'The climber scrambles up the cliff, grabs the rifle slung over their captor's back, and pulls. Falling, the guerilla arcs through the circle of the moon, pedalling air.'
Before dawn on August 12, 2000, four young rock climbers were sleeping in their portaledges high on the formidable Yellow Wall, in the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. The first shots hit the wall at 6.15am; by daybreak, they would be kidnapped by fanatical militants of the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan (IMU), which is linked to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
The guerrillas intended to use their hostages as human shields and for ransom as they moved through Kyrgyzstan, pursued by the Army. They hid the climbers by day and marched them by night through freezing, treacherous mountains, with little food, and the constant threat of execution. A fellow hostage, a Kyrgyz soldier, was executed before the climbers' eyes; and after six terrifying days, they would be forced to choose between saving their own lives, and committing an act none of them thought they ever could.
In 'Over The Edge', the four climbers - Jason Smith, John Dickey, Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden - tell the complete story of their nightmarish ordeal. In compelling detail, leading mountaineering writer Greg Child re-creates the drama hour-by-hour, from the first ricocheting bullets to the agonising decision the climbers had to take to survive, followed by their desperate flight to freedom - and the extraordinary final twist . . .
