Showing titles in Outdoors & Nature

How can an average climber do the hardest route in the world? Dave MacLeod wasn’t even the best among his fellow rock climbers in Glasgow, until a sequence of key decisions and influences catalysed his progression from an unremarkable intermediate to one of the best all-round climbers in the world. Dave shows that much of his advantage came from easily trainable skills or behavioural traits that could be replicated by any climber.

They call it the “Death Zone” – 26,000 feet high, close to the roof of the world, where the planet’s rotation causes 140 mph winds. What makes alpine climbers risk fortunes and even their lives in order to stand for five minutes on the world’s highest peak? Mount Everest is also the wind-swept battlefield for personality conflicts, the unfolding of ego-driven dramas, and the sometimes unheralded stories of courage and sacrifice as one climber lays down his life for another.1996 marked a tragic climbing season in Nepal when icy storms blew in and left a number of climbers dead.

The continued musings of a hapless wanderer. Younger than Bill Bryson, smaller than Levison Wood, and hairier than Julia Bradbury. In his latest adventure, our bumbling yet affable narrator walks the 100 miles of the stunning and dramatic West Highland Way. Join him on a memorable hike that takes in all the splendour of the Scottish Highlands. With grand imposing scenery and beautiful shimmering lochs.

Penguin Audio presents The Push by Tommy Caldwell, read by Johnathan McClain. A dramatic, inspiring memoir by legendary rock climber Tommy Caldwell, the first person to free climb the Dawn Wall of Yosemite's El Capitan. On January 14, 2015, Tommy Caldwell, along with his partner, Kevin Jorgeson, summited what is widely regarded as the hardest climb in history Yosemite's nearly vertical 3,000 foot Dawn Wall, after 19 days on the route. Caldwell's odds-defying feat was the culmination of an entire lifetime of pushing himself to his limits as an athlete.

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.

On 30 January, 1981 Joe Tasker and Ade Burgess stood at 24,000 feet on the west ridge of Mount Everest. Below them were their companions, some exhausted, some crippled by illness, all virtually incapacitated. Further progress seemed impossible. Everest the Cruel Way is Joe Tasker's story of an attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth - an attempt which pushed a group of Britain's finest mountaineers to their limits. The goal had been to climb Mount Everest at its hardest: via the infamous west ridge, without supplementary oxygen and in winter.

Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.

There are many reasons why it might seem unwise to walk, mostly alone, through the Middle East. That, in part, is exactly why Leon McCarron did it. From Jerusalem, McCarron followed a series of wild hiking trails that trace ancient trading and pilgrimage routes and traverse some of the most contested landscapes in the world. In the West Bank, he met families struggling to lead normal lives amidst political turmoil and had a surreal encounter with the world's oldest and smallest religious sect.

Have you ever wanted to visit Machu Picchu, or witness the Northern Lights? To explore remote landscapes where no boot has tread, no shutter ever snapped? You can.... Before he became Green Giant on the Appalachian Trail, Gary Sizer was a Marine, a computer nerd, and a guy with a problem. No matter how much time he spends outside, it's never enough. Whether being thrashed by drill instructors at Parris Island or drenched by a squall in a high tundra, the same calming thought always prevailed: It's good to be outside.

In the fall of 1978, Ray Ordorica packed everything he thought he would need into his Toyota LandCruiser and drove north to Alaska. He came to a land he had never seen, to find something he wasn't even sure existed: a wilderness cabin he could use for a year or more to live, think, relax, read, and write. Ordorica found his cabin, fixed it up, and, although it was just an un-insulated 12- by 16-foot one-room log structure, he spent three winters in it in relative comfort.

After Paul Stutzman lost his wife to breast cancer, he sensed a tug on his heart - the call to a challenge, the call to pursue a dream. With a mixture of dread and determination, Paul left his job, traveled to Georgia, and took his first steps on the Appalachian Trail. What he learned during the next four and a half months changed his life and can change yours as well. In Hiking Through, you'll join Paul on his remarkable 2,176-mile trip through 14 states in search of peace and a renewed sense of purpose.

There is but one aim: the summit, the summit of Mount Everest. What starts with a trouble-free trek into the Nepalese highlands explodes into a gripping tale of hardship, peril and adversity. Pushed beyond their physical and mental limits, climbers drop by the wayside. Their primal instincts for survival battle with their dogged resolve to drag themselves to the top of the world. But the focus remains: battle to the summit, and if successful, somehow get back down again.

Why is it that catching a fish, or simply contemplating catching a fish, can be so thrilling, so captivating? Why is it that what seems such a simple act—that of casting a line and hoping—can feel so rich in mystery? Illuminated by Water is Malachy's personal attempt to understand that freedom and to trace the origins and sources of that sense of wonder. He shares the appeal of fishing, its intense joys and frustrations, the steadying effect it has both at water's edge and in the memory, and the contemplation of nature and landscape that comes with being an angler.

In Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, Gierach looks back to the long-ago day when he bought his first resident fishing license in Colorado, where the fishing season never ends, and just knew he was in the right place. And he succinctly sums up part of the appeal of his sport when he writes that it is "[A]n acquired taste that reintroduces the chaos of uncertainty back into our well-regulated lives".

This true-life wilderness survival epic recounts 17-year-old Alex Messenger's near-lethal encounter with a grizzly bear during a canoe trip in the Canadian tundra. The story follows Alex and his five companions as they paddle north through harrowing rapids and stunning terrain. Twenty-nine days into the trip, while out hiking alone, Alex is attacked by a barren-ground grizzly. Left for dead, he wakes to find that his summer adventure has become a struggle to stay alive.

This hour-long ambient recording captures the magical awakening of bird-life at daybreak in the British countryside. No announcements interrupt the sequence, selected and compiled from the collections of the Sound Archive at the British Library. This is the perfect chance to immerse yourself in the uplifting sounds of a perfect country morning from the comfort of your own home.

Paul Whitehouse and John Bailey have been devout fishermen for longer than they care to remember. A hobby, past time or sport – call it what you want – they have felt the pull of the water ever since they were kids and have never missed the chance to set up on the bank and try their luck. In this wonderful book, the two fishermen collaborate to celebrate the rich tapestry that is fishing – from mentors to memories; from philosophy to modern jargon; from watercraft to becoming self-styled ‘Fishing Detectives’.

Explore the world through its most unlikely creatures: Cryptozoology, the study of hidden, monstrous, and legendary animals, is truly the art of discovering the unknown. Richard Freeman, Zoological Director of Centre for Fortean Zoology, has explored the corners of the five continents on the search for creatures that many people believe are non-existent. In this book, he shares the exciting stories of his investigations of the Yeti, Mongolian Deathworm, Loch Ness Monster, Orang-Pendak, Ninki-Naka, and more.

In The Optimist, David Coggins tackled the techniques of fly-fishing and meditated on its virtues, recounting his triumphs and failures. Now, in The Believer, he deftly mixes travel, local cultures, further fishing challenges (some knee-buckling in their disappointment), and details his own experience as life and love crowd his time to fish.

After moving from London to a new home in Yorkshire, and about to become a father for the first time, Rob Cowen finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Disoriented, hemmed in by winter and yearning for open space, he ventures out to a nearby edge-land: a pylon-slung tangle of wood, hedge, field, meadow and river that lies unclaimed and overlooked on the outskirts of town. Digging deeper into this lost landscape, he begins to uncover its many layers and lives - beast, bird, insect, plant and people - in kaleidoscopic detail.