Streaming link: https://youtube.com/live/mYkBTKUWj_E?feature=share

Join WRI and Mountaineers Books author Bernadette McDonald as she tells the rarely mentioned accounts of the local climbers to the world's tallest and most challenging peaks.

This is a FREE event with a donation basket at the door.
Doors open at 6:30pm for a community social with beer and wine available for purchase. The presentation will start at 7:00pm.

Alpine Rising: Sherpas, Baltis, and the Triumph of Local Climbers in the Greater Ranges

The name of Maurice Herzog, the first man to reach the summit of Annapurna, is widely recognized, but how many know Ang Tharkay, the Sherpa who carried the seriously frostbitten Herzog on his back for miles? Although rarely mentioned in published accounts of early expeditions, local climbers have long been significant members of first ascents on the world’s tallest and most challenging peaks. In Alpine Rising, award-winning writer Bernadette McDonald sets the record straight by shining a light on these too often forgotten heroes. Now, in the 21st century, it is often local climbers who are setting records. A Nepali team was the first to climb K2 in winter; they reached the summit while singing their national anthem. Pakistani climbers like Little Karim and Ali Sadpara devoted their lives to helping others survive and succeed on and off the mountains and their stories deserve to be celebrated. Written with unprecedented access to climbers and their families, and assisted by researchers on-the-ground in Pakistan and Nepal, Alpine Rising will forever change the way readers see the history and legacy of mountaineering in the Greater Ranges.

BERNADETTE MCDONALD was the founding Vice President of Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre and director of the Banff Mountain Festivals for 20 years, and few people have the relationships that McDonald does with the world’s most accomplished alpinists. The author of more than a dozen books about mountaineering and mountain culture, she regularly lectures on a variety of topics for universities, festivals, and alpine clubs. McDonald lives in Banff, Alberta, Canada.