Beyond the Mountain, the memoir by acclaimed American climber and Alpinist contributor Steve House, has won the 2009 Boardman Tasker Prize. The literature award, which carries with it a prize of 3,000 British Pounds, was announced at the Kendal Mountain Festival today.
“There is one book in particular here which we all felt as soon as we finished it, we would want to read again,” Judge Chairman Phil Bartlett said of House’s book in his prize announcement speech. “It is a book we feel privileged to have read, and proud to have been asked to judge.”
Alpinist 28 contributor Jerry Auld’s novel Hooker and Brown was shortlisted alongside Cairngorm John by John Allen, The Longest Climb by Dominic Faulkner, Revelations by Jerry Moffatt and Deep Powder and Steep Rock by Chic Scott.
Beyond the Mountain also won Best Book in the Mountain Literature category at the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival (read the November 4, 2009 NewsWire).