Higher Than The Eagle Soars

Book excerpt: High and wild places have dominated Stephen Venables' life and now he has written a full autobiography which explores how and - more importantly - why he became a mountaineer, and reveals a series of never-recorded adventures on four continents. At its climax he revisits his dramatic success without oxygen on the Kangshung Face of Everest, described by Reinhold Messner as the most adventurous in Everest's history and by Lord Hunt as 'one of the most remarkable ordeals from which men or women have returned alive'. As Venables writes: 'Although we didn't go seeking deliberately an epic near-death experience, it did turn out that way - the ultimate endurance test for which all the previous adventures seemed, retrospectively, to be a preparation.'