Mountaineering has always demanded a fine balancing act between calculated risk-taking and the basic instinct for survival. The pioneers of the Victorian golden age tested this balance as they pushed themselves further and further, first in the Alps and later in the Himalayas. Of them all, it was perhaps Mummery whose attitude to climbing is closest to that of the 1990s, and this book recreates his first ascent of the Grepon. It also traces his attempts...