Adventure Apparel & Accessories

 My uncle Sujal Mukherjee was one of the first generation mountaineers of West Bengal. His tryst with the Himalaya started in 1961 till he breathed his last in 1994. Instrumental as his passion for the craft was for my own introduction to the mountains, it was his prodigious appetite for mountain literature that showed me the seminal steps to enrich whatever I had begun to learn and extend whatever visage of the art and tradition of mountaineering I had begun to conceive.

 There is a wealth of literature about or inspired by mountains and it's easy to see why. One only has to think of a mountain and powerful adjectives simply tumble from your fingertips: solitary, ancient, vast, meditative, and God-like. As rivers often represent the flow of life, the mountains too are a handy metaphor for the insignificance of man or even a looming reminder that ours is a planet built on nature's magnificent brutality.

 Below is a list of ten books (in no particular order). They remain as my all time favorite books of mountaineering literature. If classics can be defined in terms of their lasting freshness, then the following books are definitely ‘classics’ of the mountain literature. I strongly recommend them to both our avid mountain wanderers and armchair mountaineers alike.

 1. Kamet Conquered - Frank Smythe

 Frank Smythe’s fascinating book Kamet Conquered tells of his successful bid to make the first ascent of Kamet (7,756 metres) in 1931.Through Smythe, an experienced high-altitude mountaineer, the reader experiences all the tension, fatigue, discomfort and struggle of a major expedition but is also able to enjoy the sublime descriptions of nature at its wildest and most beautiful. Smythe is a keen observer of light, cloud and colour and his spiritual prose conjures up a palpable sense of the Himalaya.

 There is a rich sense of history within these pages; the book is very much of its time. However, the sometimes harsh colonial attitudes do not eclipse the genuine respect Smythe has for his Indian and Sherpa companions, nor what these remarkable men achieved. Through this journey, we are led from the dank, steamy foothills of the Himalaya, to its harsh and inhospitable peaks as Smythe and his team push themselves to their limits.

 Frank Sydney Smythe was an extremely gifted and well-traveled mountaineer who wrote many very popular books about mountaineering during the first half of the last century. He achieved prominence in mountaineering circles following two impressive seasons in the Alps in 1927 and 1928. He subsequently climbed extensively in the Himalayas.

 (Source: Chessler Books & Google Books)

 2. Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak - Maurice Herzog

 Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak (1951) is a book by French climber Maurice Herzog, leader of the 1950 French Annapurna expedition, the first expedition in history to summit and return from an 8000+ meter mountain, Annapurna in the Himalaya. Annapurna was the first mountain over 8,000m to be climbed.

 mount annapurna first ascent 8000 meters

 In late 1950, Maurice Herzog lay in the American hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, dictating what would become the bestselling mountaineering book of all time, Annapurna, published the following year. The effort was emotionally exacting, as he revisited every twist and agonising turn of one of the most important Himalayan expeditions in the sport's history. With breathtaking courage and grit manifest on every page, Annapurna is one of the greatest adventure stories ever told. It is considered a classic of mountaineering literature and perhaps the most influential climbing book ever written.

 (Source: The Guardian & Wikipedia)

 3. The White Spider - Heinrich Harrer

 The White Spider (1959; with chapters added in 1964; original title: Die Weisse Spinne) is a book written by Heinrich Harrer that describes the first successful ascent of the Eiger Nordwand (Eiger north face), a mountain in the Berner Oberland of the Swiss Alps. Not one for the faint-hearted, the action of this book includes avalanches, rockfall and brutal storms abound in Harrer’s record of a significant period of mountaineering history.

 first successful ascent of mount Eiger north face

 From 1935-1958, personal ambitions and national rivalries funnelled climbers from across Europe to take up ropes, crampons and ice axes in pursuit of a glorious new conquest: the first ascent of the North Face. Teamwork, competition, tactical retreats, heroic rescues and desperate tragedies unfold on this unforgiving, icy face. The White Spider takes readers to a place where few can follow. Harrer illuminates the profound lessons that are learned on the severe edges of our world.

 (Source: The Guardian & Wikipedia)

 4. The Shining Mountain - Peter Boardman (with material by Joe Tasker)

scott cycles

 ‘It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalaya.’ - So spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unclimbed West Wall of Changabang – the Shining Mountain – in 1976.

 Tasker contributes a second voice throughout this story, which includes details of the inevitable tensions on such an expedition as well as a record of the moment of joy upon reaching the summit ridge against all odds. The Shining Mountain, is one of the outstanding works of mountaineering literature, and won the 1979 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literature.

 (Source: V Publishing & Wikipedia)

 5. Round Kangchenjunga – Douglas Freshfield

 This work by Douglas William Freshfield (1845-1934), enhanced by photographs of the great mountain photographer Vittorio Sella (1859-1943), is considered by many to be one of the best of the classic books on mountaineering. At the time the trip was taken, although the team had the authorization of the ruler of Sikkim, they had none by Nepal as it was then a closed kingdom. The expedition lasted seven weeks, and when they descended into Nepal, the first villagers they met...were astonished to learn that this tattered group had come down from the north. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

 Excerpt: It is of course impossible to go up and down feet without some climbing, in the popular sense of that word. But in the technical Alpine sense we had far too little mountaineering for my taste. Rope and ice-axe played but a very subordinate part in our journey. This was our mis fortune rather than our fault. The tremendous rainstorm of September 1899, after devastating Darjeeling and its tea-gardens, swept across Kangchenjunga into Tibet in the form of a premature snowfall, lowering the snow-level nearly 4000 feet and practically closing the highest region.

 (Source: Forgotten Books & Google Books)

 (Source: Forgotten Books & Google Books)

 6. Nanda Devi: Exploration and Ascent - A Compilation of the Two Mountain Exploration Books, Nanda Devi & the Ascent of Nanda Devi - Eric Shipton & H.W.Tilman

 Two classic mountain exploration books, Nanda Devi and The Ascent of Nanda Devi are compiled, along with further accounts by Shipton and Tilman, two of the best-known names in mountaineering.

 mount nanda devi first exploration

 The wide-ranging expedition of Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman in the Garhwal Himalaya in 1934 is regarded as the epitome of adventurous mountaineering. With their Sherpa companions they solved the problem of access to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, crossed difficult cols, made first ascents, and explored remote, uninhabited valleys. These adventures are recounted in Shipton's wonderfully vivid Nanda Devi, one of the most inspirational mountain-travel books ever written. Once access to Nanda Devi was found, it was only a matter of time before a first ascent attempt was mounted. In 1936 Tilman joined an American and British expedition and tells the tale of their successful climb in his restrained, witty account, The Ascent of Nanda Devi. This compilation of these classic tales is concluded with further accounts by Shipton of his subsequent surveying expeditions in and around the Sanctuary, which served to mitigate his regret in missing the ascent of Nanda Devi (he was on Everest at the time.) Together, the writing of these two mountaineering legends creates a fascinating adventure tale.

 (Source: Good Reads & Indian Mountaineering Foundation)

 7. Everest the West Ridge - Thomas F. Hornbein

 In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route. Roughly two weeks after Whittaker's achievement, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, fellow American mountaineers on the same expedition, became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge--a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded.

 Hornbein’s book is devoid of overblown heroics. Everest is not "conquered." The book also avoids the overly intimate, every-rivalry-recorded style of more modern books (e.g. awful accounts of Unsoeld's subsequent expedition to Nanda Devi). In this book, climbers' interactions get discussed without psychobabble. (Source: Google Books)

 “This is the story of one of the greatest achievements in American mountaineering history: Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein climbing to the top of the world from Everest's West Ridge, descending from the South Col and bivouacking at 28,000-feet. It is a great story of determination, passion and friendship.... One of my favorite things about this book is the many outstanding photographs paired with quotes about mountains”.--Katie Sauter, Library Director ‘American Alpine Club Library’