Climbing Adventure

Arthur's cleared the first floor of the dungeon. More than that, with his new ally in Cassie Chin, he's got a real chance of building his Clan. The problem is, his alliance is contingent on them pushing ahead fast to allow the Chin to make full use of their Clan Halls. The Benevolent Durians are on a speed run, but in a Tower where levels are multi-kilometers long at times, with cultivation requirements, and new enemies all around, how fast is too fast?

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.

The definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Into the Wild. Read by the author. Also, hear a Fresh Air interview with Krakauer conducted shortly after his ordeal.

In 2006, Kit DesLauriers made history by becoming the first person to climb - and then ski - from the summit of each continent's highest mountain, the famed Seven Summits. Centered on this quest, Higher Love represents a hero's journey, rich with personal insights, life-threatening consequences, and a thrilling crescendo. Spanning seven continents in just two years, this deeply personal memoir recounts Kit's initially secret journey that would change her life forever.

Gideon and his climbing team have been hiding on the fifth floor to take a much needed break before they resume ascending the Tower. Now, the time has come for them to defeat the Floor Boss and continue growing their personal power. While things heat up between Gideon and Esme, and his relationships with the others grows stronger, he is faced with the new dangers around every corner.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner, Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1985. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. Then a cry in the night took them out with torches, where they found Joe, badly injured.

At 28,251 feet, the world's second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the ultimate achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 eleven climbers died in a single thirty-six-hour period on K2–the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain's history and the second-worst in the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges.

In early May 2006, a young British climber named David Sharp lay dying near the top of Mount Everest while forty other climbers walked past him on their way to the summit. A week later, Lincoln Hall, a seasoned Australian climber, was left for dead near the same spot. Hall's death was reported around the world, but the next day he was found alive after spending the night on the upper mountain with no food and no shelter.

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant victories and hardships more brilliantly than Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest essays and reporting, Krakauer writes of mountains from the memorable perspective of one who has himself struggled with solo madness to scale Alaska's notorious Devils Thumb.

When the Towers arrived, without warning, without communication of intent or indication of reasoning, chaos ensued. Decades later, enchantments from the Tower and mana cores from the creatures within power the most advanced technologies in the real world. What was once a puzzling mystery has become a necessary part of economic growth. For Arthur Chua, the Malaysian Beginner Tower has always been his objective.

At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his listeners to do the final sort of which is which.

Condemned to a life of material harvesting in an ancient alien megastructure, Gideon Pike won't rest until he's found his way out from under the thumb of the Whelan Megacorp. His new home, an artifact of immense power, hangs suspended over a blackhole, and has been known to grant individuals strange abilities. Rumor has it this structure is responsible for most of mankind's technological advances over the last hundred and fifty years.

One of the world’s most well-traveled rock climbers, Clune takes us on an up-close journey though the evolution of the sport over the decades. From his home turf in the Gunks of New York State, to cliffs in far flung regions of the planet, Clune brings to life hilarious and sometimes horrifying escapades while he tests his mettle. Along the way, he deftly illustrates the changes that morphed rock climbing from a dirtbag activity for somewhat eccentric people to today’s Olympic sport status for its most dedicated practitioners.

Outdoor journalist James Edward Mills's book The Adventure Gap is a groundbreaking volume that is equal parts adventure story, history, and inspiration as it chronicles the first American all-Black summit attempt on Denali in 2013. Mills uses this momentous expedition as a jumping-off point to explore diversity in the outdoors, from Mathew Henson who stood at the North Pole in 1909 to contemporary adventurers such as polar explorer Barbara Hillary and rock climber Kai Lightner.

Reborn in a crypt, Nick was given an ancient heritage and an important task: to become king, and make the Archaens rise again. Nick was now the last one, and he would need to find allies by forming Soul Pacts with both followers and wives. With the power of the Soul Knight class, he would have to use both paladin and necromancer magics to conquer the tower and defeat his enemies. But not all was right, in or outside the tower. A bandit warlord had taken control of the city of Havendale, and a deathly Trial within the tower lurks, barring Nick from collecting his Heritage.

When Edmund Hillary first conquered Mt. Everest, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was at his side. Indeed, for as long as Westerners have been climbing the Himalaya, Sherpas have been the unsung heroes in the background. In August 2008, when eleven climbers lost their lives on K2, the world’s most dangerous peak, two Sherpas survived. They had emerged from poverty and political turmoil to become two of the most skillful mountaineers on earth. Based on unprecedented access and interviews, Buried in the Sky reveals their astonishing story for the first time.

In The Last of His Kind, renowned adventure writer David Roberts gives readers a spellbinding history of mountain climbing in the twentieth century as told through the biography of Brad Washburn, legendary mountaineering pioneer and photographer. Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, has praised David Roberts, saying, “Nobody alive writes better about mountaineering” - and nowhere is that truth more evident than in this breathtaking account of the life and exploits of America’s greatest mountain climber.

Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the best seller Into the Wild. Jon Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people - including himself - to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.

The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.

Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team to Chile had crashed deep in the Andes, killing many of his teammates, his mother, and his sister. Stranded with the few remaining survivors on a lifeless glacier and thinking constantly of his father’s grief, Parrado resolved that he could not simply wait to die. So Parrado, an ordinary young man with no particular disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snowcapped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness.