The Big Walls: From the North Face of the Eiger to the South Face of Dhaulagiri

Reinhold Messner can justifiably be described as the world's greatest living adventurer. Born in 1944 in the South Tyrol, he did most of his early climbing in the Dolomites and Western Alps. By the age of twenty he had climbed most of the hardest routes and in 1969 he took part in his first expedition to the Andes, reaching the summit of Yerupaja. In 1970 he climbed his first Himalayan peak, Nanga Parbat, and over the next sixteen years conquered all the world's 8,000-meter peaks, becoming the first man to do so. He has also climbed in North America, Kenya, New Guinea and Antartica, and has completed a traverse of the Antarctic continentReinhold Messner is the author of 'The Big Walls: From the North Face of the Eiger to the South Face of Dhaulagiri' with ISBN 9780898868449 and ISBN 0898868440.