Book Review - The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev

The Climb : tragic ambitions on Everest by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt

New York : St. Martin's Griffin, 1999                     ISBN  0312206372


If the 1996 Everest disaster is the most famous mountaineering tragedy in history behind the death of Mallory and Irvine, it is so probably due to the efforts of one man - Jon Krakauer, with his article and book about the tragedy, Into thin air. In that book, Krakauer describes the tragedy that befell the climbers on May 10 1996 from his viewpoint as a climber in the Adventure Consultants team. During the book he has some not-so-kind things to say about Anatoli Boukreev, who was a guide for Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness expedition. The controversy that Krakauer's book sparked continues on to this day, more than 15 years after the events themselves.

The Climb is Boukreev's version of events - given his lack of command of English, the book is really written by DeWalt, with liberal dosings of Boukreev's quotes framing the story - and in many ways, gives a more complete picture of the tragedy than does Krakauer's work.

Both Scott Fischer and Anatoli Boukreev were mountain junkies - their whole life was predicated around climbing the great peaks of the World, and trying to finance their next adventure. Fischer, a charismatic American and great climber, looked to Rob Hall's successful business model with Adventure Consultants and thought that he could replicate that success himself, by creating a business guiding people up major climbs. 1996 was the first time he had tried to do it on Everest, and when he ran into Boukreev in Kathmandu, he jumped at the chance to hire him. Boukreev, who was down to his last few dollars, readily agreed. At the time it seemed like a win-win situation for both of them - Boukreev climbed and got paid for doing so, and Fischer could advertise his climb as having a head guide who was a true veteran of 8000 metre peaks.

What rapidly becomes clear as the pages of The Climb roll on, is that while Fischer may have been a great climber, he was not a great leader. It seems that at no stage did he sit down with Boukreev or his other guides and go into any real detail on how they would tackle the peak - and he ignored Boukreev's advice on acclimatization to altitude for the clients. It also seems that he disliked confrontation, and hated to say no, so that several of the climbers who were at the South Col on May 9 shouldn't have really been there, owing to their lack of fitness.

The logisitcs of the expedition were also far from optimal - they only had barely enough oxygen for all the people on the mountain, and the plan to fix lines to the summit was never acted upon. From the armchair point-of-view, the whole Mountain Madness setup seems to have been a disaster waiting to happen. Boukreev was worried about the fitness of the clients from the start, and having never guided before, was unsure of what was actually required of him, something that Fischer never seemed to explain.

Fischer himself was not in peak form for the climb, he was exhausted, a fact that he covered up as much as he could. On the day of the summit attempt, he sent Boukreev and his other guide Neal Beidleman up the Mountain at the head of their team, while Fischer himself would sweep at the rear. The idea was, apparently, that anyone Fischer passed on his sweep would be turned around and sent back down, as if he passed them it meant it would take them too long to keep going and get back safely (before their oxygen ran out). This was a good idea in theory - in practice it was a disaster, as Fischer was so weak and slow that he didn't catch up to even the slowest Mountain Madness climbers. The other massive oversight was that neither Boukreev or Beidleman had radios, so Fischer could not communicate with them at all. The result was that most climbers summited far too late for safety. Boukreev was first to summit, but even he didn't reach the top until about 1.30pm, as he had been delayed because the ropes to the top weren't fixed beforehand as organised, so he and Beidleman had to do most of it.

In 1996 the generally accepted idea was that the latest time for summiting was 2pm. Most Mountain Madness clients summited well after that, and Fischer didn't leave the summit until after 4. By that time Boukreev was on the way down. He'd spoken to Fischer when they finally crossed paths, and they agreed that Boukreev should head down to Camp IV, as many climbers would run out of oxygen before they got down, and he might need to bring up some cylinders and generally help out.

Then the storm hit. Very soon whiteout conditions hit the top of the mountain, with clients and guides spread from the South Summit to the Balcony, and to the South Col itself. There were many heroic actions that night, with Boukreev's continued sorties from Camp IV to bring back climbers not the least of them. In fact his actions won him (along with Pete Athans and Todd Burleson) the David A. Sowles Memorial Award for valour. In all Boukreev personally rescued 3 people that night. The next day he climbed to the South Summit to try to rescue Scott Fischer, who had spent the night there, but found him beyond help. Tragically Boukreev himself was killed on Annapurna in 1997.

