The Vast Unknown

The Vast Unknown: Coburn & Pownall on the 1963 Everest ascent

Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
  • Library Hall

A very special Library Author Series event: Spend an evening with bestselling author Broughton Coburn and mountaineer Dick Pownall, discussing the first American ascent on Mount Everest in 1963.

More than 50 years after the greatest climb in American history, author Broughton Coburn shares a remarkable story of men and mountains in his book The Vast Unknown. Coburn's stories and photos provide a riveting chronicle of the first American expedition to Mount. Everest, having interviewed nine of the 21 members of the team who were still alive when he started his book project. He will be joined on stage by Dick Pownall, one of the mountaineers who helped lead the 1963 summit, for a first-hand account of the expedition and Q&A.

About The Vast Unknown
 In the midst of the Cold War, against the backdrop of the space race with the Soviet Union and the civil rights movement, a band of iconoclastic, independent-minded American mountaineers with poet beards and laserlike eyes set off for Mount Everest, aiming to restore America’s confidence and hope. The British and the Swiss had summited, but the Soviets and the Chinese had not.

The peak would become another proving ground in the battle for dominance between East and West. The Americans’ audacious plan included reaching the top from two directions, one of which would take them up the never-before scaled West Ridge, an unforgiving path of ice and rock that would test not just their physical endurance, but their very psychological soundness. All the while, they couldn’t know until they reached the top whether they would find a bust of Chairman Mao waiting for them.

The Vast Unknown is a harrowing, character-driven account of this momentous climb and its legendary team of inspiring and troubled climbers who suffered injuries, a near mutiny, and a death on the mountain. It is also an examination of the expedition’s profound sway over the American consciousness during a time when the country was searching for its identity. And it is also an investigation of one of the expedition’s little-known outcomes: the selection of a team to plant a CIA surveillance device on a Himalayan peak, to spy into China, where nuclear missile testing was underway.

About the author
For three years, Harvard graduate Broughton Coburn lived in the homeland of the Sherpas, the people who reside precariously on the skirts of Mount Everest. He has written three books that illustrate the history, grandeur and culture of this enthralling mountain: New York Times bestseller Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, the YA Triumph on Everest, and a bestselling collaboration with Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Touching My Father’s Soul. For two decades Coburn has directed development and conservation projects for the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund and other agencies, and is regarded as a premier authority on the Himalaya.

Books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Off the Beaten Path Bookstore.