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IT READS LIKE THE screenplay for an international thriller: While on an expedition in central Asia, four of the best young climbers in the world are taken hostage at gunpoint and after a week in captivity they kill one of their guards and run to freedom. In "Fear of
Falling" (page 104), Greg Child offers a terrifyingly vivid account of Beth Rodden, Jason Smith, Tommy Caldwell, and John Dickey's August ordeal. "I hope I would have the balls to save my own skin the way they did," says Child. "Their actions are nothing less than admirable."
Child, a renowned alpinist who climbed in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1995, spent many hours interviewing the four shortly after their safe return to the United States. He was struck by their resourcefulness, endurance, and sheer guts. Abducted from their portaledges by rebels from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (a militant group with ties to
Afghanistan's Taliban), the athletes were marched under cover of darkness for six days. The four worked to gradually earn the trust of their captors, and then waited for a chance to escape. Says Child: "Whether or not their decision was reasonable, everyone will have to read what goes on in this story—and learn that you don't owe your captors any
allegiance."
Child didn't encounter any trigger-happy reception committees on his own trip to Kyrgyzstan with Conrad Anker, Lynn Hill, and the late Alex Lowe. "I've done all these expeditions to countries in Asia," he says. "Some are red-hot bad zones, and nothing like this has ever happened." But in the wake of the kidnapping, the country may well drop off the
adventure-travel map. "My guess is people will not be going to the region," says Child. "There is nothing to stop these rebels from coming down again and again."
The author of 1998's Postcards From the Ledge, Child, a 43-year-old resident of Castle Valley, Utah, last month introduced Outside's "Rock Legends" feature. He also wrote an essay for the forthcoming
mountaineering compendium Voices From the Summit. In November, he shifts gears from writer back to mountaineer when he heads off on a rock climbing trip to Cape Town, South Africa.
Teru Kuwayama
Seasoned photojournalist Teru Kuwayama thought he'd done it all. Then Outside stuck him on a single-engine Cessna Caravan bush plane and flew him up to the north coast of Alaska to photograph Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for this month's Dispatch on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ("The Slippery North Slope," page 36). "You're trying to compose pictures while dodging parakeet-size mosquitoes," says Kuwayama. "Anytime you put your finger out of your jacket to push the button, they are on you."
Tim Zimmermann
Tim Zimmermann put his knowledge of boat architecture to the test in "Real CoolCat," an under-the-hood look at the sleek sailboats that are cueing up for The Race (a no-limits dash around-the-world that kicks off December 31). The Edgewater, Maryland resident, who
sails on Chesapeake Bay, is currently at work on a book due out next year "about the history of extreme racing, the design of the boats, and The Race itself." His story is on page 86.
Bill McKibben
"It was supposed to be a vacation from my repeated failures at saving the world," says Bill McKibben of his forthcoming book, Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, excerpted on page 118. But midway through writing his memoir of finally becoming an athlete,
McKibben, a longtime Outside contributor and author of The End of Nature, among other books, learned his father had cancer. His dad's painful struggle with the terminal illness changed what the author thought he knew about thelimits of human endurance.
Brad Wetzler
"I was the Coke bottle falling out of the sky," says Brad Wetzler of his Gods Must Be Crazy–style study of "tramping" culture in the Czech Republic ("Is Just Like Amerika!," page 128). For two weeks, he subsisted on sausage and beer while sleeping, singing, and
lollygagging around the countryside with a cult of Czechs who spend their weekends diligently trying to mimic American hobo culture. Says Wetzler: "It is something of a retro take on experiencing the world outside."
Chris Keyes
After spending a day with U.S. Olympic gold-medal skier and comeback queen Picabo Street for this month's Bodywork ("Picabo's Crash Course"), assistant editor Chris Keyes came away convinced that she's an unrivaled badass. "Mentally, she is tougher than anyone else on
the mountain," Keyes says.His story of her recovery from a dog's breakfast of knee-ligament tears and leg fractures—and her run for Salt Lake City gold in 2002—begins on page 157.
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