Description

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A sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth.

Whether in the name of conquest, science, or the divine, humans across the centuries have had myriad reasons to climb mountains. From the smoking volcanoes of South America to the great snowy ranges of the Himalaya, The White Ladder follows a cast of extraordinary characters—conquistadors and captains, scientists and surveyors, alpinists and adventurers—up the slopes of the world’s highest mountains, seeking the summits of the world’s highest peaks. With thrilling pace and novelistic detail, Daniel Light traces the epic rise of mountaineering’s world altitude record and highlights the roles of local guides and indigenous mountaineers whose feats are too often eclipsed by their white European counterparts. Describing the innovative technical accomplishments of the climbers, Light shows how each new breathtaking ascent heightened the spectacle of their dangerous sport.

“[Daniel Light] ... has thought seriously about the entire sweep of his subject. ... It’s a massive story with an enormous cast of characters, among them some of the most compelling figures of mountaineering history.”—Wade Davis

About the Author

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Daniel Light has been climbing for twenty years, indoors and out. The White Ladder is his first book. He lives in London.

Praise For…

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[Daniel Light] … has thought seriously about the entire sweep of his subject …. It’s a massive story with an enormous cast of characters, among them some of the most compelling figures of mountaineering history.
— Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence

Why did mountaineers of old risk life and limb to break new ground and scale new summits? In his thrilling answer to this question, Daniel Light delivers stories that are poetic, spiritual, and astonishing in their courage and drive. True climbers remain an esoteric breed but perhaps now they are finally more understandable.
— Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance

A beautifully written and sure-footed history of mountaineering "before Everest," full of wonderful stories and spanning continents and centuries. A splendid debut.
— Sir Ranulph Fiennes, author of Cold and Shackleton

The White Ladder neatly bridges a lacuna in the history of mountaineering. In elegant prose Dan Light tracks the trials and achievements of the little-known climbers who preceded and inspired the great Himalayan expeditions of the mid-twentieth century.

— John Keay, author of Himalaya and When Men and Mountains Meet

Daniel Light guides the reader through a mountainscape that stretches from the Alps to the Himalaya...with the sure footing of a serious student of climbing history, and the élan of a skilled storyteller.
— Maurice Isserman, author of Continental Divide