John All and John Balzar
ICEFALL: Adventures at the Wild Edges of Our Dangerous, Changing Planet
(Public Affairs, March 2017)
In May 2014, the mountaineer and scientist John All plunged into a crevasse in the Himalayas, a fall that all but killed him. He recorded a series of dramatic videos as he struggled to climb out of the icy tomb to the surface, seven stories up, with fifteen broken bones—including six cracked vertebrae—internal bleeding, a severely dislocated shoulder, and a battered face covered in blood. The videos went viral, shown on newscasts across the world and every website imaginable.
Yet this brush with death is only the latest of John All’s adventures. He has also won a footrace for his life against a wild hyena, stepped on a black mamba in the African bush, and scaled Everest, all in pursuit of his true calling: the study of how we can adapt to our world’s changing climate. Icefall is a thrilling adventure story and a report from the extremes of the planet, taking you to collapsing Andean glaciers, hidden jungles in Honduras where native people have learned how to survive hurricanes, and the highest points on earth. The result is a gripping adventure memoir with profound lessons for how humans will adjust as our world continues to change beneath our feet.
Praise for Ice Fall
“[John All is] a badass for science.”
–Adam Frank, NPR
“John All treads the delicate knife-edge between adventure and climate science in this gripping account of his work in some of the world’s most dangerous and remote places. He makes a passionate and powerful case for human adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change. His optimism, from someone who has been there and done that, comes across loud and clear. In this book, climate change is not just politics-it’s avalanches and huge snakes and getting lost in the desert. This book will make you see it in a new light.”
–Brian Fagan, distinguished emeritus professor of anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The Great Warming
“[John All] is one part climate scientist and two parts extreme mountaineer, with insights into what it’s like to work at the exciting-and sometimes dangerous-intersection between the pursuit of knowledge and the hunt for adventure.”
–Nate Blakeslee, author of Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town
“Sure, some science happens in labs, with devices and machines. But data is in the world, where scientists interact with it, where they dig it out. Humanity, if it is looking to survive the next century in anything approaching its current state, needs more data to survive, especially data from places that are themselves rare: deserts, glaciers, mountains, still-impenetrable forests. It’s giving nothing away to say that somehow John All, a mountain-climbing data forager extraordinaire, survives, despite all odds. Which offers humanity some hope, stuck as it is in a dark, life-on-earth-threatening place.”
–Robert Sullivan, author of The Meadowlands and My American Revolution
“John All’s passion for adventure is matched only by his sharp insight and deep knowledge of environmental science. This important book tells the story of one man’s crusade-through jungles, over mountains, and deep into the ice-to bring about change that could save millions of lives.”
–Carlos Buhler, winner of the American Alpine Club’s Underhill Award for mountaineering
John All is a research professor of mountain environmental science at Western Washington University and executive director of the American Climber Science Program. He is a Fulbright scholar and a lifetime fellow of the Explorers Club in New York City.
John Balzar is the author of Yukon Alone, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and an award-winning newspaper journalist. His adventure writing has taken him from the icy north to the deep ocean.
Find out more about John All and the American Climber Science Program