Shortlisted for a 2016 Edward Standford Travel Writing Award. In Climbing Days, Dan Richards is on the trail of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a prominent & pioneering mountaineer of the early twentieth century. For years, Dorothy & her husb&, I. A. Richards, remained mysterious to Dan, but the chance discovery of her 1935 memoir, Climbing Days, leads him on a journey. Perhaps, in the mountains, he can meet them halfway? Following in the pair`s footholds, Dan begins to travel & climb across Europe, using Dorothy`s book as a guide. Learning the ropes in Wales & Scotl&, scrambling in the Lake District, scaling summits in Spain & Switzerl&, he closes in on the serrate pinnacle of Ivor & Dorothy`s climbing lives, the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais. What emerges is a beautiful portrait of a trailblazing woman, up to now lost to history
- but also a book about that eternal question: why do people climb mountains?