Search results for ""Baton Wicks Publications""

'No one will die in this story. That is a promise, as if I controlled events, pen slicing and splicing ropes at will.' Dermot Somers' short stories have attracted international acclaim. His collection 'At the Rising of the Moon' won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1994 and was awarded the Banff Mountain Book Festival's Literature and Culture Prize. This collection brings together 23 of Somer's tales. Somers is recognised as one of the finest and most original writers in the mountaineering and travel milieu. He has travelled widely and is an accomplished climber. Though rooted in his native Irish culture, his experiences in the Alps and the Himalaya work their way into his literature, along with themes of legend and myth, the undercurrent of politics and religion and the under pinner of adult life and relationships. Whilst mountains act as a central metaphor for many of his stories, Somers is equally concerned with their effect on the dynamics of human relationships. His narratives draw on the energy from both, the energy that crams a lifetime of sensation into seconds of experience and which makes his stories so compelling.

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When John Dunlop gives Judy Scott a lift to Glencoe on his motorbike, both are surprised when a relationship develops. But for John all passions must be relegated to the demands of the big climb. The focus soon shifts to the Alps where he teams up with the American climber Jack McDonald. Their careful planning goes awry and a major first ascent bid turns into an intense struggle bringing disaster and tragedy. Calculated Risk is a fictional portrayal of the world of mountaineering, of climbing the most demanding routes at a time when climbing was still emerging from its primitive inter-war and post war austerities and such routes were a stark struggle against the elements. The realities and tensions of big-time climbing, firmly focussed on the Alps and the Himalaya, are revealed with greater clarity through the medium of fiction. Dougal Haston was among Britain's leading mountaineers. A controversial figure, he began climbing in Scotland, putting up numerous new routes before moving on to bigger mountains and ascents of Annapurna, Everest and Denali. He was part of the team which, in 1966, made a directtissima ascent of the North Face of the Eiger. In 1967, Haston became Director of the International School of Mountaineering at Leysin in Switzerland. He wrote Calculated Risk in 1977, shortly before his death while skiing above Leysin - an accident strangely foretold in the book.

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Inherited eczema and allergies made Barbara James different from her classmates, something she did not like. She was lucky. The severity of her eczema had lessened when her teacher introduced her to the Snowdonia hills. In 1964 she became a full time mountaineering instructor and mountain rescue first aider in Capel Curig at a time when there were few females instructing or leading difficult rock routes. Divorced in 1976 and with a mortgage to pay, Barbara needed a job, and became the first and possibly the only woman civilian to be employed by MOD to train soldiers. At the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion in Folkestone she learned another language, new codes of behaviour, and to lead expeditions. After early retirement, Barbara took her first holiday in 11 years. She was probably the second person to go, unaccompanied, to the magical Falkland Islands soon after the conflict. Alone she walked up Tumbledown, communed with wild life and was told that "Anyone can learn to fly". So on return, her 50th birthday present to herself was to get a Private Pilot's Licence. A year later she flew a Cessna 40 hours solo around Florida. But nothing Barbara had done was as challenging as surviving, alone, the furiously tourist evenings in Tenerife's Playa de Las Americas. Only the magical El Teide National Park and the genuine, spontaneous kindness of the Canarians ensured her return. She rented an apartment in Adeje village and the locals' initial suspicious looks soon disappeared. Itching to Climb tells the story of one woman's undaunting spirit in the face of adversities, of a life spent facing challenges head on, with a singleminded determination to achieve despite the difficulties that life had laid in her way. This is a story of encouragement and hope for anyone who suffers with eczema, or any similar debilitating condition.

