Download or read book The Hard Years written by Joe Brown and published by Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: -- Reissue of a long unavailable mountaineering classic-- Brown was the first of the modern, working-class climber-writers-- Brown made the first ascent of KangchenjungaThe Hard Years recounts Brown's childhood and earliest ventures into the world of climbing. There are chapters on his early rock climbs, including those with Don Whillans, ice climbs on Ben Nevis, and mountaineering in the Alps and Himalayas. One chapter describes the Kangchenjunga ascent, another Brown's impressions of what was then the Soviet Union during a less successful expedition in the Pamirs. All of the chapters reveal Joe Brown, described by the Times Literary Supplement as the climber of genius, who led the way to new concepts of what might be possible on rock.