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Loading... High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Placesby David Breashears
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This is an interesting biography. David Breashears is probably best known to the general public for his documentaries about Everest and for his involvement in the 1996 storm on Everest. But he is so much more than this, from a childhood dominated by his troubled, and ultimately fractured relationship with his father, through his early rock and climbing days, and his introduction to filming climbing documentaries and his later work on documentaries and big Hollywood movies, he documents a life dominated by climbing. His writing is assured and evokes both the risks and the rewards of climbing, his descriptions of the various deaths and near-death experiences he has witnessed while in the mountains is pratical and poignant. Importantly his description of the events on Everest in May 1996 is yet another accounting helping this armchair reader to a deeper understanding of just what might have happened. (  ) riverwillow | Jul 4, 2009 |  Brashears was filming for Imax on Everest in 1996 when the climbers on the mountain above his team were struck by tragedy. His team broke off from their work to bring down the survivors. This book documents the details (  ) PAFCWoody | Apr 16, 2009 | This story of an Everest expedition gives the more graphic details of the fatalities that beset the May 1996 crew. David's film team saw many climbers (and Sherpas) that died in attemps to climb and descend the mountain. He also gives accounts of returning to the mountain a year later to retrieve items from the body of friends. One erie account tells of retrieving a camera from the still attached backpack of his friend, Bruce, which afterwards a crew member cuts the cord that allows Bruce's body to disappear into the abyss. Many who have read this particular account find it hard to believe that with the deadly storm, David's crew survived. As an Alex Award winner in 2000, this book has great appeal to young mountaineers. (  ) smg626 | May 9, 2008 | This book is a cut above most climbing memoirs. In many memoirs by people who have lived interesting lives but might not be natural writers, I find myself nodding off when they turn to their childhood, or, in climbing memoirs, the details of each climb they've ever taken. This was not a problem with Breashears' book, which also gives his own balanced glimse of the 1996 Everest disaster chronicled in "Into Thin Air". (  ) dcoward | Apr 16, 2008 | Breashears, during a long and distinguished climbing career, directed and filmed the IMAX Everest film, and wrote about it in the book. Not as engaging a writer as Krakauer, the book is still pretty captivating. Beyond documenting the events of the summit attempt and subsequent deaths on May 10, 1996, Breashears tells his life story and how he was drawn to climbing and mountains. The Everest film was mostly dissapointing, although I think it would be more remarkable on an IMAX screen. It seemed rather contrived and the voice-overs by the climbers, especially Ed Viesturs, were weak. ( ) Valhallas | Dec 27, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
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Breashears has no lack of good material. We follow him through the stunning backdrops of Yosemite, Europe, Nepal, and Tibet, brushing up against triumphs and tragedies along the way. And while the nuts and bolts of his adventures are entertainment enough, his knack for building suspense and employing understated drama makes his autobiography read like a novel: "The morning was sunny and calm, and Rob looked as though he'd lain down on his side and fallen asleep. Around him the undisturbed snow sparkled in the sun. I stared at his bare left hand ... I wondered what a mountaineer with Rob's experience was doing without a glove."
Breashears also likes to remind his audience of humble beginnings surmounted: his early climbing days when he was known as "the kid," and a winter he spent sleeping under a sheet of plywood during the Wyoming oil boom when he was called "the worm." But mostly he documents his filmmaking career and climbing passion, both of which he approaches with an obsessive fervor. Readers interested in either pursuit will find High Exposure a fascinating traverse across the spine of the world. --Ben Tiffany
(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:37:33 -0500)
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