PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Gaston Rebuffat was born on May 7, 1921, in Marseilles, France. He was a recipient of France's prestigious Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. He died in Paris on May 31, 1985. David Roberts is the award-winning author of more than 25 books on mountaineering, adventure, and Western history and anthropology. Some of his works include Great Exploration Hoaxes and The Lost World of the Old Ones. He is a veteran mountain climber who has written for National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure, and Smithsonian. Roberts lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Hunt led the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 with Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. With Wilfrid Noyce, he translated Gaston Rebuffat's Starlight and Storm. He died in 1998. Wilfrid Noyce was part of the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 with Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. With John Hunt, he translated Gaston Rebuffat's Starlight and Storm. He died in 1962 while climbing the Pamir Mountains.
Sir John Hunt introduces Gaston Rebuffat (one of the four to return from Annapurna) and his book, which is briefly a discussion of the technique of mountain climbing, at greater length an account of various climbs he has made. All of it however is pervaded by the mystique- and the challenge- of the mountains- the world of wind and wide spaces, starlight and storm which has its special fascination. The individual climbs were made up the north face of the Grandes Jorasses (a satellite of Mont Blanc), of the Central Spur, of the Matterhorn (the ideal peak), in the Dolomites and the Engadine, and finally of the Eiger- where an endless night was spent on a ledge as snow- and avalanches- fell.... Rebuffat writes with the elation- and much of the eloquence- this special pursuit holds, and while this is - by comparison- a minor memoir- there will be an audience of devotees to follow his footsteps. (Kirkus Reviews)
