Savage summit : the true stories of the first five women who climbed K2, the world's most feared mountain / Jennifer Jordan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jordan, Jennifer, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women mountaineers--Biography.

Women mountaineers.

Mountaineers--Biography.

Mountaineers.

Mountaineering--Pakistan--K2 (Mountain).

Mountaineering.

Pakistan--K2 (Mountain).

K2 (Pakistan : Mountain)--Description and travel.

K2 (Pakistan : Mountain).

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xv, 303 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : William Morrow, [2005]

Summary:

K2 is called the "Savage Mountain" and it has earned the name. Though not quite as tall as Everest, it is far more dangerous. Located at the border of China and Pakistan in the remote Karakoram range, K2 has some of the harshest climbing conditions and weather of any place in the world. At the beginning of the 2004 climbing season, ninety women had successfully summited Everest, but only five female climbers had reached the peak of K2. Today, all of those brave pioneers are dead.

In 1986 Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first woman ever to reach the top of K2 and was followed to the summit that same year by French climber Liliane Barrard and British climber Julie Tullis, both of whom died on their way down the mountain. Then in 1992, the summer that Rutkiewicz perished on Kangchenjunga, French alpinist Chantal Mauduit summited K2 and survived, only to die six years later on another 8,000-meter peak. Finally, in 1995 British climber and mother Alison Hargreaves reached the top but was killed shortly after starting her descent from its perilous summit. These courageous, remarkable women can no longer tell their tales of defeating the ferocious mountain. Jennifer Jordan, a journalist and filmmaker, tells the haunting and compelling, sometimes tragic, stories of how these women lived and died on the mountains they pursued.

Mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, poets and engineers, the female pioneers of K2 were complex personalities in the controversial world of high-altitude mountaineering, and their lives and deaths are a reminder of the high price climbers often pay to follow their dreams.

Contents:

Introduction: Why K2? ix

Chapter 1 A Women's History of K2 1

Chapter 2 The Persistent Pioneer 14

Chapter 3 A Spectacular Summit 47

Chapter 4 The Black Summer 69

Chapter 5 Our Mountain of Destiny 95

Chapter 6 The Black Summer's Final, Terrible Toll 121

Chapter 7 The Pioneer Perishes 153

Chapter 8 Finally, Another Survivor 177

Chapter 9 Of Mothers and Mountains 209

Chapter 10 One Day as a Tiger 239

Chapter 11 The Legacy Is Sealed 264

Chapter 12 A Hero Is Found 278

Epilogue: The Price of Passion 284.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [301]-303).

ISBN:

0060587156

OCLC:

55681311