Along the way, he was lost in action during a storm atop Aconcuaga in Argentina; nearly drowned in crocodile-infested rapids during a canoe race in Belize; lost a team member to a heart attack during an initial, unsuccessful Everest expedition; fell into a crevasse when the ground beneath him collapsed on Mt. Cook in New Zealand; became the youngest American to summit then ski down Tibet’s Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth tallest peak; and had to deal with corrupt army officials, cannibalistic tribesmen, and Papuan terrorist groups while posing as a soldier, and surviving on a diet of fried bats and rats, when covertly traversing the heavily guarded Freeport-McMoRan mine – the world’s largest gold reserve – amid the remote and treacherous jungle terrain of Carstensz Pyramid.

All of these stories are related in Die Trying, yet this is far more than an action-adventure along the lines of Jon Krakauer’s smash-hit bestseller Into Thin Air (Villard, 1997), among many, many other mountain-based books: Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void (HarperCollins, 1989); David Breashears’ High Exposure (Simon & Schuster, 1999); Beck Weathers’ Left For Dead (Villard, 2000); even Seven Summits by Dick Bass (Grand Central, 1988), the man who first climbed each of the continents’ highest mountains.