This is the story of Joe Tasker and Peter Boardmans so-called preposterous plan to climb the West Wall of Changabang. It was unclimbed and the most technically challenging granite wall in the Garhwal Himalaya. This is a story about how climbing a mountain can become an all-consuming goal, of the tensions inevitable in forty days of isolation on a two-man expedition; as well as a record of the moment of joy upon reaching the summit ridge against all odds. Awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize for literature in 1979, it is a classic of mountaineering literature.