The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonnington and the Tragedy of Climbing’s Greatest Generation

The Boys of Everest by Clint Willis tells the gripping story of Bonington’s Boys : a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest’s first ascent. It is a story of tremendous courage, astonishing achievement, and heartbreaking loss. Chris Bonington’s inner circle included a dozen of mountaineering’s most legendary figures, Don Whillans, John Harlin, Dougal Haston, Doug Scott, Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker, and others who together gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly challenging risks on now-legendary expeditions to the world’s most fearsome peaks and they paid an enormous price. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: was it worth it?