Top Ten Mountain Books - Part Two

We brought you the first part of our Top Ten Mountain books a week or so back featuring the likes of Touching The Void and The White Spider, but we were so engrossed in our reading that we plain forgot part two, so here it is, the final five of our favourite mountain books just in time to add to the Chrismas pressie list...

In a nutshell Simpson's second book, published after Touching The Void, This Game of Ghosts is basically Simpson's autobiography and goes some way to explaining just how he came to be crawling down a glacier in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson grows up all over the place and is an inveterate risk taker from an early age, trying to ride down steps on a tricycle and so on.

He discovers climbing, makes some dangerous youthful mistakes but lives to tell the take and carries on climbing in the Alps and elsewhere. Many of the climbers he knows die in mountain accidents.

Why's it great? Ghosts is a completely different sort of book from Touching The Void, more thoughtful and reflective. It could have been desperately depressing - but the quality of Simpson's writing and vivid powers of description shine through even when things look darkest and his mates seem to be dropping like flies. The description of a truck journey along the Karakorum Highway is laugh out loud funny in a dark, dangerous way that climbers in particular will recognise instantly. A classic and a good book to give to non-climbers who wonder what the hell it's all about.

In a nutshell Young French guy growing up in pre-war France discovers climbing and finds his vocation despite being a talented ski-er. Overtaken by the war, he first does a sort of civillian national service in the mountains near Chamonix, then joins the resistance fighting the Germans in the mountains. After the war he continues his climbing career becoming one of France's leading mountaineers and working as a mountain guide. He's part of the first French team to climb the North face of the Eiger and is a member of the Herzog expedition that climbed Annapurna for the first time.

Why's it great? The title says it all - Terray 's description of his climbing career and life is laced with dry humour as well as being modest and self-effacing without a trace of ego. Which would be neither here or there were it not for the fact that it's an astonishing chronicle of an amazing climbing career told with candour and dry humour. He doesn't embroider events with retrospective glamour, recalling, for example, on the summit of the Eiger, that he 'was just a tired and hungry animal, and my only satisfaction was the animal one of having saved my skin.' Great read.

In a nutshell Post colonial British climbing legend leads last great expedition-style assault on the world's last great mountaineering problem, Everest's SW Face. After lots of grinding hard work, careful man management and some individual brilliance from the lead climbers, Dougal Haston and Doug Scott summit the mountain before surviving a bivouac high on its slopes. Hurrah.

Why's it great? Bonington's prose isn't particularly amazing, but this is the man who sparked a thousand youthful imaginations including mine. It's also an extraordinary look back at a style of expedition that's virtually unheard of these days, with CB juggling both complex logistics and the fragile egos of his lead climbers, all of whom want to go to the top.

The book gets its emotional power mainly from the contributions of expedition members and, in particular, the summit push by Scott and Haston culminating in their high-altitude bivvy. A slice of Everest history albeit a slightly dry one...

In a nutshell Young Scottish poet Andrew Greig writes a collection of poems based on climbing and is invited on an expedition to the Karakorum by the legendary Mal Duff who is unaware that Greig has never climbed. No to be put off, Duff instructs Greig in Scottish mountaineering skills and culture before they head off to Pakistan as part of a small expedition. The team climb the mountain, but only after lots of financial hassles and classic mountaineering personality clashes.

Why's it great? The perfect antidote to cliched, dull as glacial ditchwater expedition books. Greig's semi-insider, semi-outsider position in the expedition gives him a real insight into the sometimes absurd clashes of monstrous climbing egos under the pressure of climbing and logistical pressures. And his writing talent allows him to tell the story beautifully and with real affection. This is the way expeditions - small ones at least - really are and it's a fantastic and moving read. Greig's other books - Kingdoms of Experience for example - are also worth seeking out and his novel featuring two climbers, Electric Brae, is astonishing.

In a nutshell Gnarly Scottish GP Tom Patey was part of the Bonington generation, but the other side of the coin. One Man's Mountains is a posthumous collection of his climbing writing and some of the funniest climbing prose you're likely to find with dry, sardonic demolition of pomposity and commercialised climbing a speciality. Highlights include 'The Art of Climbing Down Gracefully', a collection of cunning ploys to explain crap performance and the terse, dark 'Short Walk With Whillans' when he sets off to climb the Eiger Nordwand.

Why's it great? A mix of darkly funny observations on the pre-70s climbing scene, Patey - who died abseiling from a sea stack in 1970 - is something of an 'anti-Bonington'. It's not all fun and games though, laced in are some of the astute observations of one of the best climbers of his generation. Just very, very funny.