Himalayas

Trying to decide on which mountaineering book you should read next? Or even where to start? Use our handy mind map to find a pathway for reading books you’ll like.

We created this mind map to show the connections between many of the books we’ve read. It’s by no means a complete list of mountaineering books, but it does show how many mountaineers and stories are connected, and what a small community it is.

It’s fascinating to get different perspectives on the same story or the same mountain or the same climber. The links we’ve found include:

• mountaineers that were inspired by a particular book or person e.g. Ed Viesturs being inspired to climb by reading Annapurna
• mountaineers that climbed together and are mentioned in each others’ books e.g. Anatoli Boukreev and Andrew Lock
• or simply mountaineers that they came across or mentioned in their book
• personal stories based on the same event e.g. all the books about the 1996 Everest disaster

Where to start?

Popular books that people gravitate towards are those highlighted in green on the mind map i.e.

• Annapurna – Maurice Herzog
• Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
• High Adventure or View From The Summit – Edmund Hillary

Topics to get engrossed in

14 x 8000ers – mountaineers who have completed the ‘grand slam’ of mountaineering – climbing all the highest peaks in the world over 8000m e.g.

• Everest – Reinhold Messner – first to climb all 14 x 8000ers
• No Shortcuts to the Top – Ed Viesturs – first American
• Summit 8000 – Andrew Lock – first Australian and British Commonwealth citizen

Female Mountaineers – there are not nearly as many female mountaineers, so it’s fascinating to read about experiences from a female perspective e.g.

• Arlene Blum – Breaking Trail
• Cathy O’Dowd – Just For The Love Of It
• Lene Gammelgaard – Climbing High

Classics – the early days of mountaineering and ascents of the 8000ers and other significant climbs e.g.

• Annapurna – Maurice Herzog
• Conquistadors of the Useless – Lionel Terray
• Blank on the Map – Eric Shipton
• The White Spider – Heinrich Harrer
• High Adventure or View From The Summit – Edmund Hillary
• Everest the Hard Way – Chris Bonington

1996 Everest Disaster – while we’d rather read about great mountaineering experiences rather than disasters, this topic probably has the most books written about it, and it’s interesting to read the story from so many different perspectives e.g.

• Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
• The Climb – Anatoli Boukreev with G. Weston deWalt
• Left for Dead – Beck Weathers
• Dr on Everest – Kenneth Kamler M.D.
• Mountain Madness (the story of Scott Fischer) – Robert Birkby

For more books, see our list of Books to read for Armchair Mountaineers.

Happy reading!