No Shortcuts to the Top

Posted by Evelyn Kanter Mar 16, 2007

For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing’s holy grail: to stand atop the world’s fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. He is the first American to achieve that goal.

No Shortcuts to the Top tells the story of these grueling, dangerous climbs, including two assaults on Mt. Everest, one in which he turned back 300 feet from the summit because of bad weather.

Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet plus -- roughly the cruising altitude of a passenger jet. Think of being at that altitude without supplemental oxygen, which nearly all climbers to such extreme heights rely on.

Viesturs also was part of the disastrous 1996 climb in which more than a dozen climbers died, made famous by Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air. Viesturs was part of the IMAX film team that was one of several international expeditions on the mountain at the time.

Viesturs tells a fascinating story of the dangers, challenges and beauty of extreme mounaineering, and the double pull of family in the safe world and the family of friends that share the majestic and often deadly mountain peaks.

Viesturs lives by an unyielding motto, “Reaching the summit is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”

What does a mountain climber do after he's climbed the world's tallest mountains? This spring he's joining renowned Polar explorer and dogsledder Will Steger for a ski and dogsled traverse of Baffin Island.