With all the controversy that has surrounded the 1996 Everest season, a few things are made clear by Boukreev's book. Scott Fischer did not give good leadership to either his clients or his guides. Boukreev did not understand how he fitted in to the expedition - how much initiative he could take on behalf of Fischer or the clients, and whether he could order clients or Sherpas to do as he asked - which is perhaps a criticism of both Boukreev and Fischer. The logistics of the Mountain Madness activities above Camp IV were not well organised.

All Mountain Madness expedition members, with the exception of Fischer, survived and got down the mountain without serious injury.

The edition I read (see above) has over 100 pages of extra material, mostly rebuttals of Krakauer, and a transcript of the taped "debriefing" of the Mountain Madness team which took place at Base Camp on 15 May 1996. This is fascinating reading, and gives quite an insight into the inner characters of some of the team.

If you have read Krakauer, you must read this book.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - High Crimes by Michael Kodas

High crimes : the fate of Everest in an age of greed by Michael Kodas

New York : Hyperion, 2008                                     ISBN 9781401302733


What a very depressing book. High crimes is another instalment in a mini-genre of books covering the dark side of mountaineering - a genre kicked off by Into thin air, and continued by titles such as Dark summit, and picked up with schadenfreude by many national newspapers and magazines.

High crimes intertwines two narrative threads to help Kodas make his point that the current "Everest industry" harbours as much lying, cheating and criminal behaviour as it does sport, nobility and ethics, and death on the mountain has become an accepted part of the transactions between those ascending it.

Kodas was a member of the 2004 "Connecticut" expedition, which was a disparate group of climbers from that state, brought together under the inspiration of George Dijmarescu and his wife Lhakpa Sherpa, both of whom had ascended Everest previously. Kodas, a reporter for a local paper, and his wife, also a reporter, joined the expedition to cover it for the paper, and for the opportunity for Kodas to attempt the summit, as he is an experienced mountaineer, with some of that experience in the high Himalaya.

Kodas certainly got a cracker of a story - just not the one he was hoping he'd get. His story becomes one of greed, threats, theft and violence, as the expedition turns out to be a free-for-all, with Dijmarescu failing to provide enough equipment, oxygen or food for all the climbers to be able to summit, and verbally and physically abusing other climbers. Other members of the expedition steal items that they need from each other and other expeditions, and display no regret when caught out. While stealing some stove fuel (or the stove itself) mightn't seem much, at these altitudes it can mean the difference between life and death. Kodas reports other climbers having whole tents cleared of items they were relying on for a safe climb.

The other story in the book is that of Nils Antezana, a US citizen born in Bolivia, who found mountaineering later in life, and at 69 decided he wanted to ascend Everest. Unfortunately, he had the misfortune to chose as his guide Gustavo Lisi, who, as Kodas reveals, is a person seemingly completely without morals, and who has left more than one client to fend for themselves high on mountains, and who - at the time he was hired by Nils - was falsely maintaining that he had summited Everest previously. In fact, the pictures purportedly showing him on top of the mountain were stolen by him from someone that ended up losing their fingers to frostbite in the descent. High crimes explains that not only did Lisi leave Nils to die on the mountain while he summited himself, but when he got back to camp he failed to raise the alarm or even mention that he'd left his client behind. The dedicated work of Nils' daughter revealed the true story of what happened, and is relayed here, as well as Lisi's false claim to be an accredited guide, and his expulsion from two mountaineering clubs.

Lisi still touts himself as a guide, which brings Kodas to the point he's trying to make - the  mountaineering industry is almost completely unregulated. For different reasons, both in Nepal and Tibet there is limited ability and will for proper government oversight of the mountains, and up high there would be no way to enforce the law even if a government wanted to. This has resulted in the main expedition companies becoming the de-facto state powers. While some, like Russell Brice's Himex, help other people in trouble and are run in a generally ethical manner, others, such as Henry Todd's Himalayan Experience, provided a permit and that's about it. Todd himself is a shady character, who has been implicated in scandals about re-used oxygen cylinders, among other things, and has actually been banned from Nepal for his shady dealings. So he set up in Tibet, and ran his business on the North Col route.

As I stated at the start of this review, all this makes for a depressing read - there is little of the excitement and wonder of the mountains in this book, but it is a book that had to be written. It's enough to put a potential Everest climber off. It's a shame that something that could be such a great experience seems to be dragged down into the depths of what we humans are capable of at our worst.

Required reading for all armchair mountaineers.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Last Climb by David Breashears and Audrey Salkeld

Last climb : the legendary Everest expeditions of George Mallory by David Breashears and Audrey Salkeld

Washington D.C. : National Geographic, 1999              ISBN  07922753814


What can be said about George Mallory that hasn't already been said? Bar Hillary and Tenzing, he is surely the most famous person in the history of Mt. Everest, even though it seems unlikely he never actually summited the mountain. Scholar, soldier and one of the best mountaineers of his generation, his name will always be connected with Everest, where his remains were discovered in 1999.

This book is one of the "official" publications from that 1999 expedition, written with the full support of National Geographic, and the British Alpine Club, who provided full access to their archives. While the presentation of this book initially hits the reader as more of the coffee table variety, it is a well-written account of the first three Everest expeditions. The photographs in particular are a highlight, with some gatefolds and many full page prints.

David Breashears is an accomplished climber, and brings his climber's knowledge to the descriptions of the first reconnaissance mission, and the next two missions where the goal was to climb the Mountain. It seems fantastic now, but no westerner had ever seen Mt. Everest in any detail before the first of Mallory's three trips. Mallory's first description on viewing Everest - a mixture of awe, wonder and even fear - sets the scene for his future activities.

This book covers each expedition in good detail, covering both the climbing and organisational aspects, as well as covering the "firsts" - these expeditions taught us a lot about altitude and human physiology, and introduced the mountaineering community to the Sherpas, who have gone on to prove their absolute value to all who come to Everest.

The last section of the book discusses the fate of Mallory and Irvine, based partly on evidence from the time, and what was discovered by the 1999 expedition. Breashears, mountaineer that he is, cannot bring himself to think that the pair managed to summit, as nearly all the evidence points to their failure at the final hurdle. Even so, their effort was not surpassed for 30 years, and when Irvine's lack of high altitude experience is taken into account, it's truly remarkable they got as far as they did.

There are a few inset stories in this book, about finding Mallory, the filming of the 1924 expedition and how they used oxygen at that time - all interesting additions to the whole. My wife got this book in a bargain bin, and I'm glad she did - it's a great introduction to the earliest moves on the highest peak on Earth.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Everest : the West Ridge by Thomas F. Hornbein

Everest : the West Ridge by Thomas F. Hornbein, forward by Doug Scott

Seattle WA : The Mountaineers Books, 1998 (2011 printing)    ISBN  9780898866162


Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld are written into the history of Mt. Everest, being the first team to ascend via the West Ridge (in 1963), the first to traverse the mountain, and bivouac overnight above 8000 metres. The Hornbein Couloir on the North Face of Everest was named for Tom during the 1963 expedition. Everest : the West Ridge is Hornbein's recollection of that expedition, drawn from his diary notes and transcripts of meetings and radio conversations that took place during the expedition.

The book begins on the trek to Base Camp, with meditations on Hornbein's friend Unsoeld, on why people attempt to summit mountains, and Everest in particular, and on the beginnings of the idea to try the West Ridge. Norman Dyhrenfurth, the leader of the expedition, had gathered sponsors on the basis that the expedition's aims were to climb Everest, Nuptse and Lhotse, and do some scientific work. Some of the climbers, led by Hornbein and Unsoeld, felt that retracing the steps of others up the South Col route was not pure mountaineering, and formed a view that it would be better to try and forge a new route up the mountain.

It was agreed, on the march in to Base Camp, that while the South Col route would be the main focus of the climbers, men and equipment would be sent across to those who wished to try the West Ridge. The politics of this division of attention take up a decent portion of the book as events unfold, and the pressure to put aside enough materiel for the West Ridge attempt told on tempers and friendships. Hornbein in particular was a big advocate for attempting the Ridge, and this put him offside with many members of the expedition at times.

When the West Ridge team finally got the go-ahead to try their route - after the South Col team were successful - they had a small window of opportunity to get the job done. They had to weather a terrible storm at Camp 4, where the team was very nearly blown off the mountain, before Hornbein and Unsoeld could head to the summit.

They realised, as the summit day unfolded, that it would be impossible for them to return by the route they climbed, and so the traverse became a reality. Summiting at a very late hour, near sunset, they descended on unfamiliar terrain towards the South Summit. Night fell, and they were left without light as their headtorches died. Hornbein and Unsoeld knew that Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad had summited the same day via the South Col route as they were following their footsteps, and they found them huddled exhausted in the snow near the South Summit. Hornbein and Unsoeld got the other two up on their feet and attempted to reach Camp Six on the South side of Everest. They failed, and spent the rest of that night huddled in the snow.

When the sun rose they found their way to Camp Six and safety. The final moving chapter of the story is when Unsoeld departs for Kathmandu via helicopter, wrenched away from Hornbein before they could really comprehend what they had achieved together.

Hornbein, in the coda to the work, meditates on the meaning of the whole venture. He has never returned to the Himalaya.

This is not the best mountaineering book that I have read - I somehow feel strangely short-changed by the lack of focus on the mountaineering. But, given the historic nature of the events chronicled, I'd have to say this is a must-read for any armchair Everesters out there.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book review - Dark summit by Nick Heil

Dark summit by Nick Heil

Camberwell : Penguin Australia, 2008           ISBN 9780143010630


I have no desire to ascend Everest - I could never get fit enough, wouldn't have the endurance, and I don't think I could stand the egos on display around Base Camp. Which begs the question - why do I read so many mountaineering titles? Starting with Bonington when I was a kid, I've been reading tales of mountaineering almost as a guilty secret for thirty years. Which makes me somewhat of an armchair expert, if not at climbing mountains, at least of the literature that comes from climbing them.

Nick Heil is not a mountaineer, he is a journalist and writer, and with that knowledge and the quote on the front cover of Dark summit  ("On Everest morality stops at 8000 metres"), I wasn't holding great hopes for this title. Ever since Jon Krakauer's Into thin air, there has been a genre of Everest books that concern themselves with the ethics of modern guided trips to the top of the world, most of which haven't reached the high bar set by Krakauer, and some of which have been as shameful as the events they purport to portray.

Thankfully Heil's book is quite a few rungs above those depths. His book is a description of the disastrous 2006 season on Everest, when eleven people died on the mountain (not all deaths occurred above 8000 metres). That makes the 2006 season one of the most deadly, in fact more people died than in the infamous 1996 season that forms the basis of Into thin air. Krakauer's book centred around the then novel notion of guided mountaineering trips up Everest, and the ethics and morality of that process. Since Krakauer's time the guided ascent has become an industry, and Heil jumps right into the centre of it. As with many of these types of books, the nub of the story is not quite enough to flesh out a whole book, so we are given the usual potted history of attempts on Everest, with a concentration on the North Face, where most of Heil's action is set. While this background is useful and informative, for me - and I think Heil - this was going through the motions a little bit.

The "meat" of this book concentrates on the climbers on the North Face, and in particular Russell Brice's Himex group. Heil deftly explains the advances made in modern technology since 1996, which make planning a climb easier (better weather forecasts and communication), and has pushed Everest into the twenty-first century (the battle between groups to get clients, animosities between people fought out on the web). The inherent danger of very inexperienced people high on Everest (for some climbers in 2006 Everest was their first 8000 metre climb) is always in the background, and is well portrayed.

While the drive that sends people to attempt Everest may be difficult to articulate, the drive that leads the legion of armchair mountaineers (my sister has lent me this book, and when I'm done I'll lend it to my brother-in-law) to read books such as this is simple: the subject of human beings being pushed to their limits is inherently both gripping and fascinating. Thankfully Dark summit is relatively well-written, with only a modicum of cliche, so the story is free to breathe.

The apogee of the tale is the description and discussion of the death of David Sharp, a lone climber who was found in a near-death state high on the mountain by members of Brice's expedition. Brice, and double amputee Inglis (who was one of the people who found Sharp), got a lot of flack from the press over the decision to leave Sharp. Heil treats this incident fairly, showing both that Brice and his expedition did what they could, and pointing out that some of the more, shall we say "cowboy" expedition managers at Everest don't really do their job properly.

The death of Sharp was put into high relief by the amazing survival and rescue of Australian climber Lincoln Hall during the same climbing season. Hall was an experienced climber, who collapsed and was left for dead. He survived a night in the open near the summit and was rescued by other climbers. I have read and reviewed his book Dead lucky here. Heil speculates that the rescue of Hall was one of the drivers of the criticism of the people who left Sharp to die, but goes on to point out that whereas Sharp was mostly passed by "amateurs", Hall was lucky enough to be discovered by a team of very experienced mountaineers.

As the industry of Himalayan climbing develops year-on-year, we can expect more tragedies to occur in the death zone - since 2006 we've had 11 deaths on K2, described in One mountain thousand summits by Freddie Wilkinson (which is not at the same standard as Heil's book), and 2012 saw another 10 people die on Everest - and no doubt more controversy to come.

This book is well worth reading if you're into mountain literature - Heil went with Brice to the North Col in 2007....maybe that's an achievable adventure......

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Dead lucky by Lincoln Hall

Dead lucky : life after death on Mount Everest by Lincoln Hall

New York : Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin; 2007                 ISBN  9781585426461


Lincoln Hall was a relatively well-known Australian mountaineer, having spent a lot of time in the Himalayas climbing, and was part of the Australian team that were the first from that country to ascend Everest in 1984, pioneering a new route in the process. Hall turned back from the summit in '84, so when he was offered a role in the team of a person attempting to be the youngest to complete the Seven Summits in 2006, he jumped at the chance.

2006 proved to be a particularly deadly one on Everest, but Lincoln did not die - his story was much scarier - he was left for dead at 28,000 feet, spent the night in the open, and manged to survive and make it down the mountain to safety.

As Hall makes clear at the beginning of the book, this is not the whole story of what happened on Everest in that year, just the story of his remarkable survival. There are however some interesting observations on the whole guided mountaineering activity that goes on in the Himalayas, as Lincoln's party was attached to one of these companies (7Summits), whereas his previous experience in high mountains had been with small teams of experienced mountaineers.

What was weighing on his mind more than the commercialization of Everest was his limited seven week preparation for his summit bid, even though he was using oxygen, something he hadn't used previously. When his young charge found that he couldn't cope with the thin atmosphere at the North Col and turned back, Hall thought that his climb too was over. When he was given the OK to continue on his own attempt, he set off with high hopes.

He made the summit without too many problems, but almost immediately on the climb down he began suffering from the effects of exhaustion and altitude sickness, and collapsed. The Sherpas from his team spent eight hours dragging him down the mountain, but only managed to get him down to 28,000 feet before they too were exhausted. By this time Hall was unresponsive, and to all intents and purposes dead.

The story then breaks into two strands: the reaction to the news of his death back in Australia, and a vivid description of the hallucinatory power of altitude sickness as Hall made it through the night. He was lucky enough to be lucid when the next mornings summiters appeared, and they abandoned their climb to help him.

His ordeal was by no means over however, with Hall the recipient of some surprising brutality from some of the Sherpas who assisted him down, along with high quality care and attention from his Russian expedition leaders, and others in Kathmandu and Australia.

This book was written in the year after Hall's return from Everest, when Hall was still trying to come to grips with how, and more importantly why, he survived. He comes up with no definitive answers. The trauma of the night and the rescue comes out clearly in the book, and was obviously still with him at the time of writing.

As a semi-professional writer (Dead lucky was his eighth book), this is a well written story, as gripping as it should be, and one that does give some insight into the mindset of a mountaineer.

In a tragic irony, Hall died early in 2012 from mesothelioma, possibly contracted when building cubby houses from asbestos in his youth.

If you have a penchant for mountaineering tales, it's hard to go past this one. Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell