Alpine Warriors by Bernadette McDonald

After the Second World War a period of relative calm began in Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia. During the next thirty years citizens could travel freely if they had the money. Most did not, but alpinists did. Through elaborate training régimes and state-supported expeditions abroad, Yugoslavian alpinists began making impressive climbs in the Himalaya as early as 1960. By the ’70s, they were ascending the 8000ers. These teams were dominated by Slovenian climbers, since their region includes the Julian Alps, a fiercely steep range of limestone peaks that provided the ideal training ground. After Tito died in 1980, however, the calm ended. Inter-ethnic conflict and economic decline ripped Yugoslavia apart. But Serbian strongman Slobodan Miloševic misread the courage and character of several Yugoslavian states, including Slovenia, and by 1991 Slovenia was independent. The new country continued its support for climbers, and success bred success. By 1995, all of the 8000ers had been climbed by Slovenian teams. And in the next ten years, some of the most dramatic and futuristic climbs were made by these ferocious alpinists. Apart from a few superstars, most of these amazing athletes remain unknown in the West.

Some reviews:

In this sweeping narrative, Bernadette McDonald casts a spotlight on the history of Slovenian alpinism. She tells the story of a nation’s love affair with mountains, played out through the exploits of an elite and uncompromising band of high altitude athletes. Her accounts of their audacious expeditions make for compelling, and sometimes harrowing, reading. Throughout the book she threads the inspired writing of the legendary climber Nejc Zaplotnik, helping us to understand what drove these mountaineers and what - despite the attrition - kept them on their path. An important story, meticulously researched and skillfully told.

—Maria Coffey, author of Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow and Explorers of the Infinite.


Why have so many Slovenian climbers done so well despite Slovenia's position – as measured in money or the height of its mountains – as a small and relatively poor country? Why are their climbs and climbers also so deeply complicated, from Tomaž Humar to Tomo Česen? What did America’s top alpinist, Steve House, learn when he was a teenage exchange student in Slovenia that helped shape his future? Alpine Warriors answers those questions, and many more that are specific to Slovenia but also universal to all climbers and anyone striving for a mountainous existence. Bernadette McDonald’s latest book describes a country and people where every citizen feels obligated to climb the highest mountain in Slovenia at least once, even if they don’t have any arms or legs. Seriously. A country that helped shape a teenaged Steve House, produced Tomaž Humar, Tomo Česen, Marko Prezelj, Silvo Karo, and dozens more talented climbers who re-wrote alpinism wherever they went, despite limited resources. I always thought the water in Slovenia had some sort of alpinism juice in it, but the truth is way more interesting: There’s a bible for Slovenian climbers that you’ve never heard of, but you’ll know after reading this book.

— Will Gadd, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year


Epic at every level – literary, historical and ruggedly spiritual – this chronicle of a remote mountain culture tucked away in Eastern Europe’s Julian Alps portrays ascent as both personal quest and national salvation. Welcome to Slovenia and its extraordinary alpinists, and to a thin, mysterious tome known as Pot, or The Path. In the 1970s, when climbers from an impoverished Cold War backwater, using homemade clothing and gear (wooden pitons!), barged into the arena of 8000-metre peaks, no one could explain them. Here at last is their story. Alpine Warriors is an important book, possibly one of mountain literature’s greatest works, not only for its tale but also for the intelligence, agility and poetry that Bernadette McDonald brings to its telling. Weaving together generations of legendary climbers, she guides us into a land better known for its gypsies and castles through an ever-changing backdrop of violence (from the Second World War and post-war massacres to genocide in Bosnia). Muscular and tautly drawn, the page-turning adventures in Alpine Warriors connect in the simple mysticism of Pot, a declaration of love for the mountains. Though its 31-year-old author, Nejc Zaplotnik, died in the Himalayas in 1983, his book within McDonald’s book became the bridge between his nation’s survival and its mountain soul. A cross between the movie Chariots of Fire, Carlos Castaneda’s desert shaman in The Teachings of Don Juan, and certain rare histories written with a novelist’s palette such as Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star, Alpine Warriors takes mountain literature – and mountain culture – to new heights.

—Jeff Long, author of The Wall