After I read all 19 mountain articles for the Mountain Article category of the Banff Mountain Book Competition I had two with the same score. In haste, I didn’t reevaluate them or scrutinize them further, but submitted my scores and comments. Well, the jury at Banff decided it was one of them and last week they awarded the winner of the Mountain Literature category was Astra Lincoln for her work in the annual Ascent Magazine originally titled “The Terror of Turning a Corner.”

Lincoln’s article has since been republished on Climbing dot com, though in a very Outside dot com way (Outside Magazine owns Climbing now,) that is made more for search engines and not human readers: “My Rocky Return to Climbing After a Life-Changing Accident.” The top of the webpage is just: “Climbing After a Brain Injury.” Well, that makes it raw and unapproachable, unlike Lincoln’s post. The original title has something to do with it.

I also scored Jeff Jackson’s “Cayesh” in Summit Journal the same. The article involved Mark Richey and the “Roadie Loades” on the big pointy peak. If you read it, you get it. I can’t find an online version anyplace and I don’t think I can share the PDF that was shared with me; sorry!

Overall, the Banff Mountain Book Competition jury announced ten winners, composed of seven books and Lincoln’s article from the standard categories and two more books for honorable mention. The standard categories are of Adventure Travel, Mountain Fiction and Poetry, Guidebook, Mountain Image, Mountain Article, Environmental Literature, and Mountain Literature, with the category of Climbing Literature as a category that can honor a climbing themed book from the Mountain Literature or other categories as appropriate.

The Jon Whyte Award, which is for the mountain non-fiction literature category, included books by Bernadette McDonald, Eric Blehm, Graham Zimmerman, Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar, Beth Rodden, and Rick Accomazzo. I am familiar with all of the books, though I only read McDonald’s Alpine Rising (so far.)

Well, Alpine Rising is the Jon Whyte Award winner for 2024 and eligible for the Grand Price to be announce in Banff on the evening of October 31st. Jurist Tony Whittome said this about her work:

We are privileged as judges to honour not one but two books which help transform our understanding of Himalayan mountaineering. Bernadette McDonald’s Alpine Rising, arguably the most important book in her long and distinguished career, tells the unsung, heroic and sometimes tragic story of the Sherpas, the Baltis and other Indigenous peoples without whom no Himalayan peak could have been climbed. As truths emerge from the shadows of empire and they take their rightful place in their own world, she reveals the lives and humanity behind their dramatic stories, culminating in the all-Nepali first winter ascent of K2.

The other book Whitmore references is Headstrap: Legends and Lore from the Climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling by Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar and published by The Mountaineers Books. Headstrap won the Climbing Literature category, which is the only subcategory of the finalist books; if the book is climbing related in another category, in this case Headstrap was entered for the Jon Whyte Award.

Congratulations, Astra, Bernadette, Nandini, Deepa, and the other winners.

On a wholly other topic, I wanted to update you about the Long-Short List of climbing classics and books I really want to make sure I read: I added Steve Roper’s memoir, Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber (1994). And yes, Roper and his publisher made rockclimber one word. I wish that would have stuck, like as it has with baseball becoming a single word.

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