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Is it not better to take risks than die within from rot? Is it not better to change one’s life completely than to wait for the brain to set firmly and irreversibly in a way of life and one environment? I think it is ... taking risks, not for the sake of danger alone, but for the sake of growth, is more important than any security one can buy or inherit. – Charles HoustonIt was the failed summit attempt and a failed rescue in the Himalaya that brought Charles Houston MD fame and adulation in the mountaineering world. His leadership of the American K2 expedition of 1953 is still celebrated as the embodiment of all that is right and good in the mountains.Houston, a doctor from New England, became a leading authority in high altitude ailments and artificial heart research, advising the US government, military and academia. He made an unparalleled contribution to mountain medicine, building some of the first artificial heart prototypes in his garage and playing a key part in Kennedy’s 1960s Peace Corps initiatives in India.In Brotherhood of the Rope, Boardman Tasker Prize winning author Bernadette McDonald traces the development of an American hero. This is the biography of a well-heeled New England medical man who excelled at expedition leadership and whose experience in the mountains helped his research into high altitude medical matters during his long and varied career as a doctor. Houstons’s mountain adventures, the ups and downs of his varied medical career and the associated challenges of family life are related in a candid biography that touches on many aspects of twentieth-century affairs.

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The forest of Fontainebleau is one of the major bouldering spots of the world. Thousands of sandstone boulders lie scattered over an area of 1,200 square kilometres of forest – wonderfully-shaped boulders of superb quality rock in a wilderness of pine, beech and oak trees. The climbing style is addictive, a subtle mixture of body positioning, footwork and power that is as demanding mentally as it is physically. There are problems at every grade imaginable, from the easiest of circuits to world class testpieces.Written by local climbers Jo and Francoise Montchausse and Jacky Godoffe, Fontainebleau Bouldering "Off-Piste" reveals the locations of over 3,000 of the best problems graded at Font 6a and above, and highlights 250 problems of outstanding quality. Some problems found on circuits, others are set apart and easily missed. This guide ensures that doesn't happen. Covering 92 different areas across the forest, the guide lists the harder problems in the main locations, and also on many lesser-known groups of boulders around the forest. There are 120 detailed maps - both general location maps and boulder layouts, colour photographs for every area and hints, tips and anecdotes throughout.This new edition also features a comprehensive alphabetical index to all the problems in the guide with those of the highest quality highlighted in bold type. More than enough for even the most dedicated enthusiast to go at. Fontainebleau Bouldering "Off-Piste" works particularly well when paired with the popular circuit guide Fontainebleau Climbs, written by the same authors.

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In August 1979 twenty-seven-year-old Mike Trueman set sail from the south-west coast of Wales, en route to Cornwall. The young army helicopter pilot was helping to move his friend's yacht from Northern Ireland to the south coast of England. But as they sailed out into the Irish Sea, the sky turned progressively darker and the winds gathered pace. Over the next twenty-four hours the two young sailors battled to survive force-10 gales in what became known as the Fastnet disaster and which claimed the lives of fifteen sailors off the coast of Ireland.Almost seventeen years later, Trueman was at Camp 2 at 6,400 metres on Mount Everest as the May 1996 tragedy unfolded high above him. As stricken guides, clients and Sherpas tried to survive the fierce storms which engulfed the upper mountain, Trueman was able to descend and - using his twenty-four years of experience as an officer in the British Army - coordinate the rescue effort from Base Camp. The Storms is the remarkable memoir of a British Army Gurkha officer. Trueman, a veteran of twenty expeditions to the Himalaya, gives a candid account of life inside expeditions to the highest mountain in the world. He gives a unique personal perspective on the 1996 Everest storm, as well as on the fateful day in May 1999 when Briton Mike Matthews disappeared high on the mountain after he and Trueman had summited.

