1995. 896 pp, 24 photos. The complete text of Boardman and Tasker's four books: Savage Arena, Everest the Cruel Way, The Shining Mountain and Sacred Summits. Includes Everest, Carstenz, Changabang, Kanchenjunga. DJ, Fine-New.
Longer description: Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker forged their internationally famous Himalayan climbing partnership during the second half of the 1970's and when they died together on the North-East Ridge of Everest in 1982 they left behind a track record of totally committing lightweight first ascents which was to be the inspiration of a whole new generation of alpine-syle expeditions. They each wrote two accomplished books which, deservedly, soon acquired classic status and became rquired reading for all venturing to high altitude.
It is fitting that the memorial to these two exceptional climbers and writers should take the form of the annual Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.
As for their own four books, these are now reprinted for the first time in one volume.
Savage Arena was published posthumously in 1982 but covers a span of Tasker's remarkable climbing career from the first British winter ascent of the Eigerwand, via Dunagiri South Face with Dick Renshaw (1975), Changabang West Wall with Peter Boardman (1976), Kangchenjunga North Ridge with Boardman, Scott and Bettembourg (1979), and two thwarted attempts on the West and the Abruzzi Ridges of K2 in 1978 and 1980.
Everest the Cruel Way, is Tasker's account of the 1980 British eight-man attempt to climb Everest in winter, by the notorious West Ridge with Alan Rouse, John Porter, Brian Hall, Pete Thexton, Paul Nunn and Al and Aid Burgess.
The Shining Mountain was published in 1978, three years after Boardman had reached the summit of Everest on Chris Bonington's large-scale South-West Face expedition (which Boardman irreverently described as 'the last great colonial experience'). The two-man ascent of Changabang, with Tasker, could not have been a more different undertaking, and was rated the hardest climb achieved in the Himalaya to that date. The book went on to win the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1979.
Sacred Summits was already in proof when Boardman went off to Everest for the last time in 1982.
It covers three very different expeditions - to the Carstensz Pyramid in New Guinea with his future wife in 1978-9, the impressive four-man first ascent of Kangchenjunga North Ridge (1979), and later that year the first ascent of the South Summit of Gauri Sankar by its gruelling West Ridge in a team of five.
As they interweave their stories, these four books convey the addictive exhilaration, the frustrations and the tragedies of high-altitude climbing, and the single-minded committment involved in getting to the top for two men who were both friends and rivals and blessed with the eloquence to decribe their passion thoughtfully, honestly and with a wry humour.
