Starlight and Storm (Modern Library Exploration)
by Gaston Rebuffat, Jon Krakauer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gaston Rebuffat, Jon KrakauerTranslator: John Hunt
Translator: Wilfrid Noyce
Introduction: David Roberts
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-09-07
ISBN: 0375755063
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Modern Library
Book Reviews of Starlight and Storm (Modern Library Exploration)
Book Review: Caution - Can be Addictive
Summary: 5 Stars
This book changed and energized my life. I picked up Gaston's Starlight and Storm from a used book bin while wandering downtown in DC one night when I was 18 years old. I read it a dozen times that year. And I have been climbing mountains with passion ever since. The book and the man changed my life. A year after reading this, I began to climb, initially at Seneca Rock in West Virginia. Then I moved abroad ultimately climbing in Chamonix over a dozen seasons, all over the UK and Western Europe from the Eiger to the Marmolata, and all over the US for some 50 years now. I've bought and reread all of Gaston's books. I've got pictures of Chamonix with Gaston as the main figure photographed by Pierre Tairraz, the photographer for all his books, in collages on most of the walls in my home. They have been up or years and I'm thought of as a curator of mountain photos. 30 years ago, I met Gaston with his pipe in his mouth looking out over the rising clouds from the Auguille du Midi Hut above Chamonix (just like a photo in this book) and had an opportunity to tell him that Starlight and Storm and the vision he shared of climbing in it had gripped me to the core and changed me while a wandering boy to a life-long world-wide climber and mountaineer...and I thanked him. He was gracious and happy that I had found my love of climbing...just like you would expect. My visit on that occassion was to climb his own route on the Midi. Well, it is later now in time, I've slowly become 66 years old, now living in the mountains of Colorado, but I still have this book on my shelf, so worn, so moving, so brilliant an stirring...the comradeship of the rope ..my friend, my companion, my inspiration. The story of my life, actually. Bon voyage, Gaston. Thanks again for your inspiration.
Summary of Starlight and Storm (Modern Library Exploration)
From the 1920s to the 1950s, the race was on in Europe to score first ascents of the most formidable routes in the Alps and Dolomites. Buoyed by the advent of artificial climbing techniques (primarily the use of pitons), teams from France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Poland scaled the north faces of the Eiger, the Drus, the Matterhorn, the Grandes Jorasses, and other hallowed peaks, often pooling resources to obtain previously unimaginable success (and often tragedy), while the world below was ravaged by two brutal world wars. Noted French climbing guide Gaston Rébuffat lived at the center of this crucial era in mountaineering history. Starlight and Storm, first published in French in 1954 as Étoiles et Tempêtes, is his personal account of a rugged and glorious time before Gore-Tex, when men, soaked and chilled to the bone, sang to keep each other from falling asleep (forever) during exposed bivouacs in sub-zero degree snowstorms. Rébuffat's love of the climber's life is evident with each turn of the page. Where contemporary authors like Jon Krakauer, who provides this reissue's foreword, describe climbing in terms of nightmares and inner struggles, Rébuffat moves from one harrowing ascent to the next with uncommon gaiety and charm. "We have the instinct for it, the love of rocks and the necessary skill," he writes of time spent on the Drus, "so that we can climb without being worried by technical problems. Thus the whole climb was pure joy, for, while superficially watching over the actual ascent, the spirit had leisure to wander happily." The mysterious joy and lure of traversing earth's high places are expressed with a boyish innocence lost on much of today's climbing culture, making Starlight and Storm an enjoyable read, probably unlike any mountaineering journal you have ever encountered. --Kristopher KaiyalaPolar Regions Books
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