Climbing Adventure

Arthur's cleared the first floor of the dungeon. More than that, with his new ally in Cassie Chin, he's got a real chance of building his Clan. The problem is, his alliance is contingent on them pushing ahead fast to allow the Chin to make full use of their Clan Halls. The Benevolent Durians are on a speed run, but in a Tower where levels are multi-kilometers long at times, with cultivation requirements, and new enemies all around, how fast is too fast?

In 2006, Kit DesLauriers made history by becoming the first person to climb - and then ski - from the summit of each continent's highest mountain, the famed Seven Summits. Centered on this quest, Higher Love represents a hero's journey, rich with personal insights, life-threatening consequences, and a thrilling crescendo. Spanning seven continents in just two years, this deeply personal memoir recounts Kit's initially secret journey that would change her life forever.

Condemned to a life of material harvesting in an ancient alien megastructure, Gideon Pike won't rest until he's found his way out from under the thumb of the Whelan Megacorp. His new home, an artifact of immense power, hangs suspended over a blackhole, and has been known to grant individuals strange abilities. Rumor has it this structure is responsible for most of mankind's technological advances over the last hundred and fifty years.

At 28,251 feet, the world's second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the ultimate achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 eleven climbers died in a single thirty-six-hour period on K2–the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain's history and the second-worst in the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges.

In early May 2006, a young British climber named David Sharp lay dying near the top of Mount Everest while forty other climbers walked past him on their way to the summit. A week later, Lincoln Hall, a seasoned Australian climber, was left for dead near the same spot. Hall's death was reported around the world, but the next day he was found alive after spending the night on the upper mountain with no food and no shelter.

What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty.

On 30 January, 1981 Joe Tasker and Ade Burgess stood at 24,000 feet on the west ridge of Mount Everest. Below them were their companions, some exhausted, some crippled by illness, all virtually incapacitated. Further progress seemed impossible. Everest the Cruel Way is Joe Tasker's story of an attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth - an attempt which pushed a group of Britain's finest mountaineers to their limits. The goal had been to climb Mount Everest at its hardest: via the infamous west ridge, without supplementary oxygen and in winter.

Joe Tasker lies, struck down by illness, in a damp, bug-infested room in the Himalaya, wondering if he will be well enough to climb Dunagiri, his first venture to the "big" mountains. One of Britain’s foremost mountaineers and a pioneer of lightweight climbing, he is about to attempt one of the first true "Alpine-style" climbs in the Greater Ranges. The Dunagiri attempt forms part of Tasker’s striking tale of adventure in the savage arena of the mountains.

Gideon and his climbing team have been hiding on the fifth floor to take a much needed break before they resume ascending the Tower. Now, the time has come for them to defeat the Floor Boss and continue growing their personal power. While things heat up between Gideon and Esme, and his relationships with the others grows stronger, he is faced with the new dangers around every corner.

The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climb of Mount Everest in this profound and free-flowing memoir - an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth’s highest peak to the soul’s deepest reaches. What drives a person to the edge of one of the most difficult and revered mountains in the world? How much is one willing to sacrifice and suffer to pursue an authentic and bold life?

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years, Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash. It wasn't always like this though. Once Everest was remote and inaccessible, a mysterious place, where only the bravest and most heroic dared to tread. The first attempt on Everest in 1922 by George Leigh Mallory and a British team is an extraordinary story full of controversy, drama and incident, populated by a set of larger-than-life characters.

We've added 13 new levels to our Treehouse, including a soap bubble blaster, a GRABINATOR (it can grab anything from anywhere at any time), a time-wasting level, a toilet-paper factory (because you can never have too much toilet paper) and an extra-terrestrial observation centre...which will come in handy when giant flying eyeballs from outer space come to grabinate US!

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

"It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalayas." Thus spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unscaled West Wall of Changabang - the Shining Mountain - in 1976. Bonington’s was one of the more positive responses; most felt the climb impossibly hard, especially for a two-man, lightweight expedition.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, Krakauer explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has himself battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, Eiger.

On June 8th, 1924, George Mallory and 'Sandy' Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen 800 feet shy of Everest's summit. A century later, we still don't know whether they achieved their goal, decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay did, in 1953. Irvine carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and take a photograph before they fell to their deaths?

Reborn in a crypt, Nick was given an ancient heritage and an important task: to become king, and make the Archaens rise again. Nick was now the last one, and he would need to find allies by forming Soul Pacts with both followers and wives. With the power of the Soul Knight class, he would have to use both paladin and necromancer magics to conquer the tower and defeat his enemies. But not all was right, in or outside the tower. A bandit warlord had taken control of the city of Havendale, and a deathly Trial within the tower lurks, barring Nick from collecting his Heritage.

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant victories and hardships more brilliantly than Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest essays and reporting, Krakauer writes of mountains from the memorable perspective of one who has himself struggled with solo madness to scale Alaska's notorious Devils Thumb.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.