'A monumental book ... I defy anyone to read it and remain unmoved.'
Stephen Venables, Alpine Journal
Acclaimed as one of the most powerful accounts of mountain adventure and
tragedy ever written, The Endless Knot is a harrowing account of the
1986 K2 disaster.
A rare first-hand account from a survivor at the very epicentre of the
drama, The Endless Knot describes the disaster in frank detail. Kurt
Diemberger's account of the final days of success, accident, storm and
escape during which five climbers died, including his partner Julie
Tullis and the great British mountaineer Al Rouse, is lacerating
in its sense of tragedy, loss and dogged survival. Only Diemberger and
Willi Bauer escaped the mountain. K2 had claimed the lives of
thirteen climbers that summer.
Kurt Diemberger is one of only two climbers to have made first ascents
of two 8000-metre peaks, Broad Peak and Dhaulagiri. A superb
mountaineer, the K2 trauma left him physically and emotionally ravaged,
but it also marked him out as an instinctive and tenacious survivor.
After a long period of recovery Diemberger published The Endless Knot
and resumed life as a mountaineer, filmmaker and international lecturer.