Five Miles High (Paperback, 1st Lyons Press ed)

Five Miles High is the epic account of the 1938 American Karakoram expedition to the summit of K2 - a climb considered more treacherous and difficult than Everest. Equipped with the most "modern" gear available to them - wool mittens, canvas tents, and buckle-up, leather-strapped crampons - this group of young men set out to surmount the insurmountable. A four-month-long journey would take them to one of the most inhospitable climes on the face of the Earth, nearly 27,000 feet above sea level and many miles from any sign of human settlement. The party walked 350 miles form Kashmir to K2, through Baltistan. They attempted to find routes on three sides of that huge mountain, finally reaching 26,000 feet on what has since become the standard route - now known as the Abruzzi Ridge. With a shrewd wit and a survivalist's sense of determination, Robert H. Bates and Charles S. Houston provide an intimate and gripping account of their adventures, evoking all the terror, excitement, and pure exaltation a person feels when standing, five miles high, on a part of the globe where no person has stood before. (5 1/2 X 8 1/4, 402 pages, b&w photos, illustrations)