Page 42 - Army Mountaineer Winter 2022

REVIEWS
BOOK REVIEWS
JACO VAN GASS: UNEQUIVOCAL
PUBLISHED BY MIRROR BOOKS
“One of life’s most inspiring people” Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
UNEQUIVOCAL is one of the most awe-inspiring and unique tales evertold.Ataleaboutsport,a
tale about life, a tale about never giving in, no matter how difficult the road ahead.
Jaco van Gass was 23 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan in 2009. Losing his left arm to the blast, he sustained life-threatening injuries that stopped his heart twice; yet by a miracle – and the skill of the medics treating him – he survived.
Against all the odds, Jaco has fought to build a post-injury life as an adventurer and professional athlete, a journey that has taken him from the slopes of the world’s highest mountains to the North
Pole and from the Carretera Austral to the top of a Paralympic podium.
Jaco has fought – and survived – the choking dust of the Afghan desert, the blinding whiteness and terror of avalanches and the challenges of competing for Team GB.
Not just for adventure and military enthusiasts, Unequivocal is for any reader looking for an honest, inspiring voice that will encourage them to live life to the full. Jaco has refused to let injury define his life and has gone on to prove that anything is possible. Now read how he has done it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
South African-born Jaco van Gass came to Britain at the age of 20 and joined the Parachute Regiment before losing his left arm in Afghanistan. As a keen adventurer he has reached the North Pole and taken on Everest. In 2020 he became a Triple World Champion in Track Cycling
at the Track World Championships and competed in the Tokyo Paralympic Games, becoming a double Paralympic Champion and a three times World Record holder. Following his first appearances for Walking with The Wounded in 2011, Jaco has been a highly sought-after public speaker. He was awarded an MBE in 2022 for services to cycling. Jaco collaborated with Eleanor Updegraff on Unequivocal. Updegraff is a Vienna-based writer, editor and author.
ROCK
have been fortunate enough to have climbed, trained or been assessed by Libby, you can’t doubt her credentials and exacting standards. An interna- tional mountain guide who assesses the highest standard of instructional awards in the UK for national centres.
This book is produced by Mountain Training and is part of a series that aims to give the budding instructor or mountain enthusiast a comprehensive manual to refer to. The other books in the series focus on winter, hill walking, navigation and also international trekking. Seeing the other titles in the series will, hopefully, give you a feel for what isn’t in this edition and therefore what this book is all about.
This new third (revised) edition is the biggest rewrite to have taken place since it first came out nearly 20 years ago in 2004, and at the time it was a huge step
forward from other instructional books on the market. Previous mountaineer- ing manuals were text and description heavy which, with a hands-on activity like rock climbing, was hard to decipher. Libby consciously made use of better printing including many more pictures and setting it out in a very specific and modern manner.
So much has changed since its first iteration, not only with technique but also in culture with a growing indoor scene, bouldering becoming mainstream and the Olympics pushing sport climbing to the fore. This book takes into account all these changes but is still a manual for instructors rather than coaches. Although the two do overlap, there are better books available for coaches and those focussed on movement technique. It’s been over ten years since the second edition hit the shelves, so this is well timed.
CLIMBING:
ESSENTIAL
SKILLS AND
TECHNIQUES
BY LIBBY PETER
REVIEWED BY SEAN MACKEY
Anyone who has been on any rock climbing or mountaineering course in the military or indeed in any of the national centres will be sure to have seen Libby Peter’s bright red rock climbing handbook. If you
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