Book description
In August, 2005, Tomaz Humar was trapped on a narrow ledge at 5900
metres on the formidable Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. He had been
attempting a new route, directly up the middle of the highest mountain
face in the world - solo. After six days he was out of food, almost
out of fuel and frequently buried by avalanches. Three helicopters
were poised for a brief break in the weather to pluck him off the
mountain. Because of the audacity of the climb, the fame of the
climber, the high risk associated with the rescue, and the hourly
reports posted on his base-camp website, the world was watching. Would
this be the most spectacular rescue in climbing history? Or a tragic -
and very public - death in the mountains?
Years before, as communism was collapsing and the Balkans slid into
chaos, Humar was unceremoniously conscripted into a dirty war that he
despised, where he observed brutal and inhumane atrocities that
disgusted him. Finally he did the unthinkable: he left and finally
arrived home in what had become a new country - Slovenia.
He returned to climbing, and within very few years, he was among the
best in the world. Reinhold Messner, among others, called him the most
remarkable mountain climber of his generation. His routes are seldom
repeated; most consider them to be suicidal; yet he often climbs them
solo. As this book was being written, he achieved the first-ever solo
ascent of the east summit of Annapurna.
Tomaz Humar has cooperated with Bernadette McDonald, the
distinguished former director of the Banff Festival and author of
several books on mountaineering, to tell his utterly remarkable story.
Bernadette McDonald's biography of Elizabeth Hawley,
I'll Call You
in Kathmandu
, was published in 2005. For many years she was Vice-President, Mountain
Culture at The Banff Center and Director of The Banff Mountain Film and
Book Festivals. Her most recent book is a biography of the renowned
American climber, Charlie Houston.
