Richard Moore meets a publisher who’s on top of the world after launching an innovative series of Seven Summits guide books.
THERE are those who claim the ultimate mountaineering challenge is to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents, while others contest that to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre mountains is the greatest achievement. Everyone agrees, however, that both challenges are the stuff of mountaineers’ dreams.
Well, now one of these dreams can appear a little more attainable, thanks to a small publisher from Dunblane. Jacquette Megarry, of Rucksack Readers, says no series of guidebooks has ever existed to assist those who dream of conquering the Seven Summits. So this is her dream, and it will begin to be realised on Wednesday, when the first title in the new series, a guide to Aconcagua, the 22,840ft summit of South America, is launched in Stirling.
Megarry has completed her own remarkable journey to be in a position to spread the message and communicate to a wider audience, as she puts it, “the thrill of climbing the world’s great mountains, even if it’s only from their armchairs”. She climbed her first major mountain (Kilimanjaro) only six years ago, aged 51, having been persuaded, a year earlier, to mark her 50th by walking the West Highland Way.
The treks made a powerful impression on Megarry. While she enjoyed both trips, she found the guidebooks less than ideal. “On the West Highland Way we had the official guide, but it turned to pulp when it rained; and we had separate maps, which tear in the wind, or take off like a sail.
“I had a lingering sense it wasn’t fit for its purpose. And the experience of climbing Kili, in 1999 – and the sense of satisfaction – gave me the self-belief to put my money where my mouth was. Instead of just feeling traditional guidebooks weren’t good enough, I believed I could do something better.”
And so five years ago, having been perfectly content working as an educational training consultant, Megarry “stumbled into publishing”. She says this helped in some respects. She came into the business with few preconceived ideas about how a book should be conceived, or how it should look. The numerous guides – from the Speyside Way to the Inca Trail – published by Rucksack Readers, don’t resemble traditional books: they are waterproof, with fold-out maps and numerous innovative features.
The Seven Summits series will be different. Aconcagua is smaller, more compact, but it has a tardis-like capacity for cramming in information. Everything is there. Worried you might not be able to diagnose the early signs of High Altitude Cerebral Edema? Well worry no more – this book tells you.
Megarry, who is also the author of many of the books, knows her stuff, but how on earth did she transform herself from being an occasional and not very ambitious walker into a mountaineer, and the publisher of the first series of guides to the Seven Summits?
“I’ve had to pinch myself at times,” she admits. “I’d never been to China, South America, Tanzania, or any of these places,” she says. “But I felt, having climbed Kili, I wanted to produce a book that would be self-contained, with all the information that you would need on a peak, where every last gram has to be justified.”
Megarry attempted to climb Aconcagua in 2003. The exper-ience gave her food for thought; perhaps it even inspired the Seven Summits series. “I went as far as high camp, and spent four days hunkered down in winds howling at 150-200kph a little higher up,” she recalls. “We were dying to summit, but it was impossible. We simply ran out of time.
“That was with three friends, and they went back in January and did summit. But I didn’t want to go back; I wanted to publish the kind of book that, if I’d read it beforehand, would have told me the itinerary we’d been sent on was a non-starter. We wasted the first week and had less than a fortnight on the mountain. I didn’t understand you have to lay siege to the altitude. It is not just slightly more difficult than Kili, it’s a different type of challenge.”
As Megarry says, Aconcagua, and the forth-coming books in the Seven Summits series, might help people who intend to climb these mountains, or they may just give them something to dream about. Either is fine. But if it is the former, then they “don’t teach people how to use crampons, because if they haven’t used crampons before, then a high mountain is not the place to learn”.
The author of Aconcagua is Dutchman Harry Kikstra, enlisted by Megarry because he – unlike she – actually intends to climb all seven peaks (he has done six so far, including Everest in June this year).
“Harry’s Everest summit story is something else,” says Megarry. “I’m lucky my author’s still alive, to be honest. He had High Altitude Cerebral Edema, a bad lung infection, and the problem with altitude sickness is how do you know the balance of your mind is disturbed if the balance of your mind is disturbed? Harry is a safe climber, but he climbed himself into a significant amount of danger because of that.”
But Kikstra did make it, and he’s due in Stirling on Wednesday to launch the book at Stirling climbing shop Summits.
“We try to take a systematic approach: if you were a novice, what would you need to know to climb these mountains?” asks Megarry. “The books might encourage people to try the Seven Summits, or they might just enjoy having them. Someone gave me a West Highland Way book 15 years ago, and it just lay on the bookshelf. Ideas lie dormant and then something gives you the impetus. For me, it was my 50th birthday. And one thing just led to another.”
Competition
Five copies of Aconcagua are available to lucky Sunday Herald readers. Just answer this question: In which country does Aconcagua lie? A. Argentina. B. Chile. C. Both Argentina and Chile. E-mail info@rucsacs.com with your answer, putting “Sunday Herald Competition” in the subject box.
