Jonathan Neale

Tigers of the Snow

How One Fateful Climb Made the Sherpas Mountaineering Legends

London 2003

Stron XIII+338, format: 13x20 cm

In 1934 a German-led team set off to climb the West Himalayan peak of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on earth. No such attempt had been made since the disastrous assault of 1895, but Nazi Germany was determined to prove its natural superiority to the world. The heavily funded expedition, accompanied by cameras to record the team's success, resulted in dangerous pressure to deliver results. When a hurricane hit the leading party just short of the summit, the Germans broke the unwritten rule of mountaineering and headed down alone. Facing almost certain death, it was the moment the Sherpas who survived have never forgotten. Now the Sherpas, not the Europeans, were seen as the most responsible climbers - 'Tigers of the Snow'. Impeccably researched and superbly written, this is the compelling narrative of a climb gone wrong, set against the mountaineering history of the early twentieth century and the haunting background of German politics in the 1930s