This is a facsimile edition of Whymper’s "Guide" of 1897, 32 years after his famous but tragic first ascent of the Matterhorn. Guidebooks were a good money-spinner for Whymper, who was well-known for his "Scrambles Amongst the Alps" and "Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator". In this volume he covers the Mattertal and Saastal in detail, including their history from around the 14th century onwards – times in which the Bishop of Sion was the most powerful person in the region.

The conquest of the Matterhorn naturally features in the Guide. Earlier unsuccessful attempts are covered, including a solo "scramble" by Whymper in 1862 which ended in a slip he was lucky to survive. Eventually reaching the inn at Breuil his head wounds were treated by rubbing a mixture of hot wine and salt into them. He comments "Whether their rapid healing was to be attributed to that simple remedy, or to a good state of health, is a question. They closed up remarkably quickly, and in a few days I was able to move again."

There are many revealing glimpses of earlier times. In Switzerland and Italy, Central European time was 50 minutes and 39 seconds ahead of Paris time, which in turn was 9min. 21sec. ahead of Greenwich. Trains leaving Geneva for France left on Paris time, those heading into Switzerland kept Central European time. Soap was apparently scarce in Alpine regions, and the traveller is advised to "carry a cake". Aspiring scramblers were advised to take their boots out with them, get them into use before starting, but have them nailed on the spot.

The main content of the book is sandwiched between advertisements – for the mountain hotels (many of which still exist), for cameras and ropes, travel guides and Swiss champagne, railways and medicaments (including Dr J Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, for the treatment of coughs, colds, asthma, bronchitis, diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera).

Altogther a fascinating book. I’ll take it with me next time I visit the Valais.

Elizabeth Main was one of the early pioneers of Alpine mountaineering, and especially, it follows, of women’s mountaineering. She was also an accomplished self-taught photographer. This book is based on a collection of her early photographs now housed in the Upper Engadine Cultural Archives (Kulturarchiv Oberengadin) in Samedan. The four introductory essays illustrate different aspects of Elizabeth Main: her biography, as a writer of fiction, as a mountaineer, and as a photographer. The photographs include some of the earliest to be taken in the high mountains, as well as pictures capturing winter scenery and winter sports, including the Cresta Run.

As well as being Elizabeth Main (her second husband’s name), Elizabeth was also known by the names of her two other husbands, and is referred to elsewhere as both Mrs Fred Burnaby and Mrs (‘Lizzie’) le Blond. As a mountaineer her exploits in Norway rank alongside her Alpine record, but this book only deals with the time she spent in the Engadine.

I guess this book was produced to support the National Mountaineering Exhibition at Rheged, near Penrith (there’s no price on it and no ISBN), and it came free when I renewed my subscription to the BMC! It’s a soft-back coffee-table climbing book, and gives you just what it says in the title. It covers the development of the home scene, the Alps from the heroic era to the present day, and British involvement in the Greater Ranges including, of course, Everest. There are four short sections on the evolution of climbing equipment too. It’s a useful quick reference – a sort of who’s who and who-did-what of British climbing.

Subtitled “The triumph of Sepu Kangri”, the book chronicles Bonington and Clarke’s reconnaissance of this mountain and their attempt to climb it in 1998. The climbing content is limited – the book is more a travel book about the remote region of Tibet where the mountain lies. Like other Bonington expedition accounts, there is a wealth of detail in the appendices, and Clarke makes a substantial contribution both to the narrative and in his discussions of the medical aspects of travelling and climbing in remote territory. The summit remains unclimbed.

A recently-published revised edition of a classic text – an academic view of the whole range of glaciation phenomena, with each aspect clearly illustrated with superb black-and-white photographs.

An interesting and well-written account of one of the great siege-style mountaineering achievements – Bonington’s 1975 expedition which made the first ascent of the SW face of Everest. If you want to appreciate the planning and management that goes into mounting a successful expedition like this, this is the book to read. The climbing details are good too, with Bonington using source material from other team members as well as his own words. The detail in the technical appendices is fascinating, down to the statistic that the expedition packed 110,988 teabags.

Accounts from his unpublished diaries of his travels through SW Asia (present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan) in the 1950’s. Includes many black & white photographs.

Despite the quote from Chris Bonington on the front cover – “a wonderful, gritty expedition book” – Summit Fever is a very different expedition book. Successfully different, and an excellent read.

