Alpinist Editor-in-Chief selected as a judge for the Boardman Tasker Award

Alpinist Editor-in-Chief Katie Ives has been selected as a judge for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. The other two judges are Roger Hubank and Tony Shaw. The award will be presented at the next Kendal Mountain Festival in the United Kingdom on November 14-17.

The literary prize commemorates the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, who disappeared while attempting the Northeast Ridge of Chomolungma (Everest) in 1982. The Boardman Tasker website reads:

Their deaths marked the end of a remarkable era in British mountaineering. Peter and Joe left two legacies. One was their great endeavour, their climbs on high peaks with bold, lightweight innovative methods, which included Dunagiri, Changabang, Kongur, Everest and Kangchenjunga. The second and more lasting achievement were the books they wrote and left behind. This literary legacy lives on through the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature set up by family and friends in 1983….

The written work of Boardman and Tasker set such a high benchmark for excellence that the judges “somewhat bravely” decided not to recognize any of the submissions that they received during the first year of the award’s existence, according to the website. The second year, in 1984, there were two winners of the inaugural award: Living High by Linda Gill and The Shishapangma Expedition by Doug Scott and the late Alex MacIntyre.

“Over the following years, the high standards were maintained and entries challenged our judges not least through the sheer variety of literary types–novels, poetry, expeditions, biography, history, reminiscences, and mountain travel and so on….” reads the website.

The prize comes with ?3,000 ($3,839). Since 1984, the list of recipients has included a host of Alpinist contributors, most recently David Roberts (2018) and Bernadette MacDonald (2017 and 2011), among several others.

“It’s an honor to be involved in the judging panel this year, and I’m really looking forward to reading all the submissions,” Ives said.

More information about the Boardman Tasker Award can be found here.