Peter Zuckerman

An exciting story to start with that is almost upstaged by the fascinating history of the area and the sherpa climbers. Not a dull chapter in the whole book. You'll come away with a real appreciation of the men who do the heavy work on these expeditions. The author did some impressive research but it wouldn't have been so effective without his writing style. Even the gruesome details of how death took some of the climbers was presented in a respectful way--but it still left me shaken. Great show more read. show less

Changed my mind about this book a few time. At first I was excited because yaay, it's about sherpas, the usually unsung heroes of mountaineering, but then one of the first things it says is that "going down the is the safest part of climbing K2" which WTF. Okay, in the context it meant is safer to go down the bottleneck because you're faster and that's the only way to be safe there, but as a blanket statement it doesn't really work and nowhere do they mention that most mountaineering show more accidents happen on the way down from the summit, which, um, is kinda important?

But then I really liked all the history on sherpas and about Chhiring and Pasang. You sort of understand why they do what they do, how they're treated by the climbers/tourists, a little bit about what goes on in the regions and so on. So that part was great.

I thought it was a bit weird that Chhiring's group wasn't really presented, like Fredrik Sträng is mentioned a few times because he has talked a lot about his experiences up there, but it's never really made clear that he is part of the same expedition as Chhiring, and Chris Klinke is barely mentioned at all. I don't know why this bugs me, it just does.

The way some things are presented as facts kinda bugged me as well, because I've read a lot about this disaster and the thing is of course that it's extremely unclear what happened. For a lot of reasons. Of course there's comments and footnotes at the end that clearly states every source for pretty much every claim in the book, so at least it's obvious that they did their research, so I guess I can forgive them for that.

But I still kinda liked it. Gonna read more about the Everest distaster of 1996 now, because I ordered three books on it last week. Ooops. show less

Top five non-fiction adventure books I've ever read and I read everything about polar exploration and mountain climbing that I can.
Unique that it gives so much backstory on the area, and its focus on the high altitude porters and their personal stories.
Can't recommend highly enough!

A well written history of the sherpas ..focusing their culture, religious beliefs etc. The climbing disaster in 2008 to the top of K2, with many deaths was detailed in the book Into Thin Air..This book is a follow up of the survivors. i can't understand the obsession, addiction some have to this extremely dangerous mountain climbing .. but the book is hard to put down. Overwhelming at times.