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The Mantis
'It is not the courage to go back up that we need. It’s the courage to go down. Just to go on … '
In 1977 a British expedition led by Himalayan veteran Geoff Strickland, summiteer of K2 and Makalu among others, set off to attempt the first ascent of unclimbed Puthemojar – the ‘Mantis’ – in the Karakoram.
More than 25,000 feet high, renowned for its difficulty, and with a fearsome reputation, the Mantis had claimed the life of at least one climber on each of the previous expeditions that had attempted to scale its complex series of ridges and icefalls.
In order to claim the coveted first ascent, Strickland put together a small team comprising the cream of British mountaineering talent: his long-time Himalayan climbing partner and photographer Michael Blackmore; the redoubtable northerner Joe Dodge, as tough as they come; Dodge’s regular partner and another veteran of numerous Himalayan expeditions Doug Lowrie; and two young guns – Brit Alan Wyllie, and Kiwi Peter Chase, a pair who had been tearing up the Alpine rule book with their daring climbs.
Although Michael Blackmore’s 1980 record of the climb – 'The Last Challenge' – has become a classic of mountaineering literature, Blackmore himself was never satisfied it told the full story of the events on Puthemojar in 1977. Before his death in 2000, Blackmore had prepared a draft manuscript – a ‘creative narrative’ – of the expedition which, with thanks to Blackmore’s widow, has now been completed by award-winning author and mountaineer Philip Temple.
While best regarded as a work of fiction, 'The Mantis' tells for the first time the gripping story of that 1977 expedition to Puthemojar. It is a portrait of these men, their drive, this mountain and a credible testimony of just what went on, high on the mountain that always consumed its prey.
In 1977 a British expedition led by Himalayan veteran Geoff Strickland, summiteer of K2 and Makalu among others, set off to attempt the first ascent of unclimbed Puthemojar – the ‘Mantis’ – in the Karakoram.
More than 25,000 feet high, renowned for its difficulty, and with a fearsome reputation, the Mantis had claimed the life of at least one climber on each of the previous expeditions that had attempted to scale its complex series of ridges and icefalls.
In order to claim the coveted first ascent, Strickland put together a small team comprising the cream of British mountaineering talent: his long-time Himalayan climbing partner and photographer Michael Blackmore; the redoubtable northerner Joe Dodge, as tough as they come; Dodge’s regular partner and another veteran of numerous Himalayan expeditions Doug Lowrie; and two young guns – Brit Alan Wyllie, and Kiwi Peter Chase, a pair who had been tearing up the Alpine rule book with their daring climbs.
Although Michael Blackmore’s 1980 record of the climb – 'The Last Challenge' – has become a classic of mountaineering literature, Blackmore himself was never satisfied it told the full story of the events on Puthemojar in 1977. Before his death in 2000, Blackmore had prepared a draft manuscript – a ‘creative narrative’ – of the expedition which, with thanks to Blackmore’s widow, has now been completed by award-winning author and mountaineer Philip Temple.
While best regarded as a work of fiction, 'The Mantis' tells for the first time the gripping story of that 1977 expedition to Puthemojar. It is a portrait of these men, their drive, this mountain and a credible testimony of just what went on, high on the mountain that always consumed its prey.
200 pages, ebook
First published March 3, 2014
4 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Philip Temple
65 books7 followersPhilip Temple is a multi prize-winning New Zealand author of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. His latest book is the adventure novel 'The Mantis' which explores why people risk all to be the first to reach the summit of an unclimbed mountain. Another new novel is due mid-year. He is also currently researching for a major biography of NZ author Maurice Shadbolt.
Philip was born in Yorkshire and educated in London but emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18, becoming an explorer, mountaineer and outdoor educator. With Heinrich Harrer, of 'Seven Years in Tibet' fame, he made the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramide in West Papua, one of the seven summits of the seven continents, and later sailed to sub-Antarctic Heard Island with the legendary H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman to make the first ascent of Big Ben.
Philip's first books reflected this adventurous career and 'The World At Their Feet' won a Wattie Award in 1970. After a period as features editor for the New Zealand Listener, he became a full time professional author in 1972. Since that time he has published about 40 books of all kinds and countless articles and reviews.
