Winner of the 2011 Boardman TaskerPrize Winner of the Grand Prize, 2011 BanffMountain Book Festival "Between 1980 and 1989, Polish climbers weregiant, worldwide leaders as high-altitude climbers, especially in theHimalayas. This volume documents those charismatic leaders and their iconicclimbs in a defining chapter of Himalayan climbing history." Reinhold Messner, world-renowned climber,explorer and author of 40 books on mountaineering, including The NakedMountain, Free Spirit: A Climber's Lifeand The Second Deathof George Mallory Renowned author Bernadette McDonald weaves apassionate and literary tale of adventure, politics, suffering, deathandultimatelyinspiration. Freedom Climberstells thestory of a group of extraordinary Polish adventurers who emerged from underthe blanket of oppression following the Second World War to become theworld's leading Himalayan climbers. Although they lived in a dreary,war-ravaged landscape, with seemingly no hope of creating a meaningful life,these curious, motivated and skilled mountaineers created their ownfree-market economy under the very noses of their Communist bosses andclimbed their way to liberation. At a time when Polish citizens were lockedbehind the Iron Curtain, these intrepid explorers found a way to travel theworld in search of extreme adventureto Alaska, South America andEurope, but mostly to the highest and most inspiring mountains of the world.To this end, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nepal became their secondhomes as they evolved into the toughest group of Himalayan climbers theworld has ever known.