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Item #: OP334MC-835
THE ASCENT OF EVEREST John Hunt 1953 UK edition SIGNED by 200 great climbers:
By Hunt, John
Price: $22500.00


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Detailed Product Description
London, 1953, 1st UK edition. Hardcover with DJ. 

Regarding the provenance and price: On December 11, 2024, a similar copy of Ascent Of Everest with 24 signatures sold at a Sotheby's auction for $5500. It can be found on their website. Their provenance was it was purchased from Baumann's Rare Books in Philadelphia who had sold the book to a customer in June 29, 2001. Sotheby's mistakenly said it was signed by Tenzing. We emailed Sotheby's, told them that the book originally came from us, and Tenzing did not sign this copy. They corrected the listing on their website. 

This is a copy of The Ascent of Everest, John Hunt's official narrative of the first ascent of Mount Everest.  It has over 200 signatures of great and notable climbers and mountaineers, and we let the rock and ice boys sign it too. There was a magic window that opened up from 1960 to 2010. It was a perfect time to get books signed because:
  • There were many books getting published, better climbs were being done, color printing was perfected and cost was lowered. 
  • So many climbers from the 1930s onwards were still alive.  
  • I was visiting Hillary, Herzog, Harrer, Heckmair as late as 2007, and all of them had climbed in the 1930s. 
Many of the first ascenders of the 8000 meter peaks were still alive, and  we saw many European climbers in America. The 1960s-1990 were the great years for slide shows of mountain climbs. It put climbers and authors and book collectors in the same room, and where their books were one of the major factors  that allowed those meetings to take place. 

About 35 years ago we bought this book from Dee Molenaar, a notable climber in the Cascades. He met and may have climbed with many of the great climbers as they passed though the Cascades area, and he decided to ask them to sign two books, this copy of Ascent of Everest, and a copy of his own book, The Challenge of Rainier.  Dee had been a Rainier Ranger, as well as a climbing guide. He died just a few years ago at age 102. He was on K2 in 1953, and on the second ascent of Mt St Elias in 1946, plus much more. He did 3 first ascents on his beloved Mt Rainier. 

Dee collected signatures from the 1950s to the 1980s. After 1990 the book was mine and I slowly realized what I had. Luckily I was in a position to keep adding signatures. From 1987 to 2001 I had a real  bookshop, with public toilets, a parking lot, and beer in the fridge. We kept regular hours, so it was easy for the authors and climbers of books to find us easily. 

Several of the people I had sign this book dated their signatures. Ed Webster was the first, in April 1990, so that tells us when I got the book. Ed, along with Robert Mads Anderson, Stephen Venables  and Joseph Blackburn were nearby, putting together their bold Everest Kangshung Face Expedition, and they would drop into the shop frequently. When they talked about the difficulty of the route they had chosen, I said you buys have to sign this here Everest book, as some of you might not return! Well Venables summited, and Ed left parts of his fingers to mark the route.      

Here are some high points of the book. I will number each signed endpaper page with a page number 1-14, as all of the signatures are on endpapers and dedication pages, which do not have page numbers.  If we have this book for a while, I will make a list of all the climbers that will be narly 100% correct. There are only 2 or 3 I cannot decipher, which is really bad because I got it signed by them!

Dee Molenaar was part of the efforts on Rainier in April 1962 to prepare the climbers for the American Ascent in 1963. Their climb in May 1963 was only the third successful expedition to climb Everest. 

1 Tenzing Norgay India M 39 May 29, 1953 S Col-SE Ridge

2 Edmund Percival Hillary New Zealand M 33 May 29, 1953 S Col-SE Ridge Apiarist & alpinist

3 Juerg P. Marmet Switzerland M 28 May 23, 1956 S Col-SE Ridge Engineer (oxygen expert)

Above Table was filiched from the website of High Adventure Expeditions,  https://haexpeditions.com/.  I use their website frequently, as their list of all 7136 ascents of Everest is easy to use and accurate. They have it up to date, through May 29, 2024.

The book is Signed by every climber who went to Everest in 1963 for the first American ascent AMEE (American Mt Everest Expedition], and some who did not go. They did a warm up climb of Rainer in April 1962, which had its own article in National Geographic in May 1963, when the boys were in Nepal. That junket to Rainier in 1962 must have been for publicity purposes, as if you are training to climbing Everest at 29,037 ft, with a basecamp at 17,598 ft, a stroll up Rainier to 14,411 ft aint gonna help you much. In fairness, except for a few high peaks in Alaska, Canada, the Andes, fourteen and change is all we have to offer in North America or even Europe for that matter. 

As of this writing in January 2025, the only team member still alive from the USA's AMEE in 1963 is Jim Whittaker. 

This book is Signed by Jake Breitenbach, who died on the Everest climb. This is the only time I have had his signature, and what is more, it is related to his Everest expedition. It is also signed by Willi Unsoeld and James Ramsey Ullman who wrote the Americans on Everest account of the climb. Dan Doody, an excellent climber on Everest '63 and in 1965 was the first to die after the climb. Also signed by Norman. Dyhrenfurth, Jim Whittaker, etc. [I will fill this out.] . 

It is signed by Jurg Marmet, the third person to stand atop Everest, on 22 May 1956. He was the next successful climb after Ed and Tenzing. I would sometimes ask well connected climbers if they knew who Jurg Marmet was. (I knew by then.) Only Messner knew. This is signed by Reinhold and Peter Habeler.  It is also signed by Eric Shipton and HW Tilman (whose signature is tipped in, the only one in this book. I moved it from another book where it was already tipped in. Longer list pf signatures to follow.) 

This is the only book signed by Hillary and Tenzing that we have had or seen where I know where and when it was signed. Tenzing's signature is the most commonly forged signature in climbing, partly because a facsimile of his signature appears in his book, Tiger of the Snows. We once had the final typed manuscript of Tiger of the Snows, and with it we had the original Tenzing signature which got reprinted tens of thousands of times.  

It is also signed by Tenzing's wife Dhaku, and his two sons Norbu and Jamling who went to college in America. When I handed this book to Norbu, he looked at the tipped in photo of his parents, and said, ''Hey that's my mom.'' 

Also Signed by Chris Bonington, Maurice Herzog, Audrey Salkeld, Maggie Body, Louise Hillary, Peter Hillary, and the Everesters George Lowe, George Band,  James Morris and Charles Evans. Also Signed by  Bob Bates and Charles Houston, Galen Rowell, Nawang Gombu, Junko Tabei, Lou Whittaker, Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, Warren Harding, Riccardo Cassin, Jim Bridwell, Layton Kor, Babu Chirri Sherpa, Apa Sherpa, Bradford Washburn, Barbara Washburn, Steve Roper, Stephem Venables, Peter Gillman and Leni Gillman, more to come...
































































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