No Place To Fall

No Place to Fall is Victor Saunders’ follow up to his Boardman Tasker Prize winning debut book Elusive Summits. Covering three expeditions in Nepal, the Karakoram and the Kumaon, each shares the exhilaration of attempting new alpine-style routes on terrifyingly committing mountains. In 1989 Victor Saunders and Steve Sustad completed a difficult route on the West Face of Makalu II, only to be brought to a storm-bound halt above 7,000 metres while descending. Without food or bivouac gear, they endured a tortuous descent after a night in the open. Two years later the pair were with a small team in the Hunza valley exploring elusive access to a giant hidden pillar on the unvisited South-East Face of Ultar, one of the highest and most shapely of the world's unclimbed peaks. In 1992 Victor Saunders was part of a joint Indian-British team climbing various peaks in the Panch Chuli range. A happy and successful expedition narrowly avoided ending in tragedy when Stephen Venables broke both legs in a fall on the descent from Panch Chuli Vand Chris Bonington survived another fall going to his aid. The dramatic evacuation of Venables, in which the author took a major part, forms an exciting climax to a story of cutting-edge, alpine-style climbing in the world's highest mountains. No Place to Fall offers enviable mountain exploration, enriched by sharing the lives of the mountain peoples along the way. Victor Saunders casts a perceptive, if bemused, eye over his fellow climbers and reflects on the calculation of risk that drives them back year after year to chance their lives in high places.

Victor Saunders was born in Lossiemouth and grew up in Malaya. He started climbing in the Alps in 1978 and has climbed in the Caucasus, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. He became a UIAGM mountain guide in 1996 after a career as an architect in London. He relocated to Chamonix, France and became a member of the SNGM (National Syndicate of French Mountain Guides) in 2003. He has been on more than ninety expeditions in mountain ranges including the Himalaya and Karakoram, and estimates that he has spent seven years of his life under canvas. His previous books include Elusive Summits, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1990; No Place to Fall; and Himalaya: The Tribulations of Mick & Vic, co-written with Mick Fowler, which won the Grand Prize at the Passy International Mountain Book Festival in 2015.

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