Broad Peak

by Richard Sale

The ascent of Broad Peak, the worlds twelfth highest mountain in 1957 was one of the most important climbs in the history of climbing on the great peaks. A team of four Austrians, carrying their own equipment and dispensing with bottled oxygen, took the climbing ideas of the European Alps to the Himalayas/Karakoram, an advance in tactics which laid the foundations for many of the great ascents which followed. As well as being a landmark, the expedition also resulted in the death of Hermann Buhl, at that time the most famous climber in the world. This book, written by Marcus Schmuck, the leader of the expedition, was never translated from its German original, so the Broad Peak expedition was known chiefly from the account of Kurt Diemberger who has been Buhls companion on his last climb. Now for the first time, using the original climbing diaries of Marcus Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller, and previously unpublished material from Hermann Buhl as well as the recollection of both Diemberger and Qader Saeed, the teams Pakistani liaison officer, the fully story of the expedition is told. The book is illustrated with previously unpublished photographs from Marcus Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller.

Genres: Mountaineering

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 2004

About the author

Richard Sale (1946-) is a physicist, with a PhD in astrophysics. After working as a glaciologist in Switzerland and then in the UK power industry he gave up fulltime physics for his first loves – birds and the Arctic. He has written and taken photographs for many books, including To the Ends of the Earth: The History of Polar Exploration and various travel guides.