Patagonia
The Echo - Stories from the Edge of Survival

Barry Blanchard is one of the defining alpinists of his generation — a Canmore-based UIAGM guide who has put up first ascents on Howse Peak, North Twin, Kusum Kanguru, and Mount Robson's Emperor Face, and whose 2014 memoir The Calling set a benchmark for climbing literature. The Echo picks up where that book ended and pushes further into the terrain that shaped him: the Infinite Spur on Foraker, where an ascent becomes an improvised high-altitude rescue; a style-driven attempt on Everest's unclimbed Northeast Flank with Mark Twight that ends in pulmonary and cerebral edema; a solo on Kusum Kanguru; and the cathedral walls of the Canadian Rockies where a catastrophic fall eventually reframes everything that came before it. The writing is taut and honest — Kirkus called it "action-packed and vicariously thrilling for armchair and actual alpinists alike." It is also something more than a climbing book: a reckoning with Métis identity, lost partners, the cost of ambition, and the long arc toward humility. If you read The Calling, this belongs next to it. If you haven't, start there first.

Features

• Twenty chapters plus an epilogue and glossary covering Blanchard's climbing career from the punk-rock alpinism years through his catastrophic fall and recovery on Howse Peak
• Full-color photographs throughout — the visual record of routes and partners that define the narrative
• Author's playlist and personal reading list included, as in The Calling — a window into the music and books that accompanied the climbs
• Sequel to The Calling (Patagonia, 2014) — can be read independently, but rewards readers who have the first book
• Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper; published by Patagonia

Technical Specs