It was only after he returned to Montreal that he received the harrowing news: his climbing team, all 11 members, had been massacred by the Taliban. Recognizing the peril that lay ahead, Filippi eventually made the gut decision not to pursue the climb, keeping his daughter in mind. In 2013, Filippi, a team of 10 climbers and one guide were set to climb Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat. Born in Lac-Mégantic, the undeterred mountaineer has been to over 40 countries and scaled six of the seven highest summits in the world, which he details in his book, The Escapist. The Escapist is a story about human perseverance and triumph in the pursuit of one man’s dreams, and helps to explain why some people will never give up on trying to climb to the top of the world.Climber and author Gabriel Filippi discusses the danger of comfort zonesĪs the first Canadian to climb Mount Everest three times, Gabriel Filippi has experienced both remarkable achievements and unbounded loss.

In this gripping, heartfelt and inspiring memoir, one of Canada’s foremost mountaineers shares a life spent in and out of the death zone. He chronicles how his experiences on mountains ranging from K2 to Everest to Nanga Parbat, a mountain in Pakistan also known as The Maneater, transformed him from a hubristic young man who pushed himself to the brink into the cautious adventurer who preserved seven lives when he halted an ascent up Everest just an hour from the summit. Haunted by survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder, Filippi explains how life on the brink of death can change someone. In a book marked by adventure and tragedy, Filippi dissects what it takes to get to the top of the world, and what that quest takes out of you. The Escapist is an unflinching account of extreme feats and devastating loss that takes readers to the highest peaks on six continents and into the deepest valleys of the human soul. Sometimes the alteration is physical, but more often it’s buried within. In The Escapist, Filippi proves an old axiom true: no climber returns from a summit the same person as when he began his ascent. From a Taliban attack on a mountainside in northern Pakistan that felled ten of his climbing companions to the deadliest disaster in Everest’s history, Filippi has survived again and again.īut sometimes survival comes with a price. In the course of 20 years spent scaling the highest peaks in the world, Filippi has repeatedly cheated death. A close encounter in a childhood swimming pool left him terrified of the depths, but he had no idea that it was the heights of this world that would eventually call him-and threaten his life over and over again. As a young boy growing up in Lac-Mégantic, Gabriel Filippi lived in fear of drowning.

The escapist gabriel filippi