1998, 1st American edition. 254 pp, 100+ color photos, maps. Messner has written perhaps the definitive treatise on the Yeti of the Himalaya, and claims to have solved the riddle. He actually saw one himself. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark.
Universally acknowledged as the greatest living mountain climber, Messner was the first to reach the top of Mount Everest without the use of oxygen, the first to ascend all of the world's 14 highest peaks. Reinhold Messner is without peer in his knowledge of the Himalayas. In 1986, during a solo climb in eastern Tibet, Messner confronted the greatest terror of his career - not a looming rockface or bottomless ice crevasse or murderous blizzaard; this terror was alive.
For over 20 years Reinhold Messner has been obsessed with the secret of the Yeti, the Himilayan creature of legend, who in the West became infamously known as the abominable snowman. Rather than fruitless speculation, Messner - the first person to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and the first to climb all 14 of the world's tallest peaks - provides his own first hand account. He begins by recouting his own terrifying run-ins with the Yeti - while hiking alone in remote parts of Nepal - and how they led to his determination to solve their mystery through seubsequent expeditions. This is an account of a quest, taking readers on hair-raising climbs through Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, Northern India, and even Tibet - where Messner was a fugitive from Chinese authorities.
