Come celebrate mountain literature where Michigan Ice Fest brings together writers/athletes and of course, our book loving participants! Our programming will take place Saturday at the Michigan Ice Fest Guides located at 112 Elm Munising. Come grab a snack and a cup of coffee and meet our featured authors!
Saturday February 13th • 4 PM • Guides Center
2027 Athletes Signing
Barry Blanchard
Most memoirs tell a life story in a single volume. Barry Blanchard’s life requires two. Over 40 years pioneering routes on the world’s most challenging peaks—surviving avalanches, enduring mountain storms and gaining recognition as a one of the world’s leading alpinists—the Canadian climber’s story continues in The Echo: Stories from the Edge of Survival (Sept. 15, 2026, Patagonia, hardcover and ebook; audiobook by PRH).
Picking up where The Calling: A Life Rocked by Mountains (Patagonia, 2014) left off, The Echo shows a different side of the legendary alpinist: one whose edges have been softened by age, parenthood, mentorship, loss and a life-changing accident that reset everything.
Patagonia will publish The Echo alongside the paperback release of The Calling, which covered Blanchard’s path from a troubled childhood to becoming a revered alpinist who has helped shape the sport. The Calling won The Boardman-Tasker Prize (Mountain Literature category) in 2015 and was a finalist at Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival (Adventure Memoir) in 2014. On publication of The Calling, The Wall Street Journal said it was “sure to make any reader with a shred of adventurous inclination wish to have climbed with Mr. Blanchard during the storm years of his strength.”
“The Calling covered the first and second quarters of my life, when my passion and belief in alpinism was the groundwater that flowed through me,” writes Blanchard in the introduction of The Echo. “But then there was a shift in my third quarter when my daughters were born. Fatherhood changed me.”
The Echo explores growing older in a pursuit defined by youth and risk. While guiding his daughters, students and younger climbers on classic routes, Blanchard finds that aging brings a new style—one that values wisdom over ambition, presence over conquest and gratitude over achievement. Through a collection of deeply reflective stories, Blanchard returns to pivotal climbs and essential lessons, exploring enduring partnerships and critical moments in remote places.
Graham Zimmerman
A Fine Line: Searching for Balance Among Mountains (Mountaineers Books, 2023) is Graham’s debut memoir — an honest account of a life built in the vertical world, and the philosophy that emerged from it. The book traces his evolution from a young climber cutting his teeth in New Zealand’s Southern Alps to one of the most accomplished alpinists of his generation, weaving together expedition narrative, grief, partnership, climate, and the ongoing search for balance.
A Fine Line was a finalist for the Banff Mountain Book Competition, the Boardman Tasker Award, and the New Zealand Mountain Book Competition, and received a Bronze Medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards.