Check it out

Can’t muster the courage to climb the world’s highest peaks and navigate

its most dangerous seas? You can still experience the thrill of extreme

adventure through tales of others’ exploits.

If you’re awed by accounts of scaling Everest, don’t miss “Ultimate

High,” Goran Kropp’s narrative about his 1996 journey from Stockholm to

Kathmandu by custom-built bicycle loaded with 240 pounds of gear, and his

successful summit assault without Sherpa support or bottled oxygen.

After a harrowing 7,000-mile trek back to Sweden, Kropp is planning for

his next solo adventure in 2004: He’s learning to sail so he can captain

a craft to Antarctica, ski to the South Pole and, hopefully, return in

good health to Scandinavia.

Also on the legendary mountain in 1996 was elite mountaineer and

acclaimed filmmaker David Breashears, whose new autobiography, “High

Exposure,” offers captivating insight into the passion for climbing.

Breashears’ tale of producing his Everest IMAX movie in the year when

nine climbers died on the mountain brackets descriptions of other

expeditions inspired not by blind ambition, the world-class adventurer

insists, but in the pursuit of excellence.

As unabashed in her passion for the sea as others are in their love of

mountains is Linda Greenlaw, the world’s only female swordfish boat

captain. Read about her monthlong fishing trip of more than 1,000

nautical miles in “The Hungry Ocean,” in which she contends that the

grueling, isolating and suspenseful business of fishing is a matter of

heart and soul, not of intellect.

The Southern Ocean is the sailor’s Everest -- a frigid,

hurricane-infested body of water so remote, reports Derik Lundy in “The

Forsaken Sea,” that “only a few astronauts have ever been further from

land than a person on a vessel in that position.”

Armchair adventurers can revisit the 1996-97 Vendee Globe race on this

merciless sea in Lundy’s gripping tale that examines why humans are drawn

to adventure that tests the limits of physical and psychological stamina.

Seasoned journalist Rob Mundle offers another saga of disaster in

notoriously fickle waters in “Fatal Storm,” about the 630-mile race from

Sydney, Australia, to Hobart, Tasmania in 1998, in which 57 people were

rescued, seven boats were abandoned, five boats sank and seven people

perished. Mundle recreates dramatic struggles that were part of the worst

sailing disaster in recent history in this firsthand account of raw

adventure.

Unlike adventurers who volunteer for risk, the 14 firefighters who lost

their lives in the catastrophic 1994 fire on Colorado’s Storm King

Mountain were trapped in the line of duty. Read about the bureaucratic

bungling and human errors that contributed to their tragic demise in

“Fire on the Mountain,” a riveting account starring feisty smoke jumpers,

frustrated tanker pilots and wary politicians whose collective efforts

did little to help the victims of nature at its most unforgiving.

CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public Library.

This week’s column is by Melissa Adams, in collaboration with Stephen

Short.