Mountain Adventures in the Various Countries of the World

The mountains of the 1860s killed freely and without apology. This book gathers the true accounts of men who climbed when there was no equipment to catch a fall, no forecasts to warn of storms, and no rescue teams to summon. John Timbs collected stories of the era's most daring ascents and most famous disasters: the climbers who reached the summit and those who did not return. These are adventures from an age when the great peaks were still being conquered for the first time, when a rope might be all that stood between a man and oblivion. The prose carries the spirit of Victorian adventure, full of frozen determination and the terrible beauty of nature unmasked.