Life on the Edge, Illustrated : MOUNTAINEER Thirty Years of Climbing on the World’s Great Peaks<i> by Chris Bonington(Sierra Club Books: $29.95; 192 pp.</i> , <i> illustrated) </i>

In 1983, two driven mountaineers, Briton Chris Bonington and American Rick Ridgeway, joined two driven business executives, Dick Bass and Frank Wells, in their ambitious adventure of climbing the highest peaks in each of the world’s seven continents. Bass and Wells enlisted Bonington and Ridgeway in the Antarctic slice of the Seven Summits campaign, to assist in the ascent of 16,860-foot Mt. Vinson.

Compared with climbs that Bonington had made over the years, Vinson was a piece of cake, a virtual walk-up. But Antarctic conditions, cold and wind, can border the extreme even on normal days, and Bonington insisted on caution and fastidious preparation every step of the way. Extra time was taken in one spot on the route to the summit so that the expedition had a solid snow cave in the event of storms. In another place, Bonington made certain that the team’s tents were fortified with snow walls, recalls Ridgeway, a climber and free-lance writer-photographer living in Ventura.

All of Bonington’s damnable British conscientiousness and Sandhurst training finally rubbed Bass and Wells raw. They were men on a tight schedule, and Mt. Vinson was not Mt. Everest, after all. Apologizing beforehand, Wells confronted Bonington and asked if the precautions weren’t a little overdone. Couldn’t the schedule be expedited?

Ridgeway says Bonington lectured Wells that he had spent his entire life in the mountains and he knew the hazards of haste and lax preparation. Bass and Wells may have been accustomed to wielding corporate power in boardrooms and executive suites, but, Bonington said: “Here, we do what I’m telling you.”

“He said it with just such authority ,” Ridgeway remembers, still in awe. “It was fascinating to see in a man’s face a whole life of living on the edge . . . to see all the tensions of this man’s life on his face. It spoke of this man’s competence, too, the reason why he is a survivor.” (All four made the summit and returned safely).

Bonington’s climbing career is considerably condensed in this handsome book, but there is a rich sampling of his life on the edge. This is fast-forward reading, since the text covers the dramatic evolution of mountaineering in the modern era, from Bonington’s first climbs in his home British crags in 1951 through his own ascent of Mt. Everest in 1985, after he had reached age 50.

Bonington was not always the best climber on his expeditions, nor did he always reach the summit himself, but he combined the qualities of imagination and leadership with journalistic and photographic skill to push himself and his companions--renowned climbers such as Ian Clough, Don Whillans, Hamish MacInnes, Joe Brown and Dougal Haston--constantly into new frontiers of mountaineering and its literature.

In this volume, Bonington’s writing is spare and understated, especially the brief narratives of the fatal accidents that plagued each of his major expeditions to the highest Himalayan peaks. But the text is almost incidental to the impressive array of more than 400 photos, most of them taken by Bonington himself and all in color except for a few of the very earliest ones. The text serves almost like an expanded series of captions. Most general readers will find that sufficient. Mountain buffs who seek more drama and details of individual expeditions can read one or more of Bonington’s other nine books, or probably already have.

Even those who comb mountaineering bibliographies will find Bonington’s new book a gem, both in terms of climbing history and pure scenic mountain photographic art. Those familiar with Bonington’s career will be impressed anew with the number of climbing landmarks involving Bonington and so richly illustrated here, including first ascents of Annapurna 2 in 1960, Nuptse in 1961, the north face direct of the Eiger in 1966, the south face of Annapurna in 1970, Changabang in 1974 and the southwest face of Mt. Everest in 1975. And that’s just the tip of the mountain.