UK, 2001, 1st UK edition. 236 pp, color and b/w photos. Part mountaineering book and part travelogue, this is a series of accounts of expeditions undertaken by Australia's most exciting young mountaineer, Andrew Lindblade. There are several climbs shared with the reader in the book, including the amazing Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, Patagonia, Thalay Sagar's north face, Himalaya and Mount Cook in New Zealand. This acclaimed book is now out of print and we may have the last few copies.
Review from the AU website Chockstone.org. I hinted that this book was on my wish list prior to my birthday this year and having now just finished reading it I can say that I haven’t been disappointed with the experience. Being an Aussie Andrew has scattered the novel with a few references to places well know to the Australian climber.
He spent a fair amount of time rock climbing in Victoria’s Arapiles and the Grampians before venturing further a field to build an impressive mountaineering career on remote alpine peaks in distant parts of the world.
Through all his well written adventures somehow these little local anecdotes sparked a link, at least for me. I’ve touched the same rock that this local legend trained upon. Possibly fell off routes he probably cruised before breakfast. Though the scale of his endeavours will forever greatly dwarf anything I’d contemplate, reading his words somehow made it easier to imagine myself high on the oxygen starved peaks, dodging rock fall, enduring forced bivis at breathless heights – maybe.
Anyway, tenuous though the connection was it was enough to make this document a vicarious page turner. I recommend it to all, and especially to fellow Aussie climbers. Who knows maybe it will provide inspiration to launch a similar mountaineering career. At the very least maybe one day I might stand at the base of New Zealand’s Mt Cook and remember that this is where it all began for Mr Lindblade.
The book is essentially a series of trip reports covering a portfolio of impressive peaks bagged. If I had to pick fault I’d say that this is where it might be. It would have been nice to hear a little more about the times between trips. To link the seemingly unreal heights with concepts us mortals down here at sea level can comprehend. He does do this to some extent, but overall the days high up on the ice are documented possibly too well if that makes any sense. A bit more character development I guess is what I’m trying to say.
Also the reader is given many an intense and descriptive journey of battling high winds, cruel bivis, thirsty steep treks, hard mixed rock and ice routes and very impressive first ascents, and yet it all kind of left me feeling like I’d still want to ask, “yeah, but what was it really like?”. Rapping off a single poor anchor thousands of metres above in a raging storm, your fingers frozen solid. Stuff like that he writes seemingly as par for the course. I’m having trouble expressing what I mean here. I guess you’ll just have to read the book and develop your own opinion. In any case it’s a great read.
Some of the places he gets to with climbing partner Athol Whimp are amazing. Fitz Roy’s north pillar and Cerro Torre’s south east pillar in Patagonia.
A first ascent on Thalay Sagar and the north face of Jannu in the Himalaya. It’s all there and more. Wild stuff. With some great colour photos to complement the words. There’s even a shot of him ticking a grade 29 on the Grampians’ Tiapan Wall, just to relate the whole incredible scale of his career back to something some of us would at least have stood at the base of and stared. Like a said this book is a bonus for locals, even if, like me, you’ve never set foot on a peak even half the height the aforementioned. If he does a biography I’ll buy it. Limp cover (sort of a very stiff paperback), New.
