High spirits

Mountaineer overcomes a life altering accident to find contentment away from the alps.

- CHRIS MOORE

NOT SET IN STONE: The passion and consequence of a mountain life, by David Vass (Potton & Burton, $39.99)

It was predictable that after more than three decades as one of New Zealand's best-known mountaineers, David Vass would eventually write this personal meditation on a climber's experiences.

But that is only one part of the story. In 2015, Vass broke his neck in a fall in Fiordland. The accident didn't occur on the adamantine face of the central Darran Mountains but below, in a darkening river valley, as he and his companions struggled through a storm of Wagnerian ferocity.

After surviving the fall and spending the following months in hospital, he faced the reality that, as what's known as an incomplete tetraplegic - some function is retained - he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, banished in a few seconds from the environment that had shaped his life.