In the fiction field, his nine novels include the best-selling 'Beak of the Moon', an anthropomorphic exploration of the mountain world seen through the eyes of the mountain parrot, kea. This, and its successor 'Dark of the Moon', are rated as unique in New Zealand literature. In more recent times, his Berlin-based novels 'To Each His Own' and' I Am Always With You' controversially tackle issues around German guilt and historical experience.
Philip’s non-fiction range is wide, from books about exploration and the outdoors to New Zealand history and electoral reform (MMP). His book about the Wakefield family and the early British settlement of New Zealand, 'A Sort of Conscience', was NZ Biography of the Year in 2003, and won the Ernest Scott History Prize from the University of Melbourne. Philip’s award-winning children’s books, in collaboration with wildlife artist Chris Gaskin, are unique to the genre.
Over the years, Philip has been awarded several fellowships, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1979), the Robert Burns Fellowship (1980), the 1996 NZ National Library Fellowship, a Berliner Künstlerprogramm stipendium in 1987 and the 2003 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency. In 2005, he was invested as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for Services to Literature and given a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Following examination of his work, Philip was granted the higher degree of Doctor of Literature (LittD) by the University of Otago in 2007.
Philip Temple lives in Dunedin with his wife, poet and novelist, Diane Brown.
Philip was born in Yorkshire and educated in London but emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18, becoming an explorer, mountaineer and outdoor educator. With Heinrich Harrer, of 'Seven Years in Tibet' fame, he made the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramide in West Papua, one of the seven summits of the seven continents, and later sailed to sub-Antarctic Heard Island with the legendary H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman to make the first ascent of Big Ben.
Philip's first books reflected this adventurous career and 'The World At Their Feet' won a Wattie Award in 1970. After a period as features editor for the New Zealand Listener, he became a full time professional author in 1972. Since that time he has published about 40 books of all kinds and countless articles and reviews.
In the fiction field, his nine novels include the best-selling 'Beak of the Moon', an anthropomorphic exploration of the mountain world seen through the eyes of the mountain parrot, kea. This, and its successor 'Dark of the Moon', are rated as unique in New Zealand literature. In more recent times, his Berlin-based novels 'To Each His Own' and' I Am Always With You' controversially tackle issues around German guilt and historical experience.
Philip’s non-fiction range is wide, from books about exploration and the outdoors to New Zealand history and electoral reform (MMP). His book about the Wakefield family and the early British settlement of New Zealand, 'A Sort of Conscience', was NZ Biography of the Year in 2003, and won the Ernest Scott History Prize from the University of Melbourne. Philip’s award-winning children’s books, in collaboration with wildlife artist Chris Gaskin, are unique to the genre.
Over the years, Philip has been awarded several fellowships, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1979), the Robert Burns Fellowship (1980), the 1996 NZ National Library Fellowship, a Berliner Künstlerprogramm stipendium in 1987 and the 2003 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency. In 2005, he was invested as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for Services to Literature and given a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Following examination of his work, Philip was granted the higher degree of Doctor of Literature (LittD) by the University of Otago in 2007.
Philip Temple lives in Dunedin with his wife, poet and novelist, Diane Brown.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 11, 2022
Warning: Don't pay too much attention at the beginning as to who Philip got the notes for this book from, although you know it's not going to end well, that way you can keep guessing.
Mountaineering was something young me dreamed of, growing up in NZ, so I was pleased to find there was a kiwi in this group. Much like reading various chef biographies cured me of wanting to open my own restaurant, this definitely cured me of any vestigial desires to attempt mountaineering in my old age.
At times I got a bit confused by who was who, but when it got to the more crucial parts in the final third I had everyone sorted out in my head. If you are curious or interested in mountaineering I think you'll enjoy this, also if you like an adventure story. Not at all romanticized, it certainly doesn't paint a very flattering picture of the climbers, which I think makes it even better.
Mountaineering was something young me dreamed of, growing up in NZ, so I was pleased to find there was a kiwi in this group. Much like reading various chef biographies cured me of wanting to open my own restaurant, this definitely cured me of any vestigial desires to attempt mountaineering in my old age.
