“Mountain Madness is a personal, uncritical biography that rounds out the portrait of Fischer sketched in Krakauer’s best seller.”
--Bruce Barcott in The New York Times Book Review
“You’re either cruisin’ or you’re bummin’, so you might as well cruise.”—Scott Fischer
Mountain climber Scott Fischer’s mantra would lead him to scale the highest and most treacherous peaks on earth. Best known as one of the guides who perished near the summit of Mount Everest during the tragic spring of 1996, Scott Fischer became for many an iconic symbol of audacity, hubris, and the limits of human endurance. But to those who knew him well, Scott was much more than an action figure at the heart of a modern-day cautionary tale. Now in this vivid, candid biography, Robert Birkby—one of Scott’s close friends—gives us a fascinating, in-depth portrait of who Scott Fischer really was and what led him to the top of the world.
As a teenage athlete growing up in New Jersey, Scott felt a restless drive to reach beyond the limits of his suburban environment. He discovered the freedom he sought during summers in the rugged mountains of Wyoming. A natural mountaineer blessed with tremendous physical strength and willpower, Scott thrived on the challenges of climbing, the beauty of the high country, and the like-minded people he found there. With the creation of a guide service he called Mountain Madness, Scott meshed his need to climb with his joy in sharing with others the lofty, rarified realms he had made his own.
In adrenaline-filled narratives that take us to the world’s tallest places, Robert Birkby traces the expeditions that made Scott one of the most respected climbers of the close-knit mountaineering community. From Alaska to the Soviet Union, from the granite walls of Yosemite to the punishing storms of the Himalayas, Scott’s achievements are hair-raising, inspiring, and always exhilarating—a relentless quest for new highs that builds inexorably to the rendezvous with disaster on Everest.
Scott’s life was a journey filled with adventures, deep friendships, and dramatic successes and failures in the obscure reaches of some of the world’s most beautiful and dangerous places. A captivating homage to a man who eagerly went where few dare to go, Mountain Madness is an extraordinary account of courage, passion, and extreme living.
“Bob Birkby has lovingly researched Scott Fischer’s life to create a vivid portrait of a superb athlete whose love of mountain-climbing drove everything he did. My six years of friendship with Scott were some of the most memorable moments of my life. The world is a poorer place without Scott in it. But thanks to Bob Birkby’s compelling biography, readers will be able to appreciate Scott in a wonderfully personal way.”
—Ed Viesturs, author of No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks
“Scott had one adventure after another after another. Most of us have an occasional big adventure, but it’s not this continuous series. Who does that? Nobody. Most of us are so conservative. But not Scott.”
—Stacy Allison, the first American woman to climb Mount Everest and author of Beyond the Limits: A Woman's Triumph on Everest
“Scott Fischer’s wild ride of a life culminated in a set of decisions and circumstances that ended in tragedy on Mount Everest in 1996. Robert Birkby’s biography offers the reader a captivating look at the man and the experiences that led up to that fateful day.”
—Phil Powers, Executive Director of the American Alpine Club and owner of Jackson Hole Mountain Guides
“It’s all so doggone fascinating, the whole lot of it, isn’t it? In terms of what we did and where we are now, it was just perfect. Of course, it would have been good to have fewer people die along the way....”
—Wesley Krause, Mountain Madness co-founder
“There was a simplicity to Scott’s enthusiasm for life; his was the integrity of a young man who found his calling early and never wavered. Scott never questioned his goals, his choices or his friends. Robert Birkby has done remarkable job of following Scott from his introduction to climbing as a teen in the Wyoming backcountry through his Himalayan years. Mountain Madness is a refreshing, energetic reminder of the importance of pushing back the boundaries, and a tribute to a man whose fire for adventure proved contagious for nearly everyone he met.”
—Wally Berg, Berg Adventures International
“World-class mountain climber and guide gets a posthumous tribute from a mournful, devoted friend and fellow mountaineer. . . . Deftly detailing Fischer’s life in conversational prose, Birkby shares stories about encountering bears and traversing frozen terrain in the Alaskan wilderness, adventures ascending Kilimanjaro and the death-defying challenges of the Annapurna Circuit trail. . . . A fitting homage to one of the great outdoor extremists.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Birky's admiring, but not uncritical, biography provides a much fuller picture of a climber widely critiqued in the high-profile coverage after the Everest tragedy.” --Seattle Post Intelligencer
“Birkby succeeds in illuminating the power mountains can exert over the human soul. He’s also adept at capturing powerful ties of love and friendship, of which Fischer had plenty; his charisma, charm and open embrace of adventure suffuse the narrative. This warm remembrance should strike a powerful chord not just in climbers, but in anyone who has lost a dear friend to untimely death.” --Publishers Weekly
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