The Banff Center Mountain Film and Book Festival has announced the winners of the 2024 categories, which you can find here. In the climbing category, Bernadette McDonald won for her 2024 book Alpine Rising: Sherpas, Baltis, and the Triumph of Local Climbers in the Greater Ranges, published by Mountaineers Books.
The grand prize for this year’s event will be announced at the festival which begins next week. In the meantime, here’s a list of all the books that have won the grand prize since 1994, with the year, followed by the author(s) and the book’s title.
1994: Chris Bonington and Audrey Salkeld (editors), Heroic Climbs
1995: Thomas Wharton, Fields of Ice
1996: Stephen Venables, Himalaya Alpine-Style: The Most Difficult Routes on the Highest Peaks
1997: Stefano Ardito [it]Mont Blanc: Discovery and Conquest of the Giant of the Alps
1998: Audrey Salkeld, World mountaineering: the great mountains of the world
1999: Paul Pritchard, The Totem
2000: Bradford Washburn, Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography
2001: Roger Hubank, The Path of Danger
2002: WH Murray, Evidence of Things Unseen: A Mountaineer’s Tale
2003: David Roberts, Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival
2004: Chris Duff, Southern Exposure: A Solo Sea Kayak Trip Around New Zealand’s South Island
2005: Karsten Heuer, Being a caribou: five months on foot with a herd of caribou
2006: Jeff Long, The Wall
2007: James M. Tabor, Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering’s Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters
2008: Sid Marty, The Black Grizzly Bear of Whiskey Creek
2009: Jerry Moffatt, Niall Grimes, Jerry Moffatt: Revelations
2010: John Long, The Stonemasters: Californian climbers of the 70s
2011: Bernadette McDonald, Freedom Climbers
2012: Philip Connors, Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout
2013: Tim Cope, In the footsteps of Genghis Khan: an epic journey to the land of the nomads
2014: John Porter, A Day Like a Tiger: Alex Macintyre and the birth of light and fast mountaineering
2015: Richard Wagamese, Medicine Walk
2016: Jean McNeil, Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir
2017: Jim Herrington, The Climbers
2018: Paolo Cognetti, The Eight Mountains
2019: Bryce Andrews, The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear
2020: Hank Lentfer, Raven’s Witness: Life in Alaska by Richard K. Nelson
2021: Suzanne Simard, In search of the mother tree: discovering the wisdom and intelligence of the forest
2022: Jonathan Howland, Native Air
2023: Helen Mort, The Line Above the Sky