lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on caving and mountaineering

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92927 Craig, David Native Stones: A Book About Climbing Secker & Warburg, London, 1987. First edition. Hardcover, octavo; blue boards with gilt spine titling; 212pp., monochrome plates. Minor wear; a few spots on endpapers; spotting to text block edges. Black illustrated dustwrapper mildly rubbed. Otherwise very good to near fine in wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. David Craig describes his experiences of 'the utterly exhilarating and absorbing pursuit - the climbing of steep rock'. From the Cairngorms to the Dolomites, the highlands of Cumbria to the sea-cliffs of Cornwall and North Wales, he has tested his nerve and balance on the crags, discovering an intensity of experience and self-awareness that few other activities can offer. Click here to order $35

218011 Dunlop, B.T. Jenolan Caves New South Wales, Australia Department of Tourist Activities and Immigration, Sydney NSW. 1964. Fifth edition: octavo; paperback, perfect-bound booklet with illustrated wrappers; 96pp., with many monochrome illustrations and a fold-out map. Minor wear; mild rubbing to covers and edges; slightly toned text block edges. Very good. Click here to order $20

63020 Dunlop, B.T. Jenolan Caves Dept Tourism NSW, 1979. Stapled octavo booklet, 88pp., monochrome illustrations. A little scraping to upper edge of front card cover and spine; else very good. Click here to order $15

203956 Hall, Lincoln Blood on the Lotus - signed Simon & Schuster, Brookvale, 1990. Octavo hardcover; blue boards with white upper board and spine titling; 316pp. Inscribed in ink to the owner by the author. Wear and scraping to board edges and corners; one or two spots on endpaper edges; browned and spotted text block and page edges. Illustrated blue dustwrapper sunned along the spine panel with wear to edges and corners. Very good with wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. This is a novel about the involvement of an American mountaineer, a CIA agent and a Tibetan Buddhist monk in the struggle to free Tibet from Chinese oppression in the early '70s. The author is himself a noted mountaineer who has written several books on the subject. Click here to order $35

217326 Scott, Doug & Alex MacIntyre The Shishapangma Expedition: signed copy Granada, London, 1984. Octavo hardcover; gray boards with silver gilt spine titling, blue endpapers; 322pp., b&w photographic illustrations. Inscribed to the owner by Doug Scott on the title page. Minor wear only; faint spotting to text block edges and a few scattered spots on title page; dustwrapper sunned along the spine panel and adjacent, now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. "This largely unknown, elusive, barely pronounceable mountain of uncertain altitude boasts on its southern flanks a huge spectacular, visually formidable (and consequently tantalizingly attractive) mountain wall over two and a half kilometres high and twice as broad - an unclimbed, unvisited Alpine playground. To climb it became an ambition, but not just to climb it, we had to make the ascent with style, as light, as fast, as uncluttered as we dared, free from umbilical cords and logistics, with none of the traditional trappings of a Himalayan climb. The wall was the ambition, the style became the obsession." - Alex MacIntyre Click here to order $85

201410 Shirakawa, Yoshikazu (illus.); Arnold Toynbee (preface); Sir Edmund Hillary (introduction) Himalayas Abradale Press / Harry Abrams, New York, 1986. Folio hardcover; white cloth boards with black spine titling; unpaginated with colour and monochrome illustrations, many fold-out plates and fold-out maps at rear. Small bump on head of spine. Minor wear otherwise; near fine in like dustwrapper. Yoshikazu Shirakawa spent four hazardous and adventure-packed years photographing the Himalayas. In exquisite and dramatic full-page and double-page photographs, he shows us the extraordinarily diverse effects of light at different times of day and the highly varied terrain. We see the subtle colours of dawn, sunset and twilight; the brilliance of noon; the clouds, mists, blizzards and thunderstorms swirling around the peaks; mountain lakes set like jewels in rocky valleys; snow and ice glittering like crystals; unusually green and fertile valleys. The book is divided into four parts, each devoted to a major sector of the mountains: the Nepal, Punjab, and Sikkim Himalayas, and the Hindu Kush range. An essay by Kyuya Fukada discusses the geological evolution, history and people of the Himalayas. Click here to order $50

214088 Simpson, Joe The Beckoning Silence Jonathan Cape, London, 2002. Hardcover, octavo; black boards with silver gilt spine titling, pictorial endpapers; 290pp., colour & b&w illustrations. Minor wear; well-browned and mildly spotted text block edges. Very good in like dustwrapper; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences, from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain - before his final confrontation with the Eiger - Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body. The subject of his book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it. Click here to order $20

76557 Smythe, Frank The Six Alpine/Himalayan Climbing Books Climbs and Ski Runs; The Kangchenjunga Adventure; Kamet Conquered; Camp Six; The Valley of the Flowers; Mountaineering Holiday Baton Wicks, London, 2000. Thick octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 944pp. with 56pp. of monochrome and full-colour photographic plates. Slightly rolled; some minor scuffing to the text block top edge. Dustwrapper shows minor wear; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Francis Sydney Smythe, better known as Frank Smythe or F. S. Smythe was an English mountaineer, author, photographer and botanist. He is best remembered for his mountaineering in the Alps as well as in the Himalayas, where he identified a region that he named the "Valley of Flowers", now a protected park. His ascents include two new routes on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc, Kamet, and attempts on Kangchenjunga and Mount Everest in the 1930s. It was said that he had a tendency for irascibility, something some of his mountaineering contemporaries said "decreased with altitude" Click here to order $28