Win Buhl's Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage

Mountain literature quiz: the foreign climbers

This is the third and final part of our three-part quiz about mountaineering books and their authors, and a chance to win a classic mountaineering book, courtesy of Vertebrate Publishing.

The Last Blue Mountain, by Ralph Barker was won in last week’s quiz by Heather Thomson, and before that Alistair Ballantine won Conquistadors of the Useless by Lionel Terray. Up for grabs this week is Hermann Buhl’s ‘Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage’, an inspiration to generations of mountaineers.

This week’s questions are all about foreign climbers and authors.

Send your answers to info@mountaineering.scot to arrive by midnight on Tuesday 19^th May and we’ll publish the answers and the winner on Wednesday the 20^th. We’ll contact the winner for a postal address so that Vertebrate can mail out their prize.

1 Just republished by Vertebrate, when was Lionel Terray’s ‘Conquistadors of the Useless’ first published?

2 A noted Austrian Alpine and Himalayan climber who was with British climber Julie Tullis when she died on K2, he wrote ‘Summits and Secrets’, ‘The Endless Knot’ and ‘Spirits of the Air’. Who was he?

3 Italian climber Felice Benuzzi spent most of World War II in a prisoner of war camp but still managed to pull off an amazing feat of mountaineering, resourcefulness and resilience. Which was the mountain he attempted and what was the title of the book he wrote about the exploit?

4 His ‘Pilgrimage to Nanga Parbat’ told of Herman Buhl’s climbing life through the ‘40s and ‘50s, culminating in his astonishing ascent (and descent) of Nanga Parbat. What nationality was he?

5 Nowadays there are a number of routes up the North Face of the Eiger, but who wrote the classic account of the first ascent and all those leading up to it, and what was the book called?

6 Who wrote the official account of the first 8000 metre mountain to be climbed – and which mountain was it?

7 Jon Krakauer’s ‘Into Thin Air’ was an account of a disastrous season on Everest, but it set him at odds with a Russian climber who risked his own life to save a number of others. The Russian eventually wrote his own, more believable account of the events in ‘The Climb’. What was his name?

8 His biography was uninspiringly called ‘My Life’, but contained accounts of a near penniless expedition to the High Atlas which involved cycling from Germany to Spain and then travelling by sea and by bus to the mountains – and, of course, his part in the first ascent of the Eiger North Face. Who was he?

9 A climber who was dogged by controversy, he was nevertheless one of the greats, and his writings were published in English as ’The Mountains of my Life’. Perhaps his most famous route was climbed solo, but in recent years disappeared in a massive rockfall. Who was he?

10 An outstanding French Alpinist of the 1940s and ‘50s, he was the first to climb all of the six great North Faces of the Alps, which he wrote about in his best-known book, ‘Starlight & Storm’. Who was he?

Based in the Peak District, the Vertebrate team are driven by a passion for the outdoors, for exploration, and for the natural world. As well as publishing award-winning new books, they’re making available many out-of-print classics in both print and digital formats.

With Amazon no longer booking in deliveries and bookshops closed, the company has been relying on web sales to keep afloat.

The website is available at: www.v-publishing.co.uk

Note: There is no discount code required as the 25% off offer is applied automatically at checkout.