Chris Bonington Charles Clarke TIBET'S SECRET MOUNTAIN First Edition Signed
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Chris Bonington Charles Clarke TIBET'S SECRET MOUNTAIN First Edition Signed
First edition, first print hardback of TIBET'S SECRET MOUNTAIN: The Triumph Of Sepu Kangri, by Sir Chris Bonington and Charles Clarke and published by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, in 1999. Signed by Chris Bonington on the half title page.The book is in very good condition (Clean dark purple cloth boards with silver lettering on the spine), with only minor shelf wear to the illustrated dust jacket which is not price clipped (light creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Chris, the mountaineer, writer, photographer and lecturer, started climbing at the age of 16 in 1951. It has been his passion ever since. He made the first British ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger and led the expedition that made the first ascent of The South Face of Annapurna, the biggest and most difficult climb in the Himalaya at the time.
He went on to lead the successful expedition making the first ascent of the South West Face of Everest in 1975 and then reached the summit of Everest himself in 1985 with a Norwegian expedition.
Sir Chris Bonington has taken part in 19 Himalayan expeditions. He is still active in the mountains climbing with the same enthusiasm as he had at the beginning.
1985 He devised, wrote and presented the Award-winning Channel 4 Television Series "Lakeland Rock", which won the Golden Shot award at the Portoroz European Sports Film Festival in 1986, for the best sports documentary. This was a world event with entries from America and Australia as well as Europe. The series also won a Bronze Medal at the New York Film and TV Festival in 1986.
Everest Years, an hour long TV documentary based on The Everest Years book, won the Gold Medal for sports programmes (highest award) at the 1988 New York Film and TV Festival. It also won the prize for the Best Mountaineering Film at the Banff International Mountain Film Festival.
He narrated and participated in The Climbers, a six-part series shown on BBC Television about the history of mountaineering, and wrote the accompanying book, The Climbers.
He wrote, narrated and fronted the documentary Everest - Blood Sweat and Tears, filmed in Nepal around Everest Base Camp, to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest.
He has written 17 books, fronted numerous television programmes and has lectured to the public and corporate audiences all over the world. He received a knighthood in 1996 for services to mountaineering, was president of the Council for National Parks for 8 years, is Non Executive Chairman of Berghaus and Chancellor of Lancaster University.
He is heading the RGS/Alpine Club's Everest Celebrations Committee and received the Piolets dOr Lifetime Achievement Award in April 2015.
Dr Charles Clarke, a consultant neurologist, also specialises in mountain medicine and has climbed extensively in the Himalayas. He was expedition doctor with Chris Boddington on the ascent of the south-west face of Everest in 1975, on Kongur in 1981 and on the north-east ridge of Everest in 1982, He has lived in Islington for over twenty-five years.
"It is known locally as 'the Great White Snow god'. For Britain's best-known mountaineer, Chris Bonington and his companion of many past expeditions, Charles Clarke, Tibet's 'secret mountain' - Sepu Kangri - was the last great climb in the world.
When almost every mountain range in the world has been explored, when you can pay to be guided up Mount Everest, the chance to explore and climb in an unknown Tibetan range - whose length is comparable to the entire Alps - offered a challenge few mountaineers could resist.
For Bonington and Clarke, the 22,802 ft. Sepu Kangri had long been a dream. They saw it first from an aeroplane nearly twenty years ago. But in those days central Tibet was still a forbidden land. Allowed in at last, and with only the most basic of maps, they had to ask the way to 'the great snow mountain by the sacret lake'.
Tibet's secret mountain is their account not only of the exploration and attempts to reach the summit of Sepu Kangri, but also of the largely unexplored land and its people who live in the unknown valleys below, a real-life Shangri-La untouched by Western influence.
Clarke, a distinguished neurologist in London, often found himself acting as a travelling doctor. Local Tibetana came from as far as one hundred miles away for treatment. In one case, with the help of a London colleague and a satellite phone consultation, he diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy and took successful emergency action - though he had practised no gynaecology sine medical school.
For the two climbing expeditions, Sepu Kangri itself was always the ultimate challange. Forced back by the fiercest of winds, snow and poor visibility in 1997, they returned in the autumn of 1998. They came so close to success, reaching the west shoulder. But, as the authors relate, 'the Great White Snow God' rejected us, but this time only just.'
Sepu Kangri may have triumphed, but thanks to Tibet and its people the expedition was 'so much more than mountaineering in this lovely, remote valley.'
254 pages. Illustrated with colour photographs and maps. Colour map on endpapers.
ISBN: 0 297 819844
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Chris Bonington Charles Clarke TIBET'S SECRET MOUNTAIN First Edition Signed