The Endless Knot: K2, Mountain of Dreams and Destiny - Softcover

Diemberger, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911342657 ISBN 13: 9781911342656

Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

'A monumental book ... I defy anyone to read it and remain unmoved.' Stephen Venables, Alpine Journal

Acclaimed as one of the most powerful accounts of mountain adventure and tragedy ever written, The Endless Knot is a harrowing account of the 1986 K2 disaster.

A rare first-hand account from a survivor at the very epicentre of the drama, The Endless Knot describes the disaster in frank detail. Kurt Diemberger's account of the final days of success, accident, storm and escape during which five climbers died, including his partner Julie Tullis and the great British mountaineer Al Rouse, is lacerating in its sense of tragedy, loss and dogged survival. Only Diemberger and Willi Bauer escaped the mountain. K2 had claimed the lives of thirteen climbers that summer.

Kurt Diemberger is one of only two climbers to have made first ascents of two 8000-metre peaks, Broad Peak and Dhaulagiri. A superb mountaineer, the K2 trauma left him physically and emotionally ravaged, but it also marked him out as an instinctive and tenacious survivor. After a long period of recovery Diemberger published The Endless Knot and resumed life as a mountaineer, filmmaker and international lecturer.

About this title

About the Author:

Austrian mountaineer Kurt Diemberger is a member of an extremely select club - he is one of only two climbers alive to have made the first ascent of two of the world's 8,000-metre peaks, Broad Peak in 1957 and Dhaulagiri in 1960. Diemberger is also an accomplished filmmaker and writer, he became one of the top high-altitude filmmakers in the world and his books have enjoyed popularity around the globe. He is now recognised as one of the finest chroniclers of the contemporary mountain scene, with his writing guaranteed to enlighten, move and entertain. In 2013, Diemberger was awarded the prestigious Piolets d'Or lifetime achievement award, which is perhaps the highest international recognition as a mountaineer, writer and mountain documentary filmmaker. Born in 1932, Diemberger began mountaineering in the Alps, quickly notching up an impressive list of ascents. By 1958 he had climbed the three great north faces of the Alps - the Eiger, Matterhorn, and Grandes Jorasses. He soon turned his attention to the Greater Ranges, where he made several notable and first ascents, often without oxygen. Both of his 8,000-metre first ascents were made without additional oxygen and Broad Peak, which he climbed with Hermann Buhl, Marcus Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller, was the first eight-thousander to be ascended in alpine style, (renouncing help from high-altitude porters and artificial oxygen and without backup from base camp), long before this technique became widely used on the Himalayan giants. In all, Kurt has climbed six of the eightthousanders, and Broad Peak twice (the second time in 1984 with Julie Tullis, 27 years after his first ascent). Diemberger's mountain film career began in 1958 when he filmed the greatest ridge-traverse of the Alps - the 'Peuterey Integral' on Mont Blanc, including the Aiguille Noire and Aiguille Blanche - from a rope of just two (his patient partner during the five-day climb was Frans Lindner). He then filmed the first ascent of Dhaulagiri in 1960, made films in Greenland, the Hindu Kush and in Africa, and in 1974 took his 16-milimetre camera up the 'traverse of the future' on Everest when he reached the top of Shartse (7,500 metres), having made the first ascent with his friend Hermann Warth - leaving the continuation of the enormous ridge traverse via Lhotse and Everest for others still to come. Later, in autumn 1978, Diemberger succeeded in making a sync-sound film on the top of Everest itself, recording his French companions and making a complete 360-degree panorama with his cameras. It was a world-first and, for Kurt, a keen photographer from his earliest visits to the Alps, a 'crowning moment'. Diemberger made several award-winning documentaries with Julie Tullis, his high-altitude filming companion and 'other ego' in later years. These included three films on K2, where the pair entered the field of documentaries on local people in the Himalaya with 'Tashigang - a Tibetan village between the world of humans and the world of spirits and mountain gods'. Both had great ideas for filming in this area, and they would have continued their creative union but Julie, after reaching the summit of their dream mountain K2, died in a long-lasting blizzard during the notorious 'black summer' of 1986, which claimed the lives on 13 climbers on K2. Behind K2, in the Shaksgam wilderness, a drum full of gear has been hidden since 1999 and Kurt, after seven previous visits, hopes to return for future exploration. When he was awarded the Piolet d'Or for lifetime achievement in 2013, it was not just for having climbed so many north faces, or having overcome the Giant Meringue of the Koenigsspitze (then far ahead of similar 'stunts'), but for what he had created during his mountaineering careers for all others with his camera, images and writing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1911342657
• ISBN 13: 9781911342656
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278