Five of the best books on climbing mountains

MOUNTAINEERING HAS gone mainstream. What was once a pursuit for only the hardiest adventurers is now the extreme sport du jour. Take Mount Everest. In the four decades after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit in 1953 an average of 12 people a year followed in their footsteps. In 2023 more than 1,200 people attempted the climb; 655 reached the summit and 18 died trying. The ascent of Everest is now an industry: for between $35,000 and $110,000 guides will take novices to the top of the world. But the new commercialism should not detract from the romance of mountaineering. These five books and a documentary allow armchair alpinists to experience a bit of the thrill with none of the peril.

The early history of mountaineering in Europe is in no small part one of British adventurism, which is surprising. Ben Nevis, at 1,345 metres, is Britain’s highest peak. That is less than half as high as Mont Blanc in the Alps (4,805 metres). Yet many of the Alp-conquering protagonists of “Killing Dragons” were Britons. The Alpine Club, the world’s first for mountaineering, was founded in London in 1857. Edward Whymper, the first person to ascend the Matterhorn (4,478 metres), started the craze for tourism in the Alps. Fergus Fleming, a British author, traces the lives and obsessions of explorers, some eccentric, some simply eminent. “Killing Dragons” tells the story of the age and conveys the pull that these—at the time unclimbed—peaks exerted. The exploits of these Victorians were a prelude to the conquests, again often by British climbers, of even loftier mountains in Asia in the 20th century.