlier climbs in Summits and Secrets. From climbing his first peak in the Tyrol mountains of Austria, to the epoch-making first ascent of Broad Peak with Hermann Buhl in 1957, and then summiting Dhaulagiri in 1960, where he became one of only two people to have made first ascents of two mountains over 8,000 metres, Diemberger recounts his experiences with wit, honesty and an infectious enthusiasm:
'Every climber knows the thrill ... the unique inexplicable tension, which the regular shapes of the mountain world awake in him: huge pyramids, enormous rectangular slabs, piled-up triangles of rock, white circles, immense squares - the thrill of simplicity of shape and outline and the excitement of mastering them, to an unbelievable extent, by his own efforts, his own power ... '
Summits and Secrets is a must-read for those wanting an insight into the life and achievements of one of the toughest high-altitude climbers the world has ever known.
By:
Kurt Diemberger
Imprint: Vertebrate Publishing Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 17mm
Weight: 445g
ISBN: 9781912560035
ISBN 10: 1912560038
Publication Date: 08 July 2019
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
CONTENTSPART I1 The Astronaut2 CrystalsPART II3 Grandfather's Bicycle4 The Matterhorn5 One Step ...6 Bookkeeping and Pull-ups7 Two on a Rope8 20,000 Feet in Twenty-four Hours9 Daisies, a Cat and the North Face of the Matterhorn10 'The Giant Meringue'11 Tempest12 My First Eight-Thousander: To Broad Peak with Hermann BuhlPART III13 The North Face of the Eiger14 A Lesson in French15 The Great Peuterey Ridge16 Alpine Geometry17 The White Mountain of the Himalaya: Dhaulagiri18 Herbert Tichy19 Eighteen to Eighty-one: Finals and a Police SergeantPART IV20 The Break-even21 The Fourth Dimension22 Ordeal by Fire23 Higher than the Eagle Soars: Hindu Kush24 An Apple on Tirich Mir25 360 Million Years PART V26 Three Words from Greenland 27 Between Gran Sasso, Salzburg and ...28 Altamira
Austrian mountaineer Kurt Diemberger is a member of an extremely select club - he is one of only two climbers to have made the first ascent of two of the world's 8,000-metre peaks: Broad Peak in 1957 and Dhaulagiri in 1960. Diemberger is also one of the top high-altitude filmmakers in the world and an accomplished writer, and his books - including The Endless Knot, about the 1986 K2 disaster - have enjoyed popularity around the globe. He is now recognised as one of the finest chroniclers of the contemporary mountain scene, with his writing guaranteed to enlighten, move and entertain. In 2013, Diemberger was awarded the Piolet d'Ors lifetime achievement award.
