Blind obsession guides the characters in Arnolds stories to take risks with sometimes disastrous results.

The scenarious set out by Arnold will be familiar to many of us who have set out on a challenge and have to ask some difficult questions along the way. A soloist in Alaska has to pick her way back to civilisation after a pilot fails to pick her up after a succesful summit bid. An expedition on K2 falls apart thanks to an anarchist member who fails to fit in with the team. In Argentina a young mountaineer searches to explain leaving his partner in blizzard on Aconcagua.

Arnolds stories are packed full of tension, triumph and tragedy. Briliant adventure writing for a generation fascinated by the mystique of climbing.