Michael Kodas

Kodas describes two expeditions: his own, and another expedition which resulted in the death of Dr Nils Antezana, one of the clients. Kodas explains how both expeditions fell apart due to the underhanded and selfish behaviour that takes place on the mountain. It makes for sobering reading. Thefts are common, even - or especially - from high camps during summit bids, effectively putting the lives of others at stake. Guides apparently need no qualifications and one even used another person’s show more summit photos as proof that he reached the top himself.
Kodas is a journalist and his style is clear, even when he is jumping between the two expeditions and their background stories. Unlike Graham Ratcliffe’s book (http://www.librarything.com/work/11061557/book/75212808), each section felt relevant and well-structured. Kodas isn’t trying to set any record straight; he is just telling his story and the story of Dr Antezana and his family. He comes across as more believable than Ratcliffe because he is not straining to convince the reader. Of course, it’s possible that Kodas’ trip was simply a one-off and most people do not have any problems of the kind he describes. However, I got the feeling that he was just the first to scratch that surface. Everest is a mountain that pushes us into demonstrating our bad qualities, as well as good.
Before I read this book, I had been tempted to try and get to Base Camp (I knew that I would never reach the summit), but Kodas’ book has put me off even that. If his aim was to get people to think about going to Everest before they decide to go, he has most definitely succeeded. show less

In 2004, journalist Michael Kodas joined local mountain climbers from home on an expedition to Mount Everest. He anticipated an exhilarating and arduous adventure among a group of like-minded idealists that he could report to his readers back in Connecticut. But on the Himalayan mountain, he discovered thieves, prostitutes, con men, and blackmailers. There were people who would do anything for a quick buck, or a guarantee of reaching the top. And some of them were on his own team.

Thieves show more stole equipment on which the team's lives depended, Kodas's life was threatened by one of his teammates, and a climbing partner was beaten unconscious by another in Base Camp. He returned from the Himalaya disillusioned. But a plea for help from the daughter of a mountaineer who vanished on Everest on the very day that Kodas had retreated from his own disintegrating team prompted him to return to Everest and uncover an underworld that preys on unsuspecting climbers on major peaks around the world.

High Crimes is a shocking expose of the dark underside of Everest: people stepping over dying climbers on their way up; unscrupulous con men who sell faulty oxygen tanks that leave climbers without air when their lives depend on it; drugs and prostitution in Base Camp; and people all but murdered in the cutthroat race to get to the top. Illustrated with incredible photographs and written with thriller-like pacing, High Crimes is a gripping and fascinating story.


If summiting Everest is on your list of "100 Things to do Before I Die" you should read this compelling if somewhat disheartening look at the dark side of climbing the world's tallest mountain.

High Crimes explores the corruption of one of the purest places on earth, Mount Everest, and the author doesn’t pull any punches pointing the finger and naming names of those who indulge in dishonest and outright criminal behaviour putting others’ lives at risk….and worse.

The author compares Everest Base Camp to a Wild West boomtown… with no sheriff.

He is especially critical of the Everest peak baggers who pay thousands of dollars to unscrupulous commercial operators to be dragged to the top and back down again (if they are lucky), "climbers" who have as much business being on the mountain as I do.

The structure of the novel is a little distracting, as the author tells his own summit attempted with the wife beating climbing team from Hell and the heart-breaking story of Dr. Nils Antezana, both threads running through the book pulling it all together.


Fascinating stuff show less

I saw this book in the library the day after my sister’s house was lost to the Wine Country fires in California and immediately snatched it up. Michael Kodas, deputy director of the Center for Environmental Journalism, addresses the subject of wildfires and why every year seems to herald increasingly large conflagrations that are continually breaking records, whether by their size, the cost of fighting them, or the number of lives lost. This is happening so frequently that a new word has show more been added to the lexicon to describe the phenomenon, megafires. In the past decade alone fires are increasingly threatening towns and cities. Fires destroyed hundreds of homes in Boulder an Colorado Springs in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, fires burned into Los Alamos, New Mexico and threatened material disposal areas containing plutonium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In June of 2013, nineteen of the twenty elite wildland firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots perished in a fire that threatened homes near their home base of Prescott, Arizona. In addition to the 19 Prescott firefighters, thirty other wildland firefighters perished in the time it took Kodas to write this book.

This is not just an American phenomenon, though. In 2009, 179 people died when wildfires destroyed the Australian town of Marysville. Other massive fires have burned around the globe with many threatening urban areas such as Valparaiso, Chile; Cape Town, South Africa; and Fort McMurray, in Canada.

Kodas attributes a variety of factors to this increase. First is the whole attitude that we have had about fires and the Smoky Bear philosophy that all fires must be stamped out immediately. Forests have been around for millions of years and during all that time fires have periodically burned through them, thinning them and getting rid of sick and dead trees and leaving the forests healthier because of it. One hundred years of aggressive firefighting, though, have lead to millions of square miles of forests that are overcrowded and full of deadfall and sick bug-infested trees that, when they do burn, burn with a catastrophic intensity. Add to that the modern reality that almost half of Americans are now living in what is called the Wildland Urban Interface, areas where any burns, prescribed or otherwise, would be a threat to lives and property. Kodas also makes clear without directly saying so, that climate change, or variability, as more circumspect sources would say, plays a large part in the trend. In little more than a decade the fire season has increased by over two months and some fires have continued to burn until well into the following year.

Bottom line: This book has a lot of excellent information and is very well footnoted, a relief after some other books I’ve read recently. Unfortunately, unless all of our public officials and city planners could be made to sit down and read it, I fear that this trend will continue and that, as forest service researched predict, we could see fires burning up to 20 million acres, an area the size of Maine.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire. show less

Ok. This book settles it for me. I am officially not going to climb Mount Everest. Not if someone is going to steal my food and gear while I'm trying to summit or sell me faulty oxygen canisters or threaten to abandon me if I don't pay more money. This book was an eye-opening look at the Wild West- style of atmosphere that is Everest climbing these days. Like many, I read Into Thin Air some years ago and was fascinated by the whole business how people end up at the top of the world's highest show more peak. The conditions are so extreme that the balance between helping others and keeping yourself alive (or achieving the summit experience you paid $60,000 for) makes for dramatic decisions. The concept that those who show up less-prepared or less-conditioned present a danger to others around them had not occurred to me and put a new twist on how those decisions are made. Of course, extreme adventures can also attract extreme personalities.

This book was fascinating but not the easiest to read. It tells the stories of two climbing groups approaching Everest from two sides of the mountain at the same time. It also bounces back and forth in time, which makes it more difficult to keep things sorted out. I'm glad I persevered and this will probably find more Everest books to read. show less