Annapurna

I may have read this book before.  If ever there was a true story about mountaineering that would put you off trying a climb, this is it. The suffering that went on, trying to get down off the mountain after the first successful ascent, is appalling.  It took five weeks to get out of the Himalayas. Most days there were amputations, a knuckle here, a finger or toe now missing from there. This was in 1951, so equipment and methods have vastly improved, although an Australian woman died on Everest just the other day from altitude poisoning.  This book is inscribed as a birthday present to my father in 1966.  Maurice Herzog died 2012.

Could still hold a book