Joe Simpson introduces the book –

In Summit Fever, Andrew Greig, performing poet, musician, and novelist, suddenly finds himself in the role of budding amateur mountaineer on an expedition to the Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. Quite an introduction to climbing! It was to be an attempt on what was once dubbed “the unclimbable mountain” with a disparate bunch of strangers by a man better armed with a pen and note-book than cramponed boot and ice axe.

… Grieg’s role was primarily as the expedition writer with a chance to do some high-altitude load-carrying on the way. His task … at first seems an extraordinary one given that … he had had ‘no mountaineering experience at all’ when Mal Duff cheerily invited him on the trip. … Yet the very fact that he saw this alien world … through wholly innocent eyes gives Summit Fever a refreshingly honest ambience. It is an account by a ‘climber’ with nothing to prove … and whose appreciation of the high, hard world of the world’s highest mountains is not tainted by the ennui of habitual acquaintance.

As a portrait of an expedition – warts and all – it is a well-drawn piece with a dramatic and satisfying finale. … [Greig] reveals a sensitive awareness of this strange world. It portrays all the frustrations of a mountaineering expedition – the insanity of third-world bureaucracy, and the surprising drudgery and sheer hard work of Himalayan climbing, the boredom of forever waiting for something to happen and then the explosive frenetic activity when it does, so often likened to warfare – 90 percent boredom and 10 percent terror.

Joe Simpson – Introduction

And Andrew Grieg sets out his approach –

Until the November evening when Mal Duff banged on my window, I was purely an armchair climber, happy to enjoy mountaineering from a comfortable distance. (After that, common sense deserted me.) But I’d found that most climbing books left me vaguely dissatisfied in the same way as the freeze-dried meals we were to eat on the Mustagh Tower – something was always left out.

Climbing books are written by dedicated climbers, people for whom mountaineering has become second nature and habitual. The result is there is much they have ceased to consciously notice, and an equal amount they notice but don’t think to mention. They also have to observe the general ethos of mountaineers, and so adopt a certain style towards danger, fear, loneliness, endurance, ambition, exultation – usually jokey exaggerations or complete supression in favour of purely factual accounts.

The upshot is that, as with those cursed freeze-drieds, the contents are there but the whole juice and inner substance of the experience is missing. So I have tried to write about this adventure freshly, as it all happened to me for the first time. Having nothing to prove as a climber, I can afford to be honest about how it felt.

Andrew Greig – Foreword

So what we get is a mountaineering book with a great story to tell, enhanced with much better than usual portraits of the characters involved and their relationships, and an honest account of the highs and lows Greig experiences. Even the story of the walk-in, usually quickly skipped over, is told with interest and zest.

Near the end, Greig tries to sum up and answer the unanswerable question.

So what’s it all about? Why do climbers climb, why did I do it, what does it mean? Somehow I no longer want to talk or think about it. I’d begun climbing eager to analyse my companions, myself and climbing; now I’m reluctant to draw any conclusions at all. There is no clear answer to these questions, and even if there were it would not be very important. It is in the experience itself that the value lies. I can only really talk about it with other climbers, and with them there is no need to explain. … It is the texture of these last months that I wish to convey in the book. There will be no message.

Just one more quote, not from Greig himself, but one of the other group members: “I don’t know the meaning of fear – I go straight to abject terror!”

This is a mountaineering book that not only has great photos but is also enjoyable to read.

It starts off with a nice little spat – competing forewords from Dick "I did the seven first" Bass and Pat "But I did the REAL seven first" Morrow. The difference being whether you count Kosciuszko in Australia, at 2228m, as representing Australasia or prefer the altogether more challenging Cartensz Pyramid in Irian Jaya, 4884m. And in the interests of balance and completeness, the book naturally belies its title and has chapters on all eight summits.

The format for each chapter is the same – a general introduction to the mountain, its environment and its history, followed by two or more personal accounts of ascents (or just one account, in the case of Kosciuszko). All contributions are by people who have completed the Seven.

This format keeps the book interesting, and as mentioned above, the pictures are excellent. There is, though, a sad side in the number of climbers – writers, their partners or friends – who have lost their lives on these or other climbs.

Yes, it’s the John Muir. Not great literature, but worth a quick skip-read it for its curiosity value.