The Escapist: How One Man Cheated Death on the World's Highest Mountains

Survival comes at a price

In The Escapist, one of Canada’s foremost mountaineers, Gabriel Filippi, shares a life spent in and out of the Death Zone and proves an old axiom true: no climber returns from a summit the same person as when he began his ascent.

The Escapist is an unflinching account of extreme feats and devastating loss that takes you to six continents as Filippi dissects both what it takes to get to the top of the world, and what that quest takes out of you. Over the course of twenty years spent scaling the world’s highest peaks, Filippi has repeatedly cheated death. From a Taliban attack on a mountainside in northern Pakistan that felled ten of his climbing companions to the deadliest disaster in Everest’s history, Filippi has survived again and again.

A story about human perseverance and triumph in the pursuit of one man’s dreams, The Escapist helps to explain why some people will never give up on trying to climb to the top of the world.