At times I got a bit confused by who was who, but when it got to the more crucial parts in the final third I had everyone sorted out in my head. If you are curious or interested in mountaineering I think you'll enjoy this, also if you like an adventure story. Not at all romanticized, it certainly doesn't paint a very flattering picture of the climbers, which I think makes it even better.
April 7, 2020
Philip Temple is perhaps New Zealand's most diverse author, having penned titles including children’s storybooks, novels, histories and guidebooks. The outdoor community probably best know him for a series of track guidebooks, his own accounts of climbing – Carstenz Pyramid (Nawok), and Big Ben on Heard Island (The Sea and the Snow) – an excellent book on New Zealand explorers and his novel about kea, Beak of the Moon.
Perhaps surprisingly, Temple has never before tackled the subject of mountaineering in a novel. This tells the story of a six-man British expedition attempting the unclimbed Puthemojar – the ‘Mantis’ – in the Karakoram, during 1977. With towering granite ridges, complex icefalls and a formidable reputation, the Mantis has a summit block like an insect’s head, and an icefield on it that appears from the distance like a watchful eye. ‘Each previous expedition had lost a man, and the mountain had rapidly become one of the Last Great Problems of the Himalaya in the quickening expedition competition for height and status.’
However, Geoff Strickland, summiteer of K2 and Everest among others, has assembled a small alpine-style expedition, which includes five Brits and one Kiwi, Peter Chase. Chase and Alan Wyllie are the new kids on the block, eager to test themselves at high altitude after a dazzling series of climbs in the European Alps. Two of Strickland’s old team, Doug Lowrie and Joe Dodge, are still at the peak of their game, and the most likely pair to summit.
The novel begins with an introduction by the author, claiming he has written it based on a draft manuscript, a ‘creative narrative’, of the expedition by Michael Blackmore, expedition photographer and long-time climbing buddy of Strickland. This nice deceit gives the novel the feel of an expedition account, and the mountain itself is so firmly placed in the Karokoram geography that I had to consult Google to see if does actually exist (it doesn’t).
Temple took 30 years to finish this novel, and it’s full of nods to famous mountaineers, expeditions and mountaineering literature. Strickland is a Chris Bonnington-like figure, while Joe Dodge resembles hardman Don Whillans, and Lowrie has perhaps some basis in Doug Scott. But it’s not just Bonnington’s crew that are evoked; there are similarities between the New Zealander Peter Chase’s European climbs with those of Graeme Dingle and Murray Judges’s remarkable season climbing all six of the most famous north faces in the Alps. The final dilemma faced by the mountaineers also resembles that written about in Ralph Barker’s chilling The Last Blue Mountain (a book of a real Himalayan expedition that also involved one Kiwi).
Allusions to real expeditions and climbers aside, The Mantis is simply a ripping good yarn. Temple maintains fantastic tension throughout it; you know things will go wrong, but not always when. ‘A mountain is the antithesis of life, of the entire human condition. A mountain is a place of incipient death and yet, in struggling against it, against one’s own weakness and propensity to die, it is possible to discover the very springs of life, to discover and to understand oneself.’ Although in such passages, Temple compellingly evokes the mountain world, he doesn’t romanticise the experience of high-altitude camps. When Dodge lights a cigarette in the ‘thick atmosphere’ of the snow-cave ‘it smelt of bad food, cold farts and strong tobacco.’
Through his characters, Temple explores the complex personal interactions on such a high-stakes expedition. Strickland is faltering with a high-altitude cough, but hell-bent on a last crack at the summit; Dodge is confident but Lowries had a bad premonition; the younger climbers want to prove themselves, and there is the usual clash of egos and personal ambitions. Temple captures the gallows humour banter that is so much a part of an expedition where death is not only possible, but likely. He also explores the morality of a career mountaineer like Strickland; getting to the top is not just personal ambition, but needed to secure gear sponsorship, book deals and publicity tours. With so much pressure to succeed, Temple’s characters question their responsibility to not only their climbing companions, but also to their wives and children left at home. Are the mountains, and summiting, more important than them?
Reviewer John McCrystal wrote in the Listener that The Mantis is ‘terrific and quite the best thing its author has ever done with fiction.’ Those who have read Beak of the Moon might disagree, but there’s no doubt that this is the author at his best form.
The Mantis was the first e-book I’ve read, and despite not being a convert to screen reading, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The fact it didn’t get shortlisted for this year’s Boardman Tasker Prize for mountaineering literature was a surprise to me. Perhaps that reflects a bias against e-books; I just hope the publisher decides to make a lovely hardback edition of it.
Check out an interview with the author at http://vimeo.com/98039866.
Perhaps surprisingly, Temple has never before tackled the subject of mountaineering in a novel. This tells the story of a six-man British expedition attempting the unclimbed Puthemojar – the ‘Mantis’ – in the Karakoram, during 1977. With towering granite ridges, complex icefalls and a formidable reputation, the Mantis has a summit block like an insect’s head, and an icefield on it that appears from the distance like a watchful eye. ‘Each previous expedition had lost a man, and the mountain had rapidly become one of the Last Great Problems of the Himalaya in the quickening expedition competition for height and status.’
However, Geoff Strickland, summiteer of K2 and Everest among others, has assembled a small alpine-style expedition, which includes five Brits and one Kiwi, Peter Chase. Chase and Alan Wyllie are the new kids on the block, eager to test themselves at high altitude after a dazzling series of climbs in the European Alps. Two of Strickland’s old team, Doug Lowrie and Joe Dodge, are still at the peak of their game, and the most likely pair to summit.
The novel begins with an introduction by the author, claiming he has written it based on a draft manuscript, a ‘creative narrative’, of the expedition by Michael Blackmore, expedition photographer and long-time climbing buddy of Strickland. This nice deceit gives the novel the feel of an expedition account, and the mountain itself is so firmly placed in the Karokoram geography that I had to consult Google to see if does actually exist (it doesn’t).
Temple took 30 years to finish this novel, and it’s full of nods to famous mountaineers, expeditions and mountaineering literature. Strickland is a Chris Bonnington-like figure, while Joe Dodge resembles hardman Don Whillans, and Lowrie has perhaps some basis in Doug Scott. But it’s not just Bonnington’s crew that are evoked; there are similarities between the New Zealander Peter Chase’s European climbs with those of Graeme Dingle and Murray Judges’s remarkable season climbing all six of the most famous north faces in the Alps. The final dilemma faced by the mountaineers also resembles that written about in Ralph Barker’s chilling The Last Blue Mountain (a book of a real Himalayan expedition that also involved one Kiwi).
Allusions to real expeditions and climbers aside, The Mantis is simply a ripping good yarn. Temple maintains fantastic tension throughout it; you know things will go wrong, but not always when. ‘A mountain is the antithesis of life, of the entire human condition. A mountain is a place of incipient death and yet, in struggling against it, against one’s own weakness and propensity to die, it is possible to discover the very springs of life, to discover and to understand oneself.’ Although in such passages, Temple compellingly evokes the mountain world, he doesn’t romanticise the experience of high-altitude camps. When Dodge lights a cigarette in the ‘thick atmosphere’ of the snow-cave ‘it smelt of bad food, cold farts and strong tobacco.’
Through his characters, Temple explores the complex personal interactions on such a high-stakes expedition. Strickland is faltering with a high-altitude cough, but hell-bent on a last crack at the summit; Dodge is confident but Lowries had a bad premonition; the younger climbers want to prove themselves, and there is the usual clash of egos and personal ambitions. Temple captures the gallows humour banter that is so much a part of an expedition where death is not only possible, but likely. He also explores the morality of a career mountaineer like Strickland; getting to the top is not just personal ambition, but needed to secure gear sponsorship, book deals and publicity tours. With so much pressure to succeed, Temple’s characters question their responsibility to not only their climbing companions, but also to their wives and children left at home. Are the mountains, and summiting, more important than them?
Reviewer John McCrystal wrote in the Listener that The Mantis is ‘terrific and quite the best thing its author has ever done with fiction.’ Those who have read Beak of the Moon might disagree, but there’s no doubt that this is the author at his best form.
The Mantis was the first e-book I’ve read, and despite not being a convert to screen reading, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The fact it didn’t get shortlisted for this year’s Boardman Tasker Prize for mountaineering literature was a surprise to me. Perhaps that reflects a bias against e-books; I just hope the publisher decides to make a lovely hardback edition of it.
Check out an interview with the author at http://vimeo.com/98039866.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews