High Misadventure: New Zealand Mountaineering Tragedies and Survival Stories

High Misadventure explores the dark face of climbing in New Zealand - the times when a slip or a poor decision can lead to tragedy. Climber/journalist Paul Hersey takes eight incidents from among the many of recent decades, and explores the critical factors behind them. Among the incidents he covers are the deaths of five climbers when the Three Johns Hut blew away in 1977, the 1990 loss of six army cadets during a training exercise on Ruapehu, and the 2004 deaths of four climbers on Mount Tasman. As well as offering a white-knuckle read, this book will improve our understanding of what can go wrong on the mountains, and will be of great interest to both climbers and non-climbers. Unlike other recent, more general books on survival in the New Zealand outdoors, this title focuses exclusively on mountain incidents and covers each one in great depth. The text is built on first-hand interviews with survivors, the bereaved, mountain guides and their employers, and from careful study of coroners' reports. Each chapter includes a custom-drawn relief map from Geographx.

Author Biography

Paul Hersey has completed more than 60 rock and alpine first ascents in New Zealand and Europe, and participated in expeditions to the Pamirs and the Himalayas. He has worked as an ice climbing and glacier guide on Franz Josef Glacier, and a rock-climbing instructor in the UK. Paul writes for The Climber and the Alpine Journal. His first book, Where the Mountains Throw their Dice, was published in 2007.