'A book grows rather like a snow crystal. One doesn't write it from
start to finish but, in greater or less degree, all at the same time ...
that is why my book is not in chronological order; for everything is of
the present, held in the moment when thought captures it.'
Kurt Diemberger's Summits and Secrets is a mountaineering
autobiography like no other. Writing anecdotally, Diemberger provides
an abstract look into his life and climbing career that is both
fascinating and awe-inspiring to navigate.
Known for surviving the 1986 K2 disaster - an account described in
harrowing detail in his award-winning book The Endless Knot -
Diemberger provides a captivating insight into his earlier climbs in
Summits and Secrets. From climbing his first peak in the Tyrol
mountains of Austria, to the epoch-making first ascent of Broad
Peak with Hermann Buhl in 1957, and then summiting Dhaulagiri
in 1960, where he became one of only two people to have made first
ascents of two mountains over 8,000 metres, Diemberger recounts his
experiences with wit, honesty and an infectious enthusiasm:
'Every climber knows the thrill ... the unique inexplicable tension,
which the regular shapes of the mountain world awake in him: huge
pyramids, enormous rectangular slabs, piled-up triangles of rock, white
circles, immense squares - the thrill of simplicity of shape and outline
and the excitement of mastering them, to an unbelievable extent, by his
own efforts, his own power ... '
Summits and Secrets is a must-read for those wanting an insight
into the life and achievements of one of the toughest high-altitude
climbers the world has ever known.
