Book: Beyond the Limits: A Woman's Triumph on Everest, by Stacy Allison

A new feature, I'll share information on books that feature "adventurous" women: athletes, mountain climbers, scuba divers, explorers, etc. There will be one or two of these posts a week.

Beyond the Limits: A Woman's Triumph on Everest, by Stacy Allison with Peter Carlin
Little, Brown and Compaby, 1993
282 pages plus 8 pages of b&w photos, no index

Description
At 29,028 feet, Mount Everest is the world's highest, most challenging mountain, looming in our imagination as a monument to the impossible; for every three climbers who reach its elusive summit, one dies trying. But for one moment in 1988, Stacy Allison stood alone on this mythic peak - the only spot on Earth where she couldn't climb any higher. At that moment, Allison became the first American woman ever to reach the summit of Everest.

Stacy Allison is America's premier female climber, a woman on many triumphs, both on the mountain and off. Beyond the Limits is the tale of her journey upward. It is a thrilling account about breaking through the barriers of a traditional male domain, and a moving personal story about the struggle out of the trap of domestic violence - of how she summoned the same spirit and courage that brought her to the top of the world to finally walk out of her abusive marriage. It is, ultimately, her testimony to the power of a vision and a purpose in the midst of despair and uncertainty.

In Beyond the Limits, Stacy Allison provides a rare close-up of the elite mountain-climbing world: the idieosyncratic dedicated individuals who make up the international climbing community; the political and strategic maneuvering before and during an expedition, the grueling training and single-minded ambition; and the constant danger and pressing threat of death.

Stacy describes how life feels at 29,028 feet, when cells don't regenerate and the body literally begins to waste away; what she thinks about while clinging to the side of a granite face by her fingers or when an avalanche comes crashing down on top of her; what it's like to look death in the face but refuse to give up.

Beyond the Limits is a sispenseful, triumphant adventure story, a spirited tribute to the determination of one woman, and an uplifting primer for anyone who has ever faced a mountain - physical or metaphorical - and reached for its summit.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Blown Away
2. Heaven on Earth
3. The Top of America
4. Chasing Dreams
5. Death and Survival
6. The Road to Base Camp
7. Stranded Hopes
8. Because I'm Here
9. Building the Route
10. Nowhere Else to Climb
11. Chasing the Goddess
12. Anything is Possible