Everest Audiobook By Thomas Hornbein, Jon Krakauer - foreword cover art

Everest

The West Ridge

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Everest

By: Thomas Hornbein, Jon Krakauer - foreword
Narrated by: Tom Beyer
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.19

Buy for $17.19

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route. Roughly two weeks after Whittaker's achievement, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, fellow American mountaineers on the same expedition, became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge—a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded.

This special fiftieth anniversary edition reintroduces the adventure in a larger format by members of the expedition, including leader Norman G. Dyhrenfurth and team doctor Jim Lester. In addition to a new foreword by Jon Krakauer, this volume also features a new preface by Hornbein along with a series of prefaces he wrote for earlier editions, including the original from 1965.

©1980, 2013 Thomas F. Hornbein; Foreword copyright 2013 by Jon Krakauer (P)2024 Tantor Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Outdoors & Nature Adventure
All stars
Most relevant  
This was a drastically different view of the 1963 Everest expedition than was presented by Jim Whittaker. I loved it.

Intrepid and stimulating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
love the personal account view and easy listening voice of the narrator. some parts are a little slow but add the details needed to follow the journey

Great easy listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well written and narrated. It felt like you part of the expedition to the top of the world.

Well done!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Everything about this book was great except the 95 minites of forward, FOUR prefaces, and then a prologue. The story didn't start until NINETY FIVE MINUTES into this listen. The prefaces for the first three editions were unnecessary when an even longer one was written for this fourth edition. The entire story is spoiled by the time you get through the introductory materials. definitely better to be read on physical media so you can save all tgat for LAST and also see the pretty pictures.

Great Story, Too Much Intro

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The wonderful narration brings to life Hornbein's compelling, thoughtful and humble story of one of the grearest feats in mountaineering history.

A true classic beautifully narrated.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
And what an amazing adventure! Well written and narrated. Made you feel like you were part of the expedition!

What a great read!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have read many books about Everest and enjoyed them immensely but this book was absolutely boring exacerbated by the soft spoken sing song narration, it was more like a book intended to put you to sleep. You have to listen to nearly 2 hours of introduction before the story even starts, but in retrospect the introductions and prefaces were more interesting, much more, than the telling of the tale. I quit the book after about 3 hours as I found it so dreadful. I picked it up initially just because one of the introductions was by Jon Krackauer who's Into Thin Air is one of the best books I have ever read. This one pales in comparison so much I found it intolerable

BORING

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’ve read many books on Everest, this one is not good. Too much non mountain material.

Lacking

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.