Facing the Extreme
One Woman's Story of True Courage and Death-Defying Survival in the Eye of Mt. McKinley's Worst Storm Ever
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Ruth Anne Kocour's Facing the Extreme charts her remarkable journey of survival climbing Mount McKinley.
She stepped into a death zone. The climbers on Alaska's Mt. McKinley called her "the woman." Ruth Anne Kocour, a world-class mountaineer, wasn't bothered. It was part of the challenge she faced as she joined an all-male team to conquer North America's highest peak...the mountain the Indians called Denali, or God.
Faced the extreme. But nine days into this ascent, a forty-fifth birthday present to herself, the most violent weather on record slammed into the mountain. Ruth Anne and her group would be trapped on an ice shelf at 14,000 feet for the deadliest two weeks in Denali history. Pinned down by blinding snows, unable to help other teams dying around her, and her own feet freezing solid, Ruth Anne tells of a wind chill of minus 150 degrees, deadly hidden crevasses, and being trapped in a place so violent and unforgiving that it threatened to push her over the edge and into a place of no return. And yet, in prose as crystalline as the ice around her, she tells, too, of beauty, courage, and the spirit that drives true mountaineers higher, as she risks all to go for the summit...and perhaps, for a transcendent moment, touch heaven.
And lived to tell about it ..
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An artist by profession and an experienced mountaineer, Kocour was the only woman in the team of 10 that set out to climb Mt. McKinley in May 1992. Unfortunately, the expedition coincided with the worst recorded storm ever to hit the Alaskan peak: winds up to 120 miles an hour and temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit. The storm hit when the climbers were at 14,000 feet and trapped them in their improvised camp for seven days. On day 17, they reached 16,500 feet, only to be greeted by another, though less violent, storm; on day 21 they reached the summit, stayed for 20 minutes and began a hasty descent because of the predictions of another major storm. Although their party made it, the death toll for that month on the mountain was 11. With the aid of Hodgson, an editor of Outdoor Retailer Magazine, Kocour tells of what mountain climbing means to her, ably conveying her passion for the challenge. Climbers will share her feelings; others will agree that "there isn't anything that makes sense about mountaineering." Photos not seen by PW. BOMC selection.
