First American edition. Book is in very good shape with light wear to cover. DJ is in very good shape with some light chipping along edges. No markings to text. Ships in a box.
RAKAPOSHI
by MIKE BANKS
On June 25th, 1958, one of the giant peaks of the world, 22,500-foot Rakaposhi, surrendered to human conquest. The victors were two Britishers: Mike Banks, a captain in the Royal Marines, the only man in recent years to have explored both the Arctic regions and the Himalayas, and Tom Patey, a surgeon in the Royal Navy.
Rakaposhi, part of the Karakoram Range of the Himalayas, towers above the town of Gilgit in northern Pakistan, near the strategic point where Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan come close together. It is not the highest mountain ever to be climbed, but it is certainly the most difficult: up to 1956 it had thwarted six different expeditions. In their near-miraculous climb, Banks and Patey crawled the last 1,500 feet in a violent blizzard, clutching at the ice- covered summit with fingers so numbed by frostbite they couldn't even manage a congratulatory handshake!
To Banks, reaching the top was particularly sweet. Only two years earlier he had challenged Rakaposhi with a small Anglo-American expedition that was forced to turn back at 23,500 feet. Now, having won the battle, he tells the story of both expeditions, the failure and the success, in this exciting book.
A superb story-teller who writes with crackling British wit, Captain Banks begins with an account of his first attempt. His fellow climbers-New Zealander Hamish MacInnes ("his head full of wild and wonderful plans, his pocket usually empty"), Americans Bob Swift ("a slow- speaking Californian with an unerring sense of humor and a liking for beer and sports cars") and Dick Irvin ("a skilled photographer. an avid pill-swallower") brought skill, experience, and determination to the ascent. But Rakaposhi proved too much for all of them.
The author's second try, as leader of a larger, combined British and Pakistani expedition, is described in the latter half of the book. It is a swift and blood-tingling tale of men pushed to the limits of endurance, pitted against Nature's most ferocious performers, related by a courageous explorer who makes the reader relive with him every breathtaking moment of the six-week ascent to the summit.
Illustrated with brilliant action photographs, Rakaposhi is a story that inspires and thrills-a must for every armchair adventurer.