CMC Library – it’s yours to use!

[David Pendlebury]

Hi All
A reminder that the club has an extensive library housed in the clubroom.
A catalogue of all the guides, books and maps can be found in the Members section of the website.
We have some current climbing guides, including all the definitive guides to the Peak District, plus a selection of guides to other parts of the world. There is also various instructional material and many classics of mountain literature.
I will focus on the later in this post. Steve Warwick gave me a slim volume entitled “The 100 Greatest Climbing and Mountaineering Books” and we have many of them in our library.
Selecting a few titles at random:
“Let’s Go Climbing!” by Colin Kirkus. Was first published in 1941 and is particularly poignant as he died in 1942 when his ‘plane failed to return from a mission. In a short 190 pages he goes from hill walking to Himalayan exploration, offering advice to the novice along the way. The writing style is infectious and feels very contemporary.
“K2 The Savage Mountain” by Charles Houston and Robert Bates documents the 1953 American K2 expedition. While the British had vast resources on Everest, the Americans were 8 climbers with no high altitude porter support. Then they all got trapped in a storm for 6 days close to 26,000 feet as one of them became severely ill. Their descent is a real page turner! A short and accessible account of life in poor conditions on a very serious mountain.
“Annapurna” by Maurice Herzog is a n account of the first 8000 metre mountain climbed in 1950. Again a gripping account with disaster almost befalling the team on descent. If you have read this then David Robert’s “Annapurna: True Summit” is a fascinating detective story piecing together diaries, records and interviews with family and friends to explain a more complex tale of what really happened.
Lastly. I would highlight the contemporary Steve House’s “Beyond the Mountain” which documents the American’s extreme Alpine style first ascents, either solo or with a single partner, of some of the highest faces in North America and the Himalayas. Taking the extreme to a new level!
Look out for more of my “Greatest” picks in the future.
David the Librarian

[Gemma Scougal]

Excellent reviews David the Librarian 🙂
Thanks for reminding us about the library! And not just maps and guide books by the sounds of it.

[John Barnard]

Another library book I’d recommend is Frank Smythe’s “The Kangchenjunga Adventure”, about the 1930 German-led international expedition to climb the north ridge of the world’s third highest mountain (a route eventually climbed by Doug Scott, Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker in 1979, making only the third ascent of the mountain). It’s very readable and full of the most wonderful self-deprecating humour, problems with special integrated-crampon boots that weighed half a ton, etc.

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