By Elizabeth Prata
I like movies and videos of adventures. I was enthralled with Jon Krakauer's book "Into Thin Air", a recounting of the disastrous 1996 Everest expedition. K2 was a good survival movie. I like to look into marine disasters and mountaineering expeditions. Also Shackleton, Amundson, and Peary's expeditions to the poles during the Age of Exploration. Also jungle stuff. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is rightly called a literary masterpiece, a non-fiction narrative of the obsessive search for gold in the Amazon.
I recently found this Youtuber's series called Adventures Gone Wrong. She is highly articulate, with concise but well researched narratives of different adventures that have occurred, many times with fatal consequences.
When I went thrifting to the Antique store for their Christmas Open House event, I found this book by EE Shipton. It's called "The Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition" by Eric Earle Shipton.
The book looked interesting because firstly, it's a pre-Everest expedition that occurred very near to the time when the Mountain was finally conquered, and secondly because of the author's first-hand perspective, documents, and photos of the recon mission that launched the soon to be triumphant ascent of Edmund Hilary. In fact, I see that author Shipton made a mention in the book of soon-to-be king of the mountain, Ed Hillary! Shipton was first also to have hired Tenzing Norgay, Hillary's Sherpa and the 2nd man to stand atop the highest mountain in the world.
Shipton was a world class mountaineer, explorer, and adventurer.
You never know what one will find when thrifting.
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