Award Winners of the Banff Mountain Book Festival
Mountain Literature Category

Jury members found that this book had a “compelling and agonisingly suspenseful quality about it.” It tells the story of Andrew’s rescue after five nights trapped by a storm on Mont Blanc.
 

Best Book of Mountaineering History
Ways to the Sky: A Historical Guidebook to North American Mountaineering
Andy Selters

Grand Prize Winner: A riveting story about the 1937 first ascent of Alaska’s Mount Lucania by two mountaineers who found themselves stranded on the mountain with inadequate gear and provisions due to bad weather and logistics. "The story leaps off the page," says jury member George Lowe about Bradford Washburn and Bob Bates’ climb of Mount Lucania, which in 1937 was the highest unclimbed peak in North America. "It loses none of its impact in the retelling by two 90 year-olds who had a miraculous escape by their own efforts."  Read our Review
 

Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow: The Personal Costs of Climbing
Maria Coffey

Mountain Literature Award: Coffey conducted many of her interviews for this book at past festivals, and wrote part of it at The Banff Centre during a creative writing residency. "The subject of death and loss in the mountains, and the impact this has on those who are left behind, is a difficult subject that few writers, or mountaineers, have challenged," says Child. "To dare this topic takes courage."
 

Tenzing: Hero of Everest
Ed Douglas
(At Amazon UK)

Best Work of Mountaineering History: Douglas tells the story of Tenzing Norgay, the Tibetan-born son of a yak herder who went on to become a legend after making the first ascent of Mount Everest with beekeeper Sir Edmund Hillary. "This is a fully-textured portrait of the man that avoids legend building and myth making," says Ramsay. "It becomes more magical simply because of Douglas’ confidence, patience, and incredible gift for timing which have always made him one of the best."