No problem: I finished it in one day. The damn thing is one of the few books where the phrase “I couldn’t put it down” applies.
I havent read those books, but I have read much about the events and discussions of it.
Let me guess. “Into Thin Air” is the brave people who had shit happen to them. And “The Climb” is a bunch of people do stupid shit and bad things happen. Is that it? Or maybe I got it backwards. But of what I’ve heard it was more of a clusterfuck waiting to happen rather than a string of bad luck.
I think, having only read Into Thin Air, that it’s probably more like “Some people were good, some people were bad, and some people were just people” versus “Same thing, different people”.
I don’t know if anyone’s seen the IMAX movie about Everest, but it was filmed right at the same time that Into Thin Air took place.
I’ve been to talks by Ed Viesturs and David Breashears, who were on the IMAX expedition that was going on at the same time. Neither is a stranger to high-altitude climbing, and they both said that the tragedy that befell Krakhauer’s group was an accident waiting to happen. The mountain that season was overflowing with inexperienced climbers who had paid a lot of money to be led to the top. In reality, that had become a normal state of affairs, but the people leading them gambled on the weather and lost.
The leader of one of the parties, who had successfully guided many tours to the top and back, was quoted as saying that some day there was going to be a major disaster on the mountain with the tour groups. He had no illusions about the danger. Where he failed this time was to follow his own protocol of turning back at the established time, summit or not. His wasn’t the only group to lose people. Twelve persons died that day in various climbing groups. The storm that blew in was a shock to everyone there, since when they started for the summit, it was a cloudless night.
OK, since I don’t have to worry about spoiling things…
The Climb is by Anatoli Boukreev, one of the guides (not from the group Krakhauer was with but from the other group). Krakhauer is relatively critical of Boukereev in his book. His main criticism is that Boukereev was a guide but made the final ascent without oxygen and (secondarily) made part of the ascent short-roped to another climber who later said that he hadn’t needed any help. There is some implication that Boukereev was more interested in getting to the top himself than in helping the other climbers but the actual accusation was that by not using oxygen Boukereev tired himself out too much and thus was unable to effectively help the others when things went bad. He does credit Boukereev with several heroic attempts to help the others but the implication is still there that he could have done more if he hadn’t weakened himself earlier.
For his part, Boukereev describes Krakhauer as pretty much an incompetent who had no business being on the expedition. He spends a lot of time talking about a major mistake in identification that Krakhauer made (which Krakhauer himself admits to and takes full responsibility for in his book) and how this proves Krakhauer was an unreliable witness to what happened.
Overall, Krakhauer is fairly critical of the people leading the expeditions so his book is more of the “a bunch of people do stupid shit and bad things happen” one. His main conclusion seemed to be that 1) the commercialization of Everest had given the appearance of ease and safety in getting to the top which encouraged people who were unqualified for such an activity to attempt it and 2) the people running the expeditions were so concerned about their reputations that they were determined to get all of their clients to the top despite the dangers to everyone involve that they ignored their own safety procedures to do so. (I’ve blanked on the names and don’t want to dig the book out to look at it but the leader of his group waited several hours beyond the maximum safe turnaround time in order to allow one last client to reach the top, and that time didn’t even consider the storm that blew up).
Boukereev’s book was more of the " brave people who had shit happen to them" version, but of course he is writing from the perspective of one of the guides on the expedition, not a client. Since the leaders of both of the major expeditions died (and Boukereev himself died in an avalanche a year or so later) there aren’t a whole lot of other people left to provide another perspective on things.
Having read both books my thought is that the whole thing was an accident waiting to happen. When things started going wrong the margin of error everyone had was so thin it was almost inevitable that once problems started they would multiply until there was nothing left anyone could do.
Plus, as I said before, I think everyone’s mental condition had deteriorated far enough by that point that no one will ever really be sure what happened.
Thanks for that write up!
Seconding this book. Gripping.
Tristan Jones is another author with a lot of sea adventures. I read a bunch of his books years ago. I think it was in Ice! that he describes being all alone on a boat locked into the Arctic ice for the winter, when he gets cracked in the head by a wooden mast or spar, knocking his eye out of its socket. He then pretty much just pops it back in.
If you enjoyed these, I would highly recommend The Conquest of New Spain (also known under other titles, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Diaz was a foot soldier under Cortez, and gives an extremely vivid first-hand account of what it was like to be among the few hundred men who marched into the heart of a ferocious warlike empire and conquered it.
Donbas True story of kidnap,survival and escape across Russia. During WW2. By a 16 year old boy.
This is a mandatory read book.
Icebound A woman’s medical emergency at the South Pole in Winter. You really learn a great deal about the conditions and culture of those who man the pole station in the perpetual winter night of Antarctica.
Albatross A small group of shipwrecked survivors heartbreaking tale on the open ocean.
The original book that spawned the movie Apollo 13, Lost Moon by Jim Lovell.
What was most shocking about the top of Everest in Into Thin Air and associated books is just how incapable the human body and brain are of functioning over 8,000 meters. Seriously, these were smart people, and once things start to go wrong it’s painfully obvious that nobody had the mental wherewithal to cope with changing situations at all. I think a major factor is how impossible it is to appreciate how much your mental abilities have deteriorated in the moment, like how drunk drivers always think they’re okay to drive. And once it goes wrong, it’s very hard to rescue anybody besides yourself, and not even that if you’re not an experienced self-rescuer. Just about anybody could get to the top of Everest with a guide on a good day, but once it goes wrong you’d better be lucky and a “pop that eyeball back in” kind of guy.
I don’t think it’s really possible to explain that to people who really, really want to climb a big mountain, though - not in a way that will convince them that the really tall ones are incompatible with human life.
The Worst Journey in the World, about Scott’s Arctic Expedition. More in this very interesting article about how Scurvey baffled doctors and probably contributed to Scott’s failure.
It’s amazing to me that any of them get up and back. Every step seems to require superhuman concentration on the task. We were at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood the last two days (6,000 feet) and I was surprised to note that both the wife and I had headaches the entire time. Also, short uphill hikes left us panting. I can’t even imagine trying to function at extreme altitude.
Back on topic: I’m really annoyed that there aren’t more of these books available for Kindle. I was only able to download three or four, including the latest from Colibri. I guess this genre doesn’t have a large audience. Just started In The Land of White Death, an Arctic survival yarn.
Thirded. Loved it.
The Raft
True story of 3 naval airman lost on a raft in WWII, IIRC it’s not the best crafted work, but in some ways more gripping because it’s written by a survivor not a novelist.
Entirely off topic, but **Deep Survival **is a fascinating study of how our minds work in extreme situations and how they can ‘betray’ us. It’s more of a ‘how not to go there’ book, but I loved it.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dus-stripbooks-tree&field-keywords=deep+survival&ih=9_2_1_1_0_0_0_0_0_1.140_203&fsc=-1&x=12&y=19
Night by Elie Wiesel.
Grim. Sparse. Gritty. Devestatingly haunting.
Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but needs to be mentioned.
In the heart of the sea, a true account of a whaling ship that was attacked and sunk by an angry sperm whale, and the ordeal the survivors went through. Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick based on their story. The book also goes into how much of a superpower Nantucket Island was back in the 19th century. Virtually all whale oil in the world went through Nantucket Island at some point.