Jim Davidson

Spring Author Series: Jim Davidson

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
  • Library Hall

Spend an evening at the library with author Jim Davidson. This community talk is free.

About the author
Jim Davidson is a Colorado-based climber, author and international speaker who shares stories and lessons distilled from 31 years of mountain adventures. As a high-altitude mountaineer and expedition leader, Jim has scaled peaks in Alaska, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nepal and Tibet, including the sixth highest peak in the world, Cho Oyu, at 26,906 feet. 

Davidson's epic survival and the wisdom he learned are shared in his national bestselling memoir, The Ledge: An Inspirational Story of Friendship and Survival (co-authored with Kevin Vaughan, a staff reporter for The Denver Post).  His story has also been shared internationally through a TV episode of "I Shouldn't Be Alive"  on Discovery Channel. The Ledge is the 2012 winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature.

About The Ledge

The Ledge


In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood triumphantly atop Washington's Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate young mountaineers. Instead, their conquest gave way to catastrophe when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse – the pitch-black, ice-walled hell that every climber's nightmares are made of. Jim survived the huge fall. Mike did not.

Jim was stranded alone on a small snow ledge, deep inside the glacier. Injured and devastated by the loss of his friend, Jim struggled to forge a way up the overhanging ice walls and to find the courage to even try. At once a heart-stopping adventure story, a heartfelt memoir of friendship, and a stirring meditation on fleeting mortality and immutable nature, The Ledge chronicles one man's transforming odyssey from the dizzying heights of elation and awe to the punishing depths of grief and hard-won wisdom. This book's visceral, lyrical prose sings the praises of the physical world's wonders, while searching the souls of those willing, for better or worse, to fully embrace it.

About the Spring Author Series at BWML
Bud Werner Memorial Library presents a series of free author talks throughout spring 2013. We proudly welcome Jim Davidson (March 18), Cheryl Strayed (April 11)Chris Bohjalian (April 17), Mary Roach (April 30) and Kent Haruf (May 15) to the library, and the Steamboat Springs community. Each of these diverse award-winning authors will speak about their literary works and their writing processes during a talk in Library Hall. Each talk will be followed by a Q&A and an opportunity to have authors sign copies of  their books.

Books will be for sale on-site at the event courtesy of Off the Beaten Path Bookstore.