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Designated Peak XV by surveyors in the field who’d first measured the angle of its rise with a twenty-four-inch theodolite three years earlier, the mountain in question jutted from the spine of the Himalaya in the forbidden kingdom of Nepal.
Jon Krakauer • Into Thin Air
Although in a few hours we would leave camp as a group, we would ascend as individuals, linked to one another by neither rope nor any deep sense of loyalty. Each client was in it for himself or herself, pretty much.
Jon Krakauer • Into Thin Air
(The consortium later enlisted Ernest Hemingway as a foreign correspondent during the Spanish civil war and funded expeditions like Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 crossing of the Pacific by raft.)
David Grann • The Lost City of Z
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
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David DeKok • Centralia, Pennsylvania
The papar risked their lives—and lost them in untold droves—not in the pursuit of wealth or personal glory or to claim new lands in the name of any despot. As the great arctic explorer and Nobel laureate Fridtjof Nansen points out, “these remarkable voyages were…undertaken chiefly from the wish to find lonely places, where these anchorites might
... See moreJon Krakauer • Into the Wild


To publicize his campaign, he laid plans to make a solo ascent of the south face of Denali, the mountain’s steepest aspect, in winter, with a minimum of food.