To the Summit: A Woman's Journey into the Mountains to Find Her Soul by Margo Chisholm, Ray Bruce

From the Publisher

Margo Chisholm was well past her fortieth birthday when she decided to do something truly extraordinary. Raised in a privileged and protected world of private schools and posh clubs, Margo was a seriously overweight alcoholic with a $1,000 a week cocaine habit when she turned her life around and got clean, sober, and fit. Early in her addictions, she became friends with Jonathan Wright, an accomplished professional photographer and dedicated adventurer and climber who invited Margo to join him on a trek into his beloved Himalayas - a feat Margo knew she was both physically and emotionally incapable of performing. Years later, Jonathan's memory would help sustain her on her quest for a seemingly impossible dream that his life had inspired: to become the first woman in history to scale the highest peak on each of the Earth's seven continents. In 1988, Margo climbed her first two mountains - summiting Mt. Kenya and the awesome, intimidating Mt. Kilimanjaro. An "ordinary" middle-aged woman with no formal mountaineering training and no previous experience, she had met and triumphed over the toughest demands and conditions that Nature could provide. But that was just the beginning. Spurred on by her newborn love affair with the world's loftiest peaks and most beautiful and inaccessible places, she pushed herself even further, taking on increasingly greater climbing challenges as she pursued more difficult and dangerous goals under the most harrowing of circumstances. And somewhere along the way - amid magnificent wildernesses of towering pinnacles and breathtaking, ice-covered vistas - Margo Chisholm realized she had reached a summit deep within herself; a place in the heart and soul where she discovered the pride, fulfillment and inner peace she had always longed for.

Publishers Weekly

Is it a sensational motivational goal or a death wish when a long-term food, alcohol and drug addict commits herself to climb seven of the world's greatest summits? Chisholm was taking 60 to 90 laxatives a day when she checked into an obesity clinic in 1986. Eighteen months later, with the help of a 12-Step program, fitness counseling and psychotherapy, she trained for and climbed Mt. Kenya. In 1992, she tackled Everest. This memoir, written with an assist from Bruce, a founder of the Writing Center of San Diego, is a stirring account of the mental and physical challenges Chisholm faced during her six-year conquest of the mountains. A well-kept journal of travel to faraway places, it depicts with affection base-camp culture and the society of high-altitude climbers. Descriptions of Chisholm's ascents are thrilling, and accounts of her inner struggles are candid. At 21,000 feet, under conditions of bone-chilling temperature and low oxygen, the need for Chisholm to accurately assess her mental and physical states became imperative. Throughout the book, the language of recovery and introspection serves as a refrain that often compromises the momentum of the adventure. Those who struggle over abstinence should value the techniques Chisholm used to overcome addiction, however, and will appreciate the self-help aspects of her story. But Chisholm's tale has a wider appeal, as does her message: don't hobble toward health-climb a mountain. Photos not seen by PW. 60,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Chisholm chose mountain climbing and adventure travel as a means to overcome dysfunctional behavior that included bulimia and alcoholism. Between 1988 and 1993, she climbed six of the Seven Summits (the highest peaks of the seven continents) and was the oldest woman (42 years) to climb Mt. Vinson in the Antarctic. Her two attempts on Mt. Everest were turned back just before the summit push. The joy and techniques of climbing are acknowledged, but Chisholm is better at communicating the difficulties of changing emotional attitudes and of growing psychologically. Buy for substance-abuse support programs rather than for mountaineering collections.-Paula M. Strain, Rockville, Md.

Kirkus Reviews

The compelling, if at times aggravating, tale of Chisholm's journey from the land of the dead to the thin air of high peaks, told with the help of Bruce, an editor for Self-Help Psychology magazine.

In her mid-30s, Chisholm was a wreck: hooked on booze and dope, unable to control her eating, tempering her moods with Nyquil and Sinutabs, fancying she was controlling her weight with a massive daily intake of laxatives, unable to go to work or even get out of bed. Thanks to fate, destiny—call it what you will—she found her way to a rehab group that got the recuperative ball rolling, and coincidentally, in the mid-1980s, Chisholm discovered mountain climbing. She wanted to climb the seven summits, the highest mountains on each continent, and her quest became a bit of an obsession: She wondered if she simply switched one addiction for another. But her motives feel purer than that. She was trying to claw her way out of a deadly slough, and she realized she had to be physically and spiritually up to the challenge. Spiritually, Chisholm discovered God, and readers may feel they have been foisted into a confessional role. Her mantra is "God's love, God's strength, God's will, I can." Inner voices dog her: The pessimist Martha and the perfectionist Ghost in White taunt her unmercifully. Physically, the adventurer's quests were daunting: Kilimanjaro, Denali, Cerro Aconcagua, Everest, mountains that demand resources no non-mountaineer could imagine. Chisholm's excitement at being on the roofs of the world, or at least sitting under the eaves at base camp—highly descriptive, with nuggets of climbing wisdom—is palpable.

When Everest eludes Chisholm, and she takes it in stride, readers may sense that she has covered her most impressive terrain.

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