The View from the Edge: Life and Landscapes of Beverly Johnson

by Gabriela Zim, John Long (Introduction)

Book by Zim, Gabriela

255 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[sendann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving and hard to put down, Beverly Johnson's life story is full of wisdom and laughs for the present day female climber. This story is put together from Beverly's letters and interviews with those who knew her. It's not preoccupied with narrative particularly, but the author pulls out and highlights some of the most resonant themes and events from this amazing woman's life. Beverly Johnson is of my parents generation, and it was particularly meaningful to see what pursuing climbing looked like for a woman of that time. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the ups and downs of climbing life for women of any era.

[Rolf Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engagingly written biography of Beverly Johnson. She was a pioneering female rock climber, earning her way into the Camp 4 fraternity of the early 70's era of piton and hammer big wall climbing. A solo aid ascent of El Capitan got her noticed. She met and married a documentary film maker, and they became a team making films all over the world from New Guinea to Antarctica, and even Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. She was killed in a helicopter crash in 1994.

I appreciated the author's extensive quotations from Johnson's letters.

Here's an aviation crash report of the crash that killed her
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/...