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    Unavailable
    No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
    Unavailable
    No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
    Unavailable
    No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

    Written by David Roberts

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    This gripping and triumphant memoir follows a living legend of extreme mountaineering as he makes his assault on history, one 8,000-meter summit at a time.

    For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat, safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go.

    A preternaturally cautious climber who once turned back 300 feet from the top of Everest but who would not shrink from a peak (Annapurna) known to claim the life of one climber for every two who reached its summit, Viesturs lives by an unyielding motto, "Reaching the summit is optional. Getting down is mandatory." It is with this philosophy that he vividly describes fatal errors in judgment made by his fellow climbers as well as a few of his own close calls and gallant rescues. And, for the first time, he details his own pivotal and heroic role in the 1996 Everest disaster made famous in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air.

    In addition to the raw excitement of Viesturs's odyssey, No Shortcuts to the Top is leavened with many funny moments revealing the camaraderie between climbers. It is more than the first full account of one of the staggering accomplishments of our time; it is a portrait of a brave and devoted family man and his beliefs that shaped this most perilous and magnificent pursuit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 17, 2006
    ISBN9780739339909
    Unavailable
    No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
    Author

    David Roberts

    David Roberts is a hugely talented and versatile artist and author. David began his career in fashion illustration, and his sharp eye for form and composition is showcased beautifully in his books with Andrea Beaty, which include Ada Twist, Scientist and Iggy Peck, Architect. His work ranges from feisty retellings of fairy tales created in collaboration with his sister, Lyn (Little Red, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel), to his brilliantly funny books with Julia Donaldson such as Tyrannosaurus Drip, The Troll and The Cook and the King. In 2006 he won the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Gold Award for his line drawings in Mouse Noses On Toast, and Little Red was shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. David’s sense of humour shines through in all his work, but especially his illustrations for The Bolds series by Julian Clary and the madcap Dirty Bertie books. Suffragette: The Battle for Equality was David’s first self-authored book and is an exquisitely illustrated history of the women’s suffrage movement, which has been a passion of David’s since his school days.

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    Reviews for No Shortcuts to the Top

    4/5

    103 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Inspirational story, some great short stories. Sometimes te chronology of the different hikes is hard to follow.
    • 4/5
      Ed Viesturs was the twelfth person to summit all 14 of the world's tallest mountains, the first American to do so, and the sixth to summit all 14 without supplemental oxygen. This is his autobiography, with a particular focus on his climbing. As with most (all?) of the mountaineering books I've read, this one is very exciting at times. It kept me wanting to read. Ed was climbing with Scott Fisher on K2 when they not only summitted (against Ed's better judgement), but they saved the lives of two other climbers. Ed was part of David Breashears IMAX crew when disaster hit Everest in 1996. Plus there are many other climbs that he was involved in to make it to the summit of all 14; of course, he didn't make them all on his first tries, either. I was quite interested to learn that before the mountaineering took over, Ed had originally become a veterinarian.
    • 4/5
      I love reading accounts of people accomplishing amazing things. Ed Viesturs is was the 6th person in the world to climb all fourteen 8,000 meter peaks...and he did it all without the use of bottled oxygen. I agree with others that his writing is not nearly as good as Jon Krakauer, but his accomplishments, and the struggle to achieve them, more than made up for it. My favorite part was the account of his early days in Seattle/on Mt. Rainier. I'll never go anywhere near an 8,000 meter peak, but his descriptions of Mt. Rainier have cemented my desire to stand on top of it someday.
    • 3/5
      Ed Viesturs is an amazing mountaineer. Unfortunately, he's not a very good writer. His account of his attempt and eventual success in climbing the world's 14 highest peaks reads a lot like a very, very long resume.
    • 4/5
      Viesturs is no Krakauer when he puts pen to paper but his amazing story makes up for anything it lacks in literary eloquence. Viesturs is the first American to climb all 14 8000 meter peaks without supplemental oxygen and this story takes you there with him.
    • 1/5
      This book was difficult to read. Every time the author summited a peak, he made it seem very pedestrian and anti-climatic.