Banff Mountain Book Competition Announces 2018 Finalists
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It’s awards season! Hot on the heels of the recently released shortlist for the 2018 Boardman-Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature comes the longlist of finalists for the 2018 Banff Mountain Competition.
A total of 27 works were nominated across eight unique categories that encompass nonfiction, fiction and poetry, and media from books to articles to photographs. In each category, one winner—to be announced in October—will take home a cash-prize of $2,000. Each of these winners will then be eligible for the Grand Prize of $4,000, which is sponsored by Alpine Club of Canada, and will be announced on November 1.
Among this year’s finalists is Ed Douglas, for his article “The Other Annapurna,” which appeared in Rock and Ice issue 251 (July 2018). In the piece, Douglas recounts Yannick Graziani and Stephane Benoist’s ascent of the South Face of Annapurna, via a route that Ueli Steck had established solo just weeks before, and for which the late Swiss alpinist earned a Piolet d’Or. Douglas investigates why the pair’s climb—which turned into an epic fight for their lives—was largely overshadowed and the ways in which it went on to shape their lives. Douglas also probes the controversy that resulted from Steck’s seemingly unverifiable solo ascent, and evinces the opinions of Graziani and Benoist: Do they believe Steck did what he claimed to have done, based on their own harrowing, lengthy ordeal on a route that he supposedly did in a single day?
The finalists were selected by volunteer readers. Winners will be chosen by a three-person jury comprised of Paula Wright, associate editor at Alpinist; Ian Welsted, a guide and a Piolet d’Or winner; and Larry Stanier, also a guide. The full list of category finalists follows below. Finalists within each category are listed alphabetically.
Category Finalists
Adventure Travel
$2000 – Sponsored by Fjällräven
Atlas of a Lost World
Craig Childs, Pantheon Books (USA, 2018)
Lands of Lost Borders
Kate Harris, Penguin Random House Canada (Canada, 2018)
The Last Wild Men of Borneo
Carl Hoffman, HarperCollins (USA, 2018)
Mountain Fiction & Poetry
$2000
As Above, So Below
Chris Kalman, Mascot Books (USA, 2018)
Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades
Paul Willis, Stephen F. Austin State University Press (USA, 2018)
The Eight Mountains
Paolo Cognetti, Penguin Random House – Vintage (UK, 2018)
Mysterium
Susan Froderberg, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA, 2018)
Mountain Literature – Non-Fiction
$2000 – Sponsored by the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
A Mountaineer’s Life
Allen Steck, Patagonia Books (USA, 2017)
Edmund Hillary: A Biography
Michael Gill, Potton and Burton (NZ, 2017)
End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage and Motherhood
Jan Redford, Penguin Random House Canada (Canada, 2018)
Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei
Junko Tabei and Helen Rolfe, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2017)
Tides: a climber’s voyage
Nick Bullock, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2018)
Mountain Environment and Natural History
$2000 – Sponsored by Town of Banff
Bert Riggall’s Greater Waterton: A Conservation Legacy
Beth Russell-Towe, Fifth House Publishers (Canada, 2018)
Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees
Harley Rustad, House of Anansi Press (Canada, 2018)
The Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West
Nate Blakeslee, Penguin Random House Canada (Canada, 2017)
Mountain Image
$2000 – Sponsored by Lake O’Hara Lodge
Bergtagen
Claes Grundsten, Bokförlaget Max Ström (Sweden, 2017)
The Canadian Rockies: Rediscovered
Paul Zizka, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2017)
Searching for Tao Canyon
Pat Morrow, Jeremy Schmidt and Art Twomey, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2018)
Guidebooks
$2000 – Sponsored by the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides
Higher Education
Andy Kirkpatrick (Ireland, 2018)
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California
Philip Kramer, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2018)
The Index Town Walls: A Guide to Washington’s Finest Crag
Chris Kalman and Matthew Van Biene, Sharp End Publishing (USA, 2017)
Scotland’s Winter Mountains with one axe
Garry Smith, Northern Edge Books (UK, 2018)
Squamish Rockclimbs
Kevin McLane and Andrew Boyd, High Col Press (Canada, 2018)
Mountaineering Article
$2000 – Sponsored by the University of Alberta and the Alpine Club of Canada
Contraindications
Alison Criscitiello, Alpinist Magazine (USA, August 2017)
The Force of the Soul
James Edward Mills, Alpinist Magazine (USA, November 2017)
Suicides and Pirates
Andrew Allport, The Climbing Zine (USA, March 2018)
The Other Annapurna
Ed Douglas, Rock and Ice Magazine (USA, July 2018)
Also Read
Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2018 Shortlist
Banff Mountain Book Competition Announces 2017 Category Winners