Facing The Extreme: One Woman's Story Of True Courage And Death-Defying Survival In The Eye Of Mt. McKinley's Worst Storm Ever

About this book

She stepped into a death zone. The climbers on Alaskas Mt. McKinley called her "the woman." Ruth Anne Kocour a world-class mountaineer wasnt bothered. It was part of the challenge she faced as she joined an all-male team to conquer North Americas highest peak...the mountain the Indians called Denali or God. Faced the extreme. But nine days into this ascent a forty-fifth birthday present to herself the most violent weather on record slammed into the mountain. Ruth Anne and her group would be trapped on an ice shelf at 14 000 feet for the deadliest two weeks in Denali history. Pinned down by blinding snows unable to help other teams dying around her and her own feet freezing solid Ruth Anne tells of a wind chill of minus 150 degrees deadly hidden crevasses and being trapped in a place so violent and unforgiving that it threatened to push her over the edge and into a place of no return. And yet in prose as crystalline as the ice around her she tells too of beauty courage and the spirit that drives true mountainers higher as she risks all to go for the summit...and perhaps for a transcendant moment touch heaven. And lived to tell about it.