Mo Anthoine described his drive to perform this activity as “feeding the rat,” a phrase that titles a study by his companion Al Alvarez. A history of this activity by the ex-Nazi Heinrich Harrer described a seemingly-intractable (15[1])problem nicknamed the “murder wall.” The linguist Constant incompetently performs this activity for the Rum Doodle Committee in a satirical novel by W. E. Bowman. (15[1])Michael Ransom performs this activity in a play that included the earliest version of (*) “Funeral Blues,” and was co-written by Isherwood and Auden. Anatoli Boukreev’s heroism is highlighted in a 1997 bestseller about the deaths of eight performers of this activity in a blizzard on the South Col and North Face approaches. Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air is about, for 10 points, what outdoor activity? ■END■