The Wild Within: Climbing the World’s Most Remote Mountains
Author(s):
Yates, Simon
Copyright: 2012, UK
Specifications: 1st, 8vo, pp.239, 45 color photos, sketch, 4 maps, blue cloth
Condition: signed, dj & cloth new
Yates’ third book takes us on unique expeditions to unclimbed peaks in the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, the Wrangell St-Elias ranges on the Alaskan-Yukon border, and to Eastern Greenland. Laced with dry humour, he relates his own experience of the rapid commercialisation of mountain wilderness, while grappling with his new-found commitments as a family man. At the same time he must endure his role in the film adaptation of Joe Simpson’s Touching The Void, having to relive the events of that trip to Peru for a Hollywood director. Yates’ subsequent escape to the some of the world’s most remote mountains isn’t quite the experience it once was, as he witnesses first hand the advance of modern communications into the wilderness, signalled by the ubiquitous mobile phone masts appearing in once deserted mountain valleys. He is left to dwell on the remaining significance of mountain wilderness and must rediscover what the notion of 'wild' means for him now.
Shortlisted for 2012 Boardman-Tasker Award for Mountaineering Literature.