No Way Down: Life and Death on K2 - Hardcover

Bowley, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670918423 ISBN 13: 9780670918423

Publisher: Viking, 2010

Synopsis

The summit of K2, 1 August 2008. An exhausted band of climbers pump their fists into the clear blue sky - joining the elite who have conquered the world's most lethal mountain. But as they celebrate, far below them an ice shelf collapses and sweeps away their ropes. They don't know it yet, but they will be forced to descend into the blackness with no lines. Of the thirty who set out, eleven will never make it back.

Following the stories of climbers from around the world, No Way Down weaves a tale of human courage, folly, survival and devastating loss. The stories are heart-wrenching: the young married couple whose rope was torn apart by an avalanche, sending the husband to his death; the 61-year-old Frenchman who called his family from near the summit to say he wouldn't make it home. So what drove them to try to conquer this elusive peak? And what went wrong that fateful day?

About this title

Review:

Riveting and powerful; an extraordinary story of an extraordinary tragedy. Reading No Way Down is the closest you can come to being on the summit of K2 on that fateful day (Sir Ranulph Fiennes)

A page-turning, utterly fresh take on the mountaineering experience, an Into Thin Air for a new century of adventurers, about a mountain even more treacherous than Everest (Doug Stanton, author of Horse Soldiers)

Unputdownable... a portrait of extreme courage, folly and loss, leavened by a small dose of survival' (Financial Times)

Artfully and assiduously pieces together an account of a fractious day in brutal real time. Fatality by fatality... devastating (New York Times)

A tour de force of a book...a triumph of storytelling (Associated Press)

I read this book in a single, sweaty-palmed sitting, and not because I intended to. I simply couldn't put it down. (Nick Heil, author of Dark Summit)

Brisk and engrossing... Bowley reveals a deep sympathy for his characters and their quest (Wall Street Journal)

Thrilling and wrenching (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Back Cover:

They were resting when they heard a faint cry outside. It came from far away.

They went out of the tent to check the mountain but nothing had changed from when they had last looked. The line of climbers was still stuck in the Bottleneck. The radio was quiet.

Then the Italian stumbled over. 'I see!' he said, pointing at the mountain, his face red. 'I see!'

Half a mile away at the base of the Bottleneck, about 600 feet below the main chain of climbers, a body was sliding down the ice.

The small black figure slowed down and came to a stop just beneath some rocks. It lay with its head pointing down the slope.

Immediately, excited chatter started up on the radio.

'Very bad fall!' someone said. 'He is alive. He is still moving. It is one of the Serbs.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0670918423
• ISBN 13: 9780670918423
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288