Greg Child

Lynn Hill

The memoirs of the woman rock climber who was the first person to accomplish a "free ascent" of the Nose on Yosemite's El Capitan describe her early days as a Hollywood stunt artist, friendships with other climbers, near-fatal eighty-foot fall, and personal strategies. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

My Life in the Vertical World

Climbing Free

Relates the ordeal of four young American mountaineers who were kidnapped at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists in Central Asia, their six-day ordeal at the hands of their abductors, and their escape by pushing their captor over a cliff.

The True Story of Four American Climbers' Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia

Over the Edge

Recounts the author's first three Himalayan climbs and describes the disorientation and fatigue each climber must overcome to reach the summit

Encounters in the Himalayas

Thin Air

Peeling back the layers to reveal the gritty truth about the elite climbing world is Greg Child's specialty. With clever wit, sharp observations, and insightful reflections, Postcards from the Ledge covers the full spectrum of the mountaineering experience. Entertaining even to those who have never been above sea level, Child's stories reveal climbing's other face.

Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child

Postcards from the Ledge

* Includes five previously unpublished essays * Powerful prose sparked with Child's unique wit Well-known for his Himalayan expeditions and first ascents on rock walls in Australia and the United States, Greg Child freely admits his mixed feelings about climbing. Overwhelming are the loss of friends, the thrill of achievement, and the soul-shattering moments of risk and survival; but it is precisely these experiences that compel him to write and to continue climbing. In Mixed Emotions, Child remembers the mountains, the people, and the episodes that have made him feel his life acutely, including the 1986 K2 tragedy that killed 13 climbers; a near-fatal snakebite in his native Australia; and the loss of climbing partner Pete Thexton. He recalls his associations with world-renowned mountaineers Doug Scott, John Roskelley, Voytek Kurtyka, and Don Whillans. Child also narrates fascinating off-mountain journeys to a secluded Hindu shrine, and the remote, harsh landscape of the Baltoro Glacier, where progress has left its indelible mark. Finally, Child comments on some less tangible aspects of climbing, such as the ghostly presence that accompanies climbers under duress, and the meanings of and inevitable meetings with death.

Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child

Mixed Emotions

* A different sort of true climbing adventure—this one with terrorists, kidnappings, and AK47s * New afterword by the author * First time in paperback Before dawn on August 12, 2000, four of America’s best young rock climbers—Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Jason “Singer” Smith, and John Dickey—were asleep in their portaledges high on the Yellow Wall in the Pamir-Alai mountain range of Kyrgyzstan. At daybreak, they would be kidnapped at gunpoint by fanatical militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which operates out of secret bases in Tajikistan and Afghanistan and is linked to Al Qaeda. The kidnappers, themselves barely out of their teens, intended to use their hostages as human shields and for ransom money as they moved across Kyrgyzstan. They hid the climbers by day and marched them by night through freezing, treacherous mountain terrain, with little food, no clean water, and the constant threat of execution. The four climbers -- the oldest of them only 25 -- would see a fellow hostage, a Kyrgyz soldier, executed before their eyes. And in a remarkable life-and-death crucible over six terrifying days, they would be forced to choose between saving their own lives and committing an act none of them thought they ever could. In Over the Edge, the climbers reveal the complete story of their nightmarish ordeal to journalist and climber Greg Child. With riveting details, Child re-creates the entire hour-by-hour drama, from the first ricocheting bullets to the climatic decision that gains them their freedom. Set in a region rife with narcotics and terrorism, this is a compelling story about loyalty and the will to survive. What continues to make it relevant today, 15 years after the events took place, is the geopolitical context -- the incident happened, eerily, on the eve of 9–/11; the fact that at least two of the four climbers continue to be prominent in the sport; and the details incorporated into the story around the media hype and controversy regarding the climbers and their story.

Greg Child

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