The Shining Mountain:
Two Men on Changabang's West Wall

by Peter Boardman, with material by Joe Tasker

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. 192 pages

“The climb that may well be the hardest yet done in the Himalaya remains relatively little-known, at least to Americans. In climbing the west wall of Changabang in October 1976, Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker brilliantly demonstrated what might be called the Shipton principle of expeditionary mountaineering: that a two-man lightweight, low-budget assault can rise to the kinds of challenges others would reserve for a massive attacking force. Changabang, which Longstaff had called the most superbly beautiful mountain I have ever seen, was first climbed by an immensely strong Bonington team (including Scott, Boysen and Haston) by the east ridge in 1974. They had found the climb exciting enough to publish a book about it. (…)
A mark of Boardman's integrity is that the tone in which he recounts the climb is sotto voce, without a vestige of the sort of grandiose self-appraisal indulged in (whether or not accurately) by writers like Messner and Bonington. In The Shining Mountain Boardman offers us a wealth of climbing specificity; but the most interesting dimension of the account, and the one the book is really built on, is the intense relationship between the two men.”
David Roberts, “American Alpine Journal” 1979, p. 320-322

“It is very good—an exciting tale well told, giving a real insight into what it is like out at the front. This was one of the hardest routes so far tackled among big mountains. The resulting gripping story is a must for the mountaineer's bookshelf, if indeed he has any room remaining on it.”
Michael Craig, „Alpine Journal” 1979, p. 258