Snowlines

'Fascinating and elegantly written' WILLIAM BOYD

'Reads like a classic wilderness thriller' LEE CHILD

‘An incredible book that combines thrilling adventure, physical endurance and self-discovery' CAL FLYN

A sweeping history of ski mountaineering and the author’s quest to complete its most difficult race: the Patrouille des Glaciers.

Simon Akam was almost killed on Russia’s highest mountain in 2017.

It was a narrow escape from a near-fatal accident on a commercial skiing expedition – and it provided a reckoning. Rather than turn away from the mountains, Akam resolved to go back. This time, though, he wanted to do it properly.

He would go with alpine natives. He would learn the right skills and serve a proper apprenticeship, aimed at true autonomy: months in France and Switzerland, perfecting his French and German while honing his mountain craft. His destination was the famous Haute Route traverse in the French and Swiss Alps, the very place where ski mountaineering was born, whose riveting history he would unearth and whose breathtaking peaks and valleys he would learn to ski—unguided—in preparation for one of the most difficult ski mountaineering races in the world: the Patrouille des Glaciers.

Woven through this personal journey is the story of the sport and the route itself: a tale that slalomed from Scandinavia to the Alps, east to Asia, west to the New World, and up and down to the poles. It is about how a select group of men, and a few women – often bound by dynasty as much as skill – negotiated the long twentieth century, on the mountains and off. It is about which of winter’s myriad hazards can be controlled, and which cannot, and at what cost control is maintained. And it is about whether the mastery you believe you hold over your environment, your body and your mind is truly as strong as you think.

Blending high-altitude adventure with narrative history, Snowlines is a gripping account of risk, mastery and reinvention – and of testing yourself against a landscape that can never be fully tamed.

Reviews

'A compelling exploration of fear, ambition and the urge to venture into difficult places. Akam weaves personal adventure with the extraordinary history of the Alps, asking what draws us to the mountains and what we discover there'

Levinson Wood, explorer and author of The Great Tree Story

‘An incredible book that combines thrilling adventure, physical endurance and self-discovery. Snowlines functions as a history of ski-mountaineering but also as a personal quest: a triumph over one of the world’s most extreme races and an act of intense self-mastery’

Cal Flyn, author of The Savage Landscape

'A fascinating and elegantly written book about a very specific alpine sport that, however, broadens out to encompass moments and observations that are universal and profound'

William Boyd, bestselling author of Any Human Heart

'A fascinating account that reads like a classic wilderness thriller, full of depth and history … I knew nothing about the subject but ended up entranced'

Lee Child, bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series

'A whole century of the Alps – war, ambition, exploration – found inside a single race. Akam has written in this book the truest account of ski mountaineering I have read'

Kilian Jornet, mountain athlete