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Ken Wilson’s Classic Rock is one of the most popular and iconic works of climbing literature ever written. Along with Hard Rock and Extreme Rock, it has acquired legendary status. First published in 1978, Classic Rock represented the absolute best of British climbing at that time, quickly establishing itself as a must-have publication. It is a celebration of 80 of the best lower-grade routes in Great Britain, bringing them to life through a superb selection of photographs, anecdotes and essays from some of the most accomplished climbers of the day. ‘Ticking’ the book became an instant and obvious challenge, and remains so to this day (Wilson wasn’t a fan, describing it as ‘puerile ticking’). Any climber working his or her way through the book will be taken on a tour of the finest routes on the best cliffs and crags to be found throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Many of the routes in the book were established over a century ago. At that time the Victorian and Edwardian alpinists, flushed with successes abroad, sought harder challenges at home. With their well-honed confidence, they went straight for the biggest cliffs of Scotland. Anyone seeking to retrace their steps will immediately be transported to bold lines of weakness up otherwise daunting precipices! Before long these pioneers trailed their hemp ropes and balanced their hobnail boots up the sea cliffs of Cornwall and the gritstone edges of the Pennines, and the crags of the Lake District and North Wales. These climbers provided us with a great national treasure – a repository of adventure and spectacle that can provide a lifetime’s enjoyment and challenge. An ascent of a great historic route will rarely disappoint. Such routes retain much of their original challenge, unsullied by the pitons and bolts often found on their continental equivalents. They take bold, logical lines up otherwise difficult cliffs – usually cleaned and stabilised by years of use. Classic Rock provides a mere sampling of these treasures. This latest edition has been transformed with over 300 new colour photos. These sit alongside archive images to create an inspirational dialogue between today’s climbers and those of history. Fifty-five chapters, contributed by acclaimed climbers and writers such as Jim Perrin, Paul Nunn and Angela Soper, describe the finest classic rock climbs in Britain.

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In 1959, sixteen-year-old Ian ‘Spike’ Sykes left school and, after a short period of work at Leeds University, joined the RAF. Already a keen climber, he signed up on the promise of excitement and adventure and was posted to the remote RAF Kinloss Mountain Rescue Team in the north of Scotland. It was the beginning of a journey which would see him involved in some of the most legendary call-outs in Scottish mountain rescue history, including the 1963 New Year tragedy on the Isle of Skye.In the Shadow of Ben Nevis tells Spike’s story from growing up in Leeds in the aftermath of the Second World War, to his time with the RAF during the cold war. After leaving the RAF, he remained an active member of the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team and was involved in the first lower down the north face of Ben Nevis – an epic 1,500-foot descent to rescue stricken climbers in the middle of winter.Following a two-and-a-half-year stint on Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey, he returned to the Highlands and opened the first Nevisport shop with his close friend Ian ‘Suds’ Sutherland. Together, they brought Sunday trading to Fort William and were one of a small number of shops to revolutionise outdoor retail in the UK. Later, he was a key player in the development of the Nevis Range ski area. Over many years, and against all odds, the project became a reality and a great success.Recounted within these pages are a great many lively tales of adventures and mishaps, told with immediacy and charm. With a foreword by legendary Scottish mountaineer Hamish MacInnes, a close friend of Spike’s, In the Shadow of Ben Nevis is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Scottish mountaineering and mountain rescue.

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Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc by Peter Foster is the biography of scientist and mountaineer Thomas Graham Brown, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the mountain earned him the soubriquet, and whose achievements in the Alps and Greater Ranges place him at the forefront of British mountaineering between the two world wars.Born in Edinburgh in 1882, Graham Brown first pursued a career in the sciences as a physiologist – his exacting father demanding the highest standards – and the results of his research, largely unrecognised at the time, now underpin current understanding of the nervous control of movement in animals and man. His mountaineering career began in earnest after the First World War. From rock climbing in the Lake District he progressed to guided climbs in the Alps, where in 1927 he was fatefully introduced to Frank Smythe with whom he made the groundbreaking first ascents of the Sentinelle Rouge and the Route Major on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc. This resulted in an obsession with the mountain and a feud between the pair that smouldered and flared for twenty years.Ambitious, determined and uncompromising in his views, he never left others feeling neutral: Geoffrey Winthrop Young thought him ‘a vicious lunatic’, yet Charles Houston felt closer to Graham Brown ‘than almost anyone else I know’. Graham Brown’s life was one of turbulence in his career, relationships and in the mountains, whether on expeditions to Mount Foraker, Nanda Devi and Masherbrum, or most frequently, the Alps.Peter Foster has drawn upon diaries, letters and extensive archival research that illuminate the highs and lows of Graham Brown’s scientific and climbing careers, and explores the imbalance between the significance of his achievements and the lack of recognition he received. But, above all, The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc allows one to hear Graham Brown’s voice: querulous, opinionated and, to the discomfort of his many adversaries, almost always right.

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The Climbing Chronicles record the 1940s climbing exploits of Harry Parker. Each night he noted down his adventures in his 'chronicles', recording the routes he climbed, the walks, the journeys, and the people he met. His diaries have now been transcribed by his son John, and offer a first-hand view of climbing and walking in Britain in the 1940s.

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In 1938 Anderl Heckmair made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, a monumental climb that cemented his place in history. In My Life he tells the story of how he turned from a fragile child wrapped 'quite literally, in cotton bindings,' into one of the most important mountaineers in the world.

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On Thin Ice is Mick Fowler's second set of climbing memoirs, following Vertical Pleasure. Here, the celebrated mountaineer records his expeditions since 1990 where, despite work and family commitments, he maintained a regular series of 'big trips' to challenging objectives around the world with a sequence of major successes. The combination of exotic travel with major climbs provides the ultimate adrenalin-soaked holiday experience that Mick Fowler has mastered to the full. We are transported from the cliffs of Jordan to remote peaks in deepest Asia via Taweche and Changabang in the Himalaya, with jaunts to the Andes and Alaska thrown in for good measure. That Fowler has organised this routine for years, while holding down a conventional nine-to-five job with the Inland Revenue, has constantly amazed his peers. In this, his second book, he has also mastered the skills of amusing travel-writing to entertain us as a preliminary to the finale of a titanic struggle on each of his fiendishly demanding climbs. His ascent of Siguniang in 2002, with Paul Ramsden featured hard ice climbing on a fabulous face in deepest China and was so admired by the international climbing community that it won the US Golden Piton and the French Piolets d'Or, both awards given for the finest alpine achievements in the world during that year. Fowler describes his travels in the great traditions, with engaging modesty and wit, but the climbs themselves are frequently so dramatic that the anxiety and tension forces its way to the surface to be matched by a corresponding relief and triumph when success and safe descent is achieved.

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I personally have always been quite comfortable either halfway up or halfway down a steep, snowy mountainside. Ascents and Descents is the autobiography of Peter Allison: civil engineer, rock climber, ski-mountaineer and mountain guide. Starting out on the crags of north-east England as a young boy, Peter soon became immersed in the emerging climbing scene of the 1950s, when harnesses were a thing of the future, and hemp ropes and plimsolls were the staple climbing gear. He soon began to explore ice climbing and mixed climbing, progressing to crags in the Lake District and then the Alps, and claiming several first British ascents. Over the course of an impressive sixty-five-year climbing career, he climbed hard lines on the high mountains, including the North Face of the Eiger and the Hoernli Ridge on the Matterhorn. Having initially juggled climbing with a thriving and extremely busy quarrying business, Peter decided it was time to dedicate more time to his love of the hills, and qualified as a mountain guide, subsequently specialising in routes on the Chamonix Aiguilles, the Aiguille du Chardonnet and the Aiguille d'Argentiere. He built an excellent reputation, balancing fun and risk with safety and prudence, and always putting his clients first. Ascents and Descents tells of the highs and lows of climbing, from standing on a summit in perfect conditions to the frustration of years of rehabilitation from a broken pelvis. Peter Allison recounts his colourful story with honesty, humour and frank detail, leaving you in no doubt about his true passion for the mountains.

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In Distant Snows, mountaineer John Harding recollects his worldwide adventures spanning sixty years across Europe, Iran, East Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Arctic. He climbed many classic peaks including Mont Blanc, Mount Kenya, and Mount Cook, explored obscure ranges, and pioneered ski mountaineering expeditions in Turkey, Spain and Greece.Written with candour, a sharp eye for the tragicomic and with a sympathetic insight into the history and culture of indigenous mountain peoples, Harding’s compelling narrative proclaims the power of nature, the glory of landscape and the spirit of the mountains. Distant Snows is a window into the mind and passions of a mountaineer while faithfully preserving the memory of the many characters who accompanied him on his mountain odyssey.With a foreword by the celebrated explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Distant Snows offers tales of serious undertakings as well as more leisurely exploits, complemented by Harding’s personal photographs and hand-drawn maps. This is a must-read for mountaineers, lovers of the natural world and those with aspirations of adventure.

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