ISBN:  1876 780 92 4

Author: Peter Maiden

Size: B5

Format: Paperback

RRP: $33.95

Special price for the AAA:  $25 plus $5 p&p

Limited Hard cover edition   RRP $50

Special price for the AAA:  $40 plus $5 p&p

In March 2001 a handpicked team of elite Australian mountaineers flew to Nepal on the first stage of a potentially dangerous three-month expedition in Central Asia.  The twenty members of the Army Alpine Association (the AAA) expedition were to begin their arduous journey with an acclimatisation trek in the beautiful Nepalese Annapurna Sanctuary.  From there the team was heading for Tibet to climb the mighty Everest.

When a catastrophic avalanche killed three of their party the Australian Army Alpine expedition’s plan to conquer Everest teetered on the very brink of disaster.  One of the dead was little Kathleen Hackett, only eight-years-old, and the Army brass, together with outraged Australian media subjected the traumatised Team to intense scrutiny.

The expedition continued, undertaking the ultimate human challenge, the conquest of the world’s highest mountain.  The weather was appalling, Everest took two lives, and the handpicked Australian team was hit by illness.  As it became locked in a desperate life and death battle with the implacable mountain, the team was unaware that, back home and Army inquiry was already being established to investigate the expedition’s conduct.

Today the question of Australian military justice is front-page news.  The acrimonious Everest board of inquiry to which all the members of the 2001 expedition were subjected gives readers of this exciting story a courtside view of the Army judging its own.