Survival stories

Last week's rescue of 'los 33' after being trapped in a Chilean mine for over two months provides an excuse for papers to review previous stories of survival. In the Observer, Ed Douglas selects The 10 best Mountain Survival stories. It's a good mix of the well known, such as Touching the Void, Into Thin Air etc, plus a few lesser known tales such as British climber Tony Streather's 1957 expedition to Haramosh.

Not all of the books listed are classics and of course everyone has their own favourites - just take a look at the comments. I might have included Ernest Shackleton's climb over the mountains of South Georgia (as told in Alfred Lansing's Endurance). There was also Doug Scott's epic crawl down the Ogre in 1977 after breaking both legs, and Stephen Venables's high altitude rescue from Panch Chuli V in the Himalaya which he wrote about in A Slender Thread. Making lists, it's an endless task...