WADE DAVIS ON “INTO THE SILENCE”

11 Dec WADE DAVIS ON “INTO THE SILENCE”

In Telluride, Wade Davis is a rock star. The man regularly plays to packed venues filled with his “groupies” – I admit to being in the fold  –  every time he returns to Mountainfilm, generally annually.

Wade is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and man for all seasons: poet and scientist, ethnographer and photographer, filmmaker and licensed river guide. He is also the author of a recent bestseller, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.

When Wade, a giant, looked back over his shoulder at Mallory, another giant, what he saw was a man with no choice: having emerged whole from the putrescent mud of WWI, the only place to turn was East and up. Everest became Mallory’s Grail, his Great White Whale, powerful, indifferent, ultimately healing in the chase, even unto death.

An overnight classic in the mountaineering genre, Into the Silence took Wade 10 years to pen, but with the release of this exhaustively researched project, he has climbed to new heights:

“Into the Silence is quite unlike any other mountaineering book. It not only spins a gripping Boy’s Own yarn about the early British expeditions to Everest, but investigates how the carnage of the trenches bled into a desire for redemption at the top of the world. . . . At its heart, Into the Silence is an elegy for a lost generation . . . a magnificent, audacious venture,” The Sunday Times

“The book is not the only one on the subject, but it is the only one most of us will ever need. . . . In Into the Silence, he brings his talents as an ethnographer to bear in portraying the mostly British teams that led the expeditions (a Canadian and an Australian figured prominently as well). . . . Davis’s thorough research gives him an almost omniscient eye. He is as sure-footed a sherpa as we could have hoped for on this journey,” National Post

“Mr. Davis’s research is extraordinary, the scope of his book ambitious . . . , his writing sensitive and graceful, and the storytelling entertaining,” The Wall Street Journal

Writer Caroline Alexander and producer/director George Butler, the team that made “The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition,” have already optioned “Into the Silence” for their next film triumph.

Into The Silence is available locally at Between the Covers bookstore. Call 970-728-4504 to reserve your copy.

To learn more about the man and the book, click the “play” button and listen to my interview with Wade Davis.