Himalaya Alpine-Style: The Most Challenging Routes on the Highest Peaks

by Stephen Venables, Andy Fanshawe

Release Date: March, 1996

Edition: Hardcover

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It is a good book

Unfortunately, recent reviewers have focused more on the achievments of the authors themselves than what has been written in the book.

It is a great book with loads of info on many different great routes done in the only proper style, i.e. alpine style. There are many references to the original articles, if you ever plan to have some expeditions to the area described in the book, as well as more general references to books of the first ascents of the mountains described and it that respect very resourceful.

Also, I think it is one of the virtues that the book is not written in an overpassionate, and boosting manner as most autobiographic books, but rather describes in a very admiring way the great achievments of extreme alpinism in the Himalaya.

If you want to know more about the greatest achievments in Alpine climbing in recent years this book does give you a great overview of some of the most facinating (and craziest) climbs.

I agree that some of the maps are not very good and that there could have been more depth in the description of the climbs, but the references should help someone wanting some more info.

Ho-Hum

Yet another coffee-table book on climbing the Himalayas, this time with a purported "Alpine-Style" aesthetic binding it all together. Unfortunately, many of the photos tend to be a bit amaturish, the writing uninteresting, which is saying alot given the fascinating subject matter the authors had to deal with. The gung-ho climbing aesthetic is also questionable, given the authors' own backgrounds. Plenty of other excellent coffee-table books have been written about climbing the pristine parts of the high Himalaya, in terms of photo quality and relevance, this one doesn't really compete.