Painted Mountains

In this age of commercially guided expeditions and vacationing hordes in the Himalaya, Stephen Venables, a member of climbing’s greatest generation (and the first Briton to summit Everest without oxygen), still seeks out climbing’s loneliest and most difficult challenges. In addition to his tremendously accomplished mountaineering career and his award-winning books, Venables is known for traveling to remote towers of rock and snow in the farthest flung corners of the world, with tiny groups—typically one or two companions. In fact, it is those climbs, as much as his exploits on Everest, that have helped make Venables one of contemporary mountaineering’s most influential figures. In particular it is the two dramatic climbs in Kashmir recounted in Lost Mountains which helped shape today’s increasingly small-sized, elite mountaineering expeditions. First published in the UK under the title Painted Mountains, Lost Mountains won climbing literature’s most prestigious literary award, The Boardman-Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. It is a gripping account of how a skillful, bold, and creative mountaineer survives situations that would overwhelm almost anyone else. 20 black-and-white photographs accompany the text.