With Friends in High Places: An Anatomy of Those Who Take to the Hills

The joys, risks and motivations of mountain climbing are at the heart of Malcolm Slesser’s remarkable book. This autobiographical account spans 66 years of mountain exploration in every continent, during which both attitudes and technology have undergone vast changes. Mountain climbing, like life itself, is not without risk. Some brilliant climbers like Herman Buhl and Dougal Haston have perished through a momentary lapse of judgement. Too many die young, failing to appreciate that safety lies in the awareness of danger. But the motivation for mountain climbing is not risk. It is the joy of exploration of the vertical, whether it be a virgin summit, a lonely precipice or simply a new line on a familiar rock face. It is the delicious matching of skill to the difficulties presented by the mountain. It is to heighten the senses in lonely remote places. It is to remove all obstacles between the individual and nature. In WITH FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES, Malcolm Slesser recalls perilous situations, such as the ill-fated Pamir expedition of 1962, and unusual environments, including the Arctic and the Tropics, that he has experienced throughout his decades of mountaineering and exploring around the globe.