• Co-author Reinhold Messner is himself a legendary climber deeply influenced by Buhl's accomplishments
• Draws upon previously unpublished resources and interviews with family and friends
• Buhl wrote the classic Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage

Mountaineering is a relentless pursuit. One climbs further and further yet never reaches the destination. Perhaps that is what gives it its own particular charm. One is constantly searching for something never to be found.Hermann Buhl

Hermann Buhl the first man to stand atop Nanga Parbat, and legendary for his will to push himself to the lastñwas the mountaineer of the 1950s. His account, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage, has inspired generations of climbers. Yet that classic, shaped and romanticized by a collaborator, does not reveal the man Buhl really was. Now celebrated mountaineer Reinhold Messner and journalist Horst Hofler publish Buhl in his own words, pure and unadorned, in Hermann Buhl: Climbing without Compromise.

Drawing text from Buhl's original climbing diaries, journals, and articles written for mountaineering publications of his time, Messner and Hofler present a portrait of the whole man-strong-willed, creative, and fragile. A loner, rough-edged in his relations with fellow climbers, Buhl took opposition and disagreements heavily to heart. He was demanding as a father, yet he often sang for his young daughters. Though intense and always pushing his limits on the mountain, he displayed a subtle sense of humor in his journals.

Climbing without Compromise also reveals Buhl as an astonishingly modern mountaineer. Indeed, Buhl was a pioneer looking to the future. Buhl lived, above all, for and through his climbing, at a time when no one dreamed about making a living through top alpine achievements. The Buhl Crack on the Cima Canali demonstrates his style as a free climber; his ascent of Broad Peak gives us a glimpse of the super-alpinism of the future. ....