Eight years before the Into Thin Air tragedy, Ed Webster’s International 4-man team accomplished the Ultimate Mt. Everest Climb. Without Sherpa assistance, with no bottled oxygen or radios, Webster’s team pioneered a super-dangerous new route up Everest’s avalanche-blasted East Face in Tibet. Click here for the Kindle eBook of Webster’s 5-Star Everest book, Snow in the Kingdom : amzn.to/1FwLDeK.
American climber Ed Webster ascended the Neverest Butress with three partners: fellow American and Expedition leader Robert Anderson, talented Canadian Iceman Paul Teare, and acclaimed British mountaineer Stephen Venables. Their 1988 new route up Everest's Kangshung Face-a direct line to the South Col, but from Tibet-stands in stark contrast to today’s coddled and guided Mt. Everest expeditions. Most people want to climb Everest via the easiest possible routes, have round-the-clock Sherpa help, plenty of bottled 02, and slog in line up a highway of footsteps and traffic-jammed fixed ropes to the top. But not everyone. What Webster and his friends ascended was The Real Everest. Not a technologically subdued, crowded, overwhelmed Mt. Everest. Imagine instead climbing Earth's highest mountain with ethics and style. Up a brand new untried line up the peak's toughest face. With a very small team. Always looking out for each other. Carrying ALL your own food, gear, and supplies yourself. (Only SIX Expeditions have attained Everest’s summit with NO Sherpa assistance.) Using a minimum of fixed ropes. And of course without bottled oxygen or radios. (No radio at Base Camp either.) The four climbers endured blizzards, hurricane-strength winds, and eventually devastating frostbite before one member attained the summit. After running out of food, they agonizingly descended for four foodless days down avalanche-ready-to-go snow slopes, without ropes, in a blinding whiteout. Staring down death. NEVER GIVING UP. And surviving, ultimately, because of their combined skill, willpower-and friendship. This is the uniquely inspiring story told in Ed Webster’s 5-Star rated autobiography, Snow in the Kingdom, My Storm Years on Everest. Chronicling all 3 of Webster's Mt. Everest expeditions, in total, each to a different side of Everest, to Nepal and twice to Tibet, Snow in the Kingdom has secured its place as an "Everest classic." Its compelling personal narrative is beautifully illustrated by 100 pages of color photographs, plus a multitude of B&W photos carefully positioned to match the text on every single page. See Amazon's "Preview the Book" for examples.
"You know, none of you should have made it back down alive!" Joe Simpson of Touching The Void-fame once told Webster. Almost miraculously, by a wisp, Ed Webster and his partners did survive their Everest first ascent of the Neverest Buttress. In the years since, Reinhold Messner, the world’s greatest mountaineer, has unstintingly praised the team's effort as “the best ascent of Everest in terms and style of pure adventure.” No subsequent expedition has equaled, let alone surpassed, the ethical bar raised on Everest by the 1988 International Everest Expedition to the Kangshung Face. To the present day, these four climbers from America, Canada, and England-Anderson and Webster, Teare and Venables-are still the smallest team to achieve the first ascent of one of Mt. Everest’s 15 primary routes. Four friends welded by months of daily challenges, extreme climbing, and unimaginable suffering, united to ascend the world's tallest mountain in the very best possible style. It almost doesn't sound true, does it ? It was, and it is: check out the Everest history books and Wikipedia. This is Everest The Really Hard Way, and Snow in the Kingdom. Thank You. Webster’s website is: www.mtnimagery.com
4 окт 2015
