Mountain: A Life on the Rocks

Steve Backshall’s love affair with the mountains has taken him to some of the world’s wildest places, environments that have the power to make a human being feel very small, very vulnerable and very alive.

MOUNTAIN: A LIFE OF THE ROCKS is an account of his most breathtaking expeditions: heading into the ‘Death Zone’ on the roof of the world in the Himalayas, and picking a precarious route up hundreds of metres of rock in the Arctic and Alps. There are expeditions of exploration, as Steve makes the first ascent of jungle peaks and scales the tabletop mountains of the ‘Lost World’, Venezuela’s Gran Sabana, in search of undiscovered animal species on their summits. Steve recalls his apprenticeship in the art of mountaineering with the Indian army, and the terror and near-disaster of some of his more ill-fated adventures, including the aftermath of the fall that should have ended his life.

This is a tale of terror and ecstasy, a book that tries to get to the heart of why we risk our lives to climb and conquer. But most of all, MOUNTAIN is a love letter to the wilderness, from one of the world’s most adventurous spirits.