Rare UK hardcover Limited Edition of 50 copies, Signed by Lino Lacedelli and contained in a handmade slipcase! Not found in USA bookstores!
2006. 128 pp, 16 pages of color photos. Hardcover bound with a handsome deep blue clothg, and silver spine letters. Come with a dust jacket. This is a Limited Edition, No 37 of 50 copies. Signed by Lino Lacedelli, and comes with a handmade slipcase. Condition is like New.
This copy is SIGNED and Numbered, and the number and Limitation information and the signature are on the FEP, front endpaper. SIGNED Lino Lacedelli.
After 50 years of silence, at last a full account of what really happened during the legendary 1954 K2 expedition, an epic achievement that has always been clouded in mystery. On July 31, 1954, two Italians, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, became the first humans to summit K2. The event was celebrated in Italy with great pride, but when the team, led by Ardito Desio, returned home a terrible accusation was leveled at them.
One of the members of the expedition, Walter Bonatti, said the two climbers who summitted had put his life in danger by abandoning him before the final stretch so that they could reach the top without him. But the official version of the climb, written by leader Desio and confirmed by all other members of the expedition, said that hadn't happened, that Bonatti's accusations were unfounded, the result of a misunderstanding.
Today, more than 50 years after the event, summiter Achille Lacedelli tells his own terrible version of the truth: in the night before the summit attempt, he and Compagnoni deliberately failed to make their rendezvous with Bonatti, forcing him to abandon the final ascent so they could have the oxygen tanks he carried with him.
This is a story of courage & ambition, of glory & guilt, of more than 50 years of hiding the truth that became Lino Lacedelli's Price of Conquest.