Summit Fever! Ascent (A Peak Marcello Adventure) by Roland Smith

We moved quickly, as Zopa suggested, without a word between us. At the eleventh flag, there was a deafening roar. "Run!" Josh shouted.

You can't outrun an avalanche. Josh grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me into the wall of snow and ice. "Climb it! Swim up!" he shouted.

The white wall smacked into me.

PITCH-DARK.

Peak Marcello hadn't exactly planned to summit Myanmar's formidable peak, Hkakabo Razi. This trip was supposed to be just an exotic vacation hike through Myanmar's tangled rain forest with his adventuring companions Nick and Alessia and guide Ethan.

But that hike is no walk in the park. Leeches, worms that borrow under the skin, and clouds of mosquitoes are just small nuisances compared to huge venomous snakes and a murderous guide whose pack elephant erupts in a killer rage from time to time,  a guide who cuts the rope bridges over gorges and who gets himself murdered, stranding them in the midst of nowhere; but when Nick suffers a severe concussion and Alessia goes along on the airlift to Yangon, Peak's jaunt through the jungle seems to be at an end.

But when the mysterious monk Zopa turns up with climbing gear and his two trusty Sherpa strongmen, Peak can't resist the old climber's suggestion that they try to climb Hkakabo's 19,250 foot summit. And at their first rest camp, Peak discovers that his father, Josh Wood, who has just completed the "Seven Summits" challenge ending in Everest, is also scaling Hkakabo Razi with a photography team. Peak has had almost no contact with his father throughout his life, and he neither trusts nor admires Josh, except for his mountaineering skills. But having come this far, he decides to go on with the climb. Peak manages to dig himself out of a sudden avalanche with his lucky spoon in his pocket, and when he recovers, he decides to go on with the ascent to the summit.

Weather worsens when they are a thousand feet below the summit, with rising temperatures that make the ice weak and the atmosphere foggy. Zopa and the Sherpas go ahead to place the protection pins, leaving Peak with his father to cross a glacier. Then things go downhill fast.

I fell over the edge while I was clipping into the rope. Josh's hand reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. The only thing between me and death was his strength.

Peak remembers what his mother has said about Josh. "At the end of your rope, there is no one better. Unfortunately, he doesn't pay much attention until you're dangling."

Peak is dangling.

"Let me go," I said. "No use in us both going over."

"I'm not letting you die alone," said Josh. "Try! Save me!"

It's again a cliffhanger in Roland Smith's forthcoming third book in series, Ascent (A Peak Marcello Adventure) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). For fans of flat-out wild adventures in far places, it's hard to beat Smith's Peak Marcello Adventures, written with world-wide settings and fast and furious extreme survival scenes. Author Smith, however, doesn't totally neglect the other valleys and peaks in adolescence, working in relationships with his concerned mother, his difficult father, his independent girlfriend Alessia, and his own internal conflict over competing with a father who is a celebrity climber. With this one, it seems clear that Peak has much to learn about himself and more mountains yet to climb.

Previous books in this series are Peak (A Peak Marcello Adventure) and The Edge (A Peak Marcello Adventure) (see review here).

"Let Us Probe the Silent Spaces..." Lily's Mountain by Hannah Moderow

"Please tell me you're kidding," Sophie says. A mosquito lands on her forehead and she doesn't bother swatting it away. "It'll take days to get to the mountain."

"No way. It's only twenty miles," I say.

"Twenty miles of danger," Sophie says. "We promised Mom we'd stay in the campground."

"But I have Dad's expert map," I say, "so we can follow his route."

"...To where?" Sophie asks. "To find his grave?"

Their dad had fallen into a sudden crevice in a glacier near the peak of Mount Denali, but Lily persists in her belief that his mountaineering knowledge and skills would have enabled him to survive, sure that if she and her sister Sophie can get to the slope of Denali, they will be able to rescue their father. Convincing her reluctant mother that a camping trip with her sister is the best way to honor their father, Lily uses what she has learned from her dad to prepare for a climb to the glacier where he disappeared.

But nothing could prepare Lily for what she and Sophie encounter. They are attacked by mosquitoes and a grizzly, but the pepper spray her dad always carried saves them this time. But Lily stumbles in crossing an icy river, losing her backpack, her food, and all her gear. Wet and cold, she and Sophie fight off hypothermia as they ascend above the tree line, and even with a broken rib from a fall down a scree-covered slope, Lily resolves to continues toward the glacier, determined to try to find her father alive.

"Soph!" I say. No answer. She's either asleep or just plain ignoring me. She doesn't know I just ate all our food.

I was sure Dad would be here at the base of the glacier.

Now I'm going to have to walk up the glacier alone to find him.

But what Lily finds on Muldrow Glacier is the edge of a new crevasse, hundreds of feet deep. And just before it is a strip of red tape held up by bamboo stakes, with three words written in black marker.

DANGER! Crevasse ahead.

The hole is massive and bottomless, sheet ice on all sides. "Dad," I whisper, one last time. I don't expect an answer.

I know that the silence will be long.

There's a certain peace in knowing the truth for Lily, in Hannah Moderow's, Lily's Mountain (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Moderow's story-telling is fast-paced, with short chapters and plenty of outdoor action to keep middle school and young adult readers involved to the end, but in this riveting coming-of-age debut novel, the mountain is both metaphor and an all-too-real challenge to find a way to deal with the death of a beloved parent. Learning emotional courage as well as physical courage is an significant journey for Lilly, and although Sophie's journey is different, both sisters find a closeness and a solace in knowing that their father is with them yet.

"It's a miracle we made it," says Sophie.

"No, it's not," I say. "Dad taught us exactly what we needed to know."