Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss
Description
Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature
An intriguing biography of the renowned Austrian alpinist Paul Preuss, who achieved international recognition both for his remarkable solo ascents and for his advocacy of an ethically "pure" alpinism (meaning without any artificial aids).
In the months before his death in 1913, from falling more than 300 metres during an attempt to make the first free solo ascent of the North Ridge of the Mandlkogel, Paul Preuss's public presentations on his climbing adventures filled concert halls in Austria, Italy, and Germany.
George Mallory, the famed English mountaineer who died on Mount Everest in 1924, said "no one will ever equal Preuss."
Reinhold Messner, the first climber to ascend all fourteen 8000 metre peaks, was so impressed by the young Austrian's achievements that he built a mountaineering museum around Preuss's piton hammer, wrote two books (in German) about him and instituted a foundation in Preuss's name.
Alex Honnold, the first and only person to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, has thought about Preuss' untimely and surprising death and imagined it to have likely been "the worst four seconds" of Preuss' life.
Although he died at only 27 years old, modern climbing may never have developed the ethical, existential core that it has today if not for Preuss's bold style. Even the most trenchant traditionalists remain unsure about whether to add him to their pantheon or dismiss him as at worst a lunatic or at best an indelicate subject better left ignored.
Smart's biography is the first English language volume to be published and is certain to bring the remarkable story of Paul Preuss to a whole new generation of climbers.
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Person
David Smart has been climbing since 1975 throughout North America and Europe. He has completed hundreds of new routes in eastern Canada and is the founder of Gripped, Canada’s Climbing Magazine, Canadian Running magazine, Canadian Cycling Magazine and Triathlon Magazine Canada. He is also the author of five climbing guidebooks; a memoir entitled A Youth Wasted Climbing, short-listed for the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in 2015; Paul Preuss: Life and Death at the Birth of Free-Climbing, short-listed for awards by both the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature (UK); and Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites which won both the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival Award for Mountain Literature and The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature (UK) for 2021. He is the editorial director of Gripped Publishing and is still an active new-router in northern Ontario. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.