Invisible on Everest, by Parsons & Rose

Mike Parsons and Mary B. Rose write a history of the stuff climbers use in Invisible on Everest: Innovation and the Gear Makers. Though they write a history that covers much of the specialized equipment used in the quest for the summit, they write in the most detail about their own areas of interest and expertise, with focuses on fabric development and women's early climbing attire, as well as the exponential growth of the domestic outdoor gear market (and those who made a living from it) in the 1960s through the 1980s. They trace the development of active cold-weather clothing from early polar journeys to the top of Everest, through the development of Gore-Tex, and argue that early explorers and climbers were not so ill-equipped as they appeared. Rose argues that women's climbing in skirts during the 19th century was more of an exception than a tradition, and follows the growth of climbing clothes for women from the earliest examples to the use of (gasp!) shorts beginning in the 1930s. Parsons traces the origins of climbing hardware, including karabiners, nuts, cams, ropes, axes, and harnesses, with detail on British and Continental developments, and some nods to US innovations.

Everest warrants its own chapter, with details on the equipment development for the expeditions from 1921 to 1953. The authors credit Mallory with a practical eye for equipment and a care for detail. Smythe gets major credit for his continual and conscientious attention to the developers of his equipment. I wish I could have read some details about Pugh. Everest was a phenomenon apart from the development of gear for the masses, but it had an effect on it, with early examples of down clothing (1922), the mummy sleeping bag (1933), synthetic boots (1953), and zippered pockets (1924), among other innovations. The public nature of the expeditions brought suppliers great advertising, and jump-started the careers of some young guns, while exclusion meant especially bad press for some of the established firms.

Overall, the book is an entertaining read, I imagine both for climbers and armchair enthusiasts. I appreciated the authors' arguments, but I craved more detail (which is probably why they followed up this book with the Mallory replica clothing project). I felt like the hardware chapter could make a book unto itself with some expansion, and that the clothing of climbers could easily make another. I loved the illustrations from old gear catalogs, and the many quotes from them as well. I think you'll like it!

Ice, Steel, and Fire, by Linda Parker

Linda Parker writes a series of profiles of some of Britain's most intrepid travelers of the Modern Era in Ice, Steel, and Fire: British Explorers in Peace and War 1921-45. She picks an interesting and perhaps overlooked set, as many writers have already covered the great explorations of participants in the Great War, such as the Mount Everest reconnaissance, or the turn-of-the-century journeys of Younghusband, Wollaston, Bailey, and others. Parker's explorers head out to decidedly remote locations, whether crossing Greenland, surveying Antarctica, sailing the Aleutians, scrounging in the southern Amazon, or penetrating the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, and then apply their unique skills to the battles of World War II. Parker picks subjects with decidedly interesting stories both in their explorer days and their war careers, so some famous British explorers, such as Eric Shipton (who served as a trainer during the war), are left out. She includes, however, the explorations and war careers of George Binney, Spencer Chapman, Quintin Riley, Peter Fleming, Andrew Croft, Sandy Glen, Martyn Sherwood, R. E. D. Ryder, Lancelot Fleming, Augustine Courtauld, and Bill Tilman. 

Tilman is the Everest connection to this set, and a bit of an exception to the list, as he participated in both world wars. Parker writes of his crossing of Africa on a bicycle, a little of his African mountaineering, his exploration and climbing of Nanda Devi, and his 1938 attempt on Everest, before writing significantly more on his World War II career in North Africa, the Middle East, Albania, and Italy. The 1938 attempt gets about two pages of summary, with Tilman quips about oxygen and the weather, but overall dry treatment. Tilman's participation in the 1935 Everest reconnaissance is but a two-sentence interruption to the story of Nanda Devi. Parker analyzes a bit more Tilman's army career, such as suggesting why he remained a relatively low rank. It's too bad the narrative stops at 1945, as Tilman's exploration and war service blend uncomfortably as he pushes the limits of "being lost" while wandering round politically sensitive areas in Central Asia soon after the war.

Overall, I felt like Parker could have done more to analyze and explain, as this is a narrative of the grey areas between exploration and service to one's country. Too much of it was summary and exposition, and not nearly enough it the interesting stuff that can go along with a good story. The Martyn Sherwood chapter, especially, had a lot of potential to ask or even answer some fascinating questions. The stories are entertaining, but the book is more an introduction to the topic than a definitive volume.

Filming the Impossible, by Leo Dickinson

Leo Dickinson, who along with Eric Jones filmed Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler's first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen, writes of a life of filming the world's great adventures. Beyond Everest, Dickinson films and participates in such projects as the first filmed climb of the North Face of the Eiger, exploration in Patagonia, the first descent by kayak of the Dudh Kosi (including the highest ever canoe launch at Everest Base Camp), ballooning over the Sahara, attempts at ballooning around the world, and skydiving from both planes and balloons. His writing is as dynamic as his films, with the unaffected perspective of someone who uncovers something new and interesting even in well-trodden paths. He pushes the limits of filming, with cameras mounted on kayaks, lightweight cameras with batteries wired from within a climber's down suit, helmet cams for skydiving (not so standard in the 1970s!), and filming ballooning from a rope ladder attached far away from the basket. Throughout the book are high-quality photographs from each of his adventures.

He meets Reinhold and Ushi Messner at a mountain film festival, and Reinhold first invites him to Dhaulagiri, and then to Everest. Dickinson has some troubles with the altitude, but Eric Jones eventually makes it as far as the South Col of Everest. I did not realize until reading this book, that Messner's filming during his summit climb (which would later cause him snow blindness) was actually for Dickinson's movie. Dickinson provides an outsider's perspective to Messner and Habeler's climb, though with few surprises. He credits their reaching the summit mainly on Messner's determination and belief in himself, pointing out that Habeler waffled quite a bit on oxygen and wished to go down during their summit climb in marginal weather. Dickinson's subsequent film, Everest Unmasked, would later win awards at the Telluride, Trento, and Banff mountain film festivals.

Letters from Everest, by George Lowe

George Lowe, pivotal member of the 1953 climb that made the summit of the world's highest mountain, gives an account of the climb through a series of vivid letters written back home to New Zealand in Letters from Everest: A First-Hand Account from the Epic First Ascent. While working with Lowe on his memoirs (found in the recently published The Conquest of Everest), Huw Lewis-Jones came across several piles of correspondence, including a lovely series of letters from the first ascent of Everest, meant to fill in friends and family on the details of the climb. Within, Lowe writes plainly of climbing Everest, providing a sense of reality lost in many of the carefully edited accounts prepared for the public (think Hunt, Hillary...). Details come to light that would have been otherwise lost, such as Lowe's dicey return from the Lhotse Face with a team a Sherpas during a whiteout (reminiscent of Longland's frightening epic on the North Ridge 20 years earlier), the true extent of John Hunt's physical efforts, or the level of madness surrounding Tenzing upon the team's return to Kathmandu. Perhaps my favorite is a clarification of the context of Hillary's famous, "Well, we knocked the bastard off" comment, with Lowe writing that it was said more incredulously than insidiously.

Lowe is a wonderful personality who perhaps stayed too quiet too long about the Everest climb. He writes quite well and provides a more modern and down-to-earth telling than any of his cohorts. All the more impressive is that it was written at the moment, at high altitude, and with a multitude of distractions and discomforts. This book doesn't quite substitute for a full telling of the first ascent of Everest, but it's an excellent supplement for someone already familiar with the story, and a gem for the true aficionado. Enjoy!

Extreme Landscapes, edited to Bernadette McDonald

Bernadette McDonald oversees a collection of inspired writing, in celebration of the International Year of the Mountain (2002), in Extreme Landscape: The Lure of Mountain Spaces. She invited authors with a wide range of expertise, from mountaineer and photographer to philosopher and ethnobotanist, to contribute to the overall discussion through their essays of mountains, their effect on people, and people's effect on them. And what a discussion! The quality of writing here is well above the average mountain collection, with thoughtful and intelligent prose in a variety of styles---the poetic and hypnotic effusions by Ehrlich on the experience of Greenland, the blurring of landscape and belief by Schaller, the symbolism and human understanding of Amy, the blending of South and North by Davis, and so much more.

Everest is but a small part of this collection---often used as an example to make a point. Sid Marty shows us that in places such as Everest, some of the places that we treasure the most as a natural wonder have also had extreme human impacts upon them. John Amatt tries to create some lessons from his experience with the 1982 Canadian Mount Everest expedition. Dermot Sommers (Everest, '93) laments the slow disappearance of Khaling Rai, among other mountain heritage languages. Reinhold Messner (Everest, '78, '80) looks for a more controlled, intelligent, and natural use of mountains within Europe. Rick Ridgeway (Everest, '76) profiles Doug Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard as they turn their commercial success into mountain conservatories in South America. Ed Douglas connects the story of his visiting the Kama Valley, east of Everest, to the story of his late father and his passing. Both Bernard Amy and Edwin Bernbaum play with Mallory's "Because it's there..." quote, Amy suggesting that people climb mountains more because they are over there than simply because they exist, and Bernbaum defining Mallory's "it" as "the experience of a deeper reality that gives meaning and vitality to [mountaineer's] lives," poetically declaring that Mallory disappeared into the "it" that was there on Everest.

Everest: The First Ascent From North (Col), by Mohinder Singh

My 400th Everest book! I looked for a good one that was hard to come by and also had a good story, as with my other century books, Goswami's Everest, Is It Conquered? (100), Shin's Orient Express to Crystal Summit (200), and Doskov and Petkov's How We Conquered Everest (300). If you've read Krakauer's Into Thin Air, then you should be familiar with the three Indian climbers, T. Samanla, Tsewang Paljor, and Dorje Morup, who were caught high on the Northeast Ridge of Everest during the storm of May 10th; however, their story is told only as a tragic footnote to the events happening nearby, among and around Krakauer's own team. Singh writes their full tale, along with that of their entire expedition in the book presented below!

Mohinder Singh, Commandant (Retd.) ITBP, writes of the successful, yet tragic 1996 Indo-Tibetan Border Police Everest expedition, which he led, in Everest: The First Indian Ascent from the North (Col). Singh had a tough job, following three failed Indian attempts at the North Col route, and working ahead of and among other expeditions to make the sort of climb the ITBP could be proud of. His is the largest expedition on the Tibetan side of Everest in 1996, and they provide the most manpower and material support for stringing the route and supplying the mountain. He shows how much work it can be, to not only lead an Everest expedition, but to lead an Indian Everest expedition, documenting, without complaining, a bit of the bureaucracy he faces, both from China and his home country. He gives a small taste of the great amount of organization that went into his leading the climb, both on the mountain and beforehand, within the text providing lists of the days' accomplishments, schedules, or bullet points for important information.

Once the team makes it away from New Dehli, the text takes the form of a daily journal, with chapters separating important parts of the climb. Singh provides a great amount of information regarding the team's daily accomplishments, with occasional small interpersonal details and the team's interaction with other teams included, as long as they are important to the overall function of the Indian team. I love the focus of this book, as it creates a bit of a microcosm out of their climb, detailing what it takes, and including only what is important to get a large number of climbers to the summit of the world's highest mountain. The expedition and its climbers are considerably more open---Camp II gets a reputation as an Indian restaurant due to their willingness to share with passers-by, they liaise with other teams to string the route, and they lend the use of their satellite equipment to other teams in need. He focuses the narrative on their working together with the Japanese team's Sherpas to work the North Ridge and his continuous communication with the Japanese leader to coordinate their climbs.

That focus makes it all the more tragic when two Japanese climbers and their Sherpas climb past three dying Indian climbers on May 11. The three Indians had made the summit as the storm of May 10th was building, and were not heard from after their radio transmission from the summit. However, May 11th dawned clear enough to see the climbers with binoculars from the North Col, and watch as the Japanese team stopped for a rest and a snack 40 meters beyond one of the stricken Indian team. After reaching the summit, they again climbed past the three Indian climbers. While Singh does not credit the Japanese with his teammates' deaths, he does find their actions inexcusable and unexplainable. After a period of mourning, he turns to his team to decide a future course. They return to place five more climbers on the summit in a single push a week after the first ascent and the storm.

Some interesting facts from this book: They have a Sherpa, Wangde, who becomes ill from an old complaint, returns to Kathmandu with a team member, and dies in the hospital while they are still on the mountain; this death is not generally recorded in the tally for 1996, though a similar death (Ngawang Topche's) from the South is. Singh claims that his second summit team noticed Dorje Morup, not Tsewang Paljor, in the hollow near the First Step, though most secondhand accounts switch them. Based on the photographs in the book, you'll see that every team member for this climb was issued with green boots---it was not just "Green Boots," (the irreverent name given to the climber in the hollow), with a wild fashion sense. Lastly, this is the only Everest book I've so far read with a section on edible and medicinal Himalayan herbs.

Off Peak, by Patricia Glyn

Patricia Glyn writes of a much happier, later South African climb of Everest than the fraught 1996 expedition, in Off Peak: The Discovery Everest Expedition Diary. Her team, or rather the team she covers, heads to the Nepal side of Everest during the 2003 pre-monsoon anniversary season. Deshun Deysel returns, along with Sean Wisedale, Mark Disney, and