Lydia Bradey: Going Up Is Easy

Provocative, stirring, and beautifully co-written by novelist Laurence Fearnley, Lydia Bradey: Going Up is Easy is the story of how one woman took on the mountaineering world and won. In 1988, Lydia Bradey became the first woman to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. She made the ascent alone and to date she is the only New Zealander to have made an oxygen-free ascent. Her climb was a truly remarkable achievement but also an internationally controversial one. Going Up is Easy details for the first time the events surrounding Bradey's historic feat, as well as her many hair-raising expeditions through Alaska, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, China, Europe, and New Zealand. In the spirit of John Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Joe Simpson's Touching the Void, Going Up is Easy celebrates a life lived on the edge. Through her stories, we encounter a woman propelled by curiosity and passion to become one of the greatest female high-altitude adventurers of recent times. Co-written with acclaimed novelist Laurence Fearnley, a long-time friend of Bradey, and stunningly illustrated throughout, Going Up is Easy is a life story by turns dramatic, tender, funny, frank and inspiring. Lydia Bradey is one of Australasia's foremost high-altitude mountaineers. Beginning her alpine career in the 1970s, she made her first ascent of Aoraki/Mount Cook while still a teenager. Following her dream to become a climber, she travelled to Alaska, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan, where, in 1987, she became the first Australasian woman to climb an 8000-metre peak, Gasherbrum 2. In 1988, she made a historic ascent of Mount Everest, becoming the first woman to reach the summit without supplementary oxygen. Employed as a professional mountain guide, she has made two further ascents of Everest as well as climbed and guided extensively throughout Nepal, Pakistan, Antarctica, South America, Africa and Europe. She lives at Lake Hawea, Otago, with her partner - and fellow mountain guide - Dean Staples. Also available as an eBook

Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2014 her novel Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and, in 2008, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2016 she won the NZSA/ Janet Frame Memorial Award and in 2017 she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition. She was named a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2019. She lives in Dunedin.