Helen Mort
I grew up admiring the books of Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker. Many of the mountain literature texts which won the BT prize over the years were formative in my interests as a (very amateur) climber but also as a writer. I never dreamed that my own work would join that list one day. I’m thrilled that ‘A Line Above The Sky’ has received this honour from judges who I admire. In fact, as a former judge of the prize myself, I know exactly how much work and care goes into the process and how difficult it is to make decisions, so my gratitude is doubled. The prize is instrumental in expanding our sense of what ‘mountain literature’ can be and this year’s shortlist reflected the diversity of work being published - I was proud to be amongst all the authors, especially Anna Fleming who I’ve been on tour with this year talking about gender and climbing. The award creates a real sense of community and fellowship I think. It’s exciting!
Brian Hall
Three years ago I was struggling to start writing, trying to define my audience and quite simply what my book was going to be about. The idea of a ’time capsule’ emerged by revisiting a period in the seventies and eighties which perhaps was the golden age of Himalayan mountaineering. Many of my friends had died as we changed the style of Greater Range mountaineering from Heavyweight Expeditions to faster and lighter Alpine style. Just to talk about climbing would not do the characters justice and I also wanted to illustrate the counter culture in which we lived at that time. Eventually I developed a concept to speak about a generation of climbers through the voices of those that can no longer speak.
As a relative novice to writing a book I was overwhelmed by the size of the project. But I attended the Banff Mountain and Wilderness Writing program in 2019. This brilliant course gave me confidence, empowering me to forge ahead with my memoir. As the pages started to accumulate I was in a world of my own, unlocking my memories through diaries, photographs, books, articles and crucially talking to friends. I was writing the book for myself, without a care that anyone would actually read it. Of course I wrote too much and it was only when Robert Davidson of my publishers, Sandstone Press started editing, that 'High Risk: Climbing to Extinction' started to read like a proper book. The notion of entering it into the Boardman Tasker Mountain Literature Award was far beyond reality. When I was one of six shortlisted out of forty entries I was amazed. Had the book done justice to the memory of my friends who where no longer with us? I had no reference point as to whether my book was good or bad. One chapter focused on Joe Tasker and I was paranoid that my writing would not reflect his stature as one of the worlds top mountaineers. Soon my climbing friends started giving me positive feedback, which swaged my fears. Obviously I was elated to be the joint winner of the 2022 Award and the enormity of the accolade has still not sunk in.