The Tower

A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre

By: Kelly Cordes

Narrated by: Bernardo de Paula

Patagonia's Cerro Torre, considered by many the most beautiful peak in the world, draws the finest and most devoted technical alpinists to its climbing challenges. But controversy has swirled around this ice-capped peak since Cesare Maestri claimed first ascent in 1959. Since then a debate has raged, with world-class climbers attempting to retrace his route but finding only contradictions. This chronicle of hubris, heroism, controversies, and epic journeys offers a glimpse into the human condition, and why some pursue extreme endeavors that at face value have no worth.

©2014 Patagonia (P)2023 Tantor

Great story and writing. Narrator doesn’t know how to pronounce climbing terms.

Great book, well written, well narrated with the caveat that if you’re a climber the continual mispronunciation of terms like piton and arête may drive you insane. (To be fair it’s possible it wasn’t those specific words, but there are a variety of climbing terms that are loan words from other languages and the narrator straight up mangles them). Anyway, great book, well worth a read or listen.

its pronounced pee-tahn

come on dude. the mispronunciation is killing me, piton is pronouned pee-tahn. must be over 100 times

Pie-tons? Really?

Next time use a narrator that remotely understands the sport. Listening to this narrator was painful.

Interesting, exciting, insightful

Loved this book, the history, the research. It was obvious a lot of research went into this book. It was so well written & conclusions did not feel jumped to. I appreciated getting all sides of the stories. So interesting & so we’ll written. I couldn’t put it down once I started.

Great book - struggling narration.

Awesome story and writing by Kelly Cordes. Unfortunately the narrator clearly did not do his diligence as he mispronounces numerous climbing terms such as piton and arete throughout the book.