Cathy’s journey to become the first woman in the world to climb Everest from both sides. Challenge, adventure, love, choices of life and death. The world’s highest mountain, climbed just for the love of it.
The story of what she chose to do will haunt everyone who reads it
Cathy’s journey to become the first woman in the world to climb Everest from both sides. Challenge, adventure, love, choices of life and death. The world’s highest mountain, climbed just for the love of it.
The story of what she chose to do will haunt everyone who reads it
NO TIME TO READ?
LISTEN TO IT
Audiobook
Four time to Everest, twice to the summit. Cathy was on Everest at the most dramatic moments at the start of the modern age.
Audiobook
NO TIME TO READ? NO PROBLEM. LISTEN TO IT
Four time to Everest, twice to the summit. Cathy was on Everest at the most dramatic moments at the start of the modern age.
A BOOK THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST PEAK
Everest record holder Cathy O’Dowd tells how she faced the climber’s nightmare dilemma
Your book beautifully illustrates the fact that its an inner journey as much as it is an outer one against nature’s harsh elements. Your book has a ‘theme song’ between the words which really for me shows how someone like yourself deeply loves the Himalayas, its beauty and grandeur. The love of being close to nature and doing something that truly awakens the spirit within us.
A BOOK THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST PEAK
Everest record holder Cathy O’Dowd tells how she faced the climber’s nightmare dilemma
Your book beautifully illustrates the fact that its an inner journey as much as it is an outer one against nature’s harsh elements. Your book has a ‘theme song’ between the words which really for me shows how someone like yourself deeply loves the Himalayas, its beauty and grandeur. The love of being close to nature and doing something that truly awakens the spirit within us.
What is it all about?
A STORY FROM THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN AGE ON EVEREST
At 8am on 29 May 1999, Cathy O’Dowd, a 30-year-old mountaineer from South Africa, stepped onto the summit of Everest and into history. She had become the first woman to climb the highest mountain in the world from both its south (Edmund Hillary) and north (George Mallory) sides.To achieve this, Cathy has had to face the ultimate risks of Everest.
During her first ascent from the south in 1996, she and her team were trapped in the killer storm described in Jon Krakauer’s best seller Into Thin Air. They finally reached the summit, only to have the thrill of success snatched away when a team member disappeared on the descent.
In 1998 Cathy, attempting the north side of Everest, stopped only a few hundred metres from the summit to try and help a dying American climber. The woman’s first words were ‘don’t leave me’. Yet Cathy eventually had to leave her to save her own life.
Cathy (left) on the summit of Everest
for the second time.
Now Cathy has captured the drama of her Everest climbs, her passion for the challenge of climbing mountains and her love for wild places in this story of her four attempts on the mountain. Cathy tries to answer the question of why, if climbing Everest can be so dangerous, people still want to do it.
Featuring a new chapter exclusive to this revised edition, Cathy shares the previously untold story of her fourth Everest expedition, an attempt to climb a new route on the seldom visited and very risky east face of Everest. Storms, avalanches and crevasses all contributed to an expedition fraught with difficulty.
This is a book of challenge, of adventure, of love and life and death. This is Everest, the world’s highest mountain, climbed ‘just for the love of it’.
Extracts from the Book
En route to Everest via Aconcagua
In February 1998 I attempted Aconcagua by the standard route but turned back at Berlin camp to help [...]
The Great Storm of 1996
The most famous storm in the history of Everest. Four teams sitting on the South Col, wondering whether to [...]
Standing on top of the world
One of the questions I am most commonly asked is: what did it feel like to stand on [...]
Joining my first Everest expedition
Most people I meet assume that Everest must have been childhood dream and my first Everest trip the [...]