A full-length account of a story covered in a Pulitzer Prize-nominated article documents the 1992 mountaineering venture during which co-author Jim Davidson and his best friend, Mike Price, ascended Mount Rainier before a tragic fall that instantly ended Mike's life and forced Jim to climb to safety with sparse equipment. Reprint.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER &; &;The authors bring extreme climbing to life. . . . Perhaps no author can rationalize why some choose to risk their lives . . . for the thrill of conquering a mountain. The Ledge comes perilously close and tells a ripping true story at the same time.&;&;The Denver Post
In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood atop Washington&;s Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate mountaineers. Then their triumph turned tragic when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse&;the pitch-black, ice-walled hell of every climber&;s nightmares.
An avid adventurer since youth, Davidson was a seasoned climber at the time of the Rainier ascent. But the harrowing free fall left him challenged by nature&;s grandeur at its most unforgiving. Trapped on a narrow frozen shelf, deep below daylight, he desperately battled crumbling ice, snow that threatened to bury him alive, and crippling fear of the inescapable chasm below&;all the while struggling to save his fatally injured friend. Finally, alone, with little equipment and rapidly dwindling hope, he confronted a fateful choice: the certainty of a slow, lonely death or the near impossibility of an agonizing climb for life. A story of heart-stopping adventure, heartfelt friendship, fleeting mortality, and implacable nature, The Ledge chronicles the elation and grief, dizzying heights and punishing depths, of a journey to hard-won wisdom.
&;Plunges readers into a dark, icy chasm from which escape seems impossible. Then it reveals the strength it takes to look up, and to start climbing.&;&;Jim Sheeler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the National Book Award finalist Final Salute
&;How [ Davidson] rescued himself is the core of The Ledge, and its most gripping part. The physical effort and will involved are astonishing.&;&;The Plain Dealer
&;A moving portrait of friendship and loss.&;&;The Wall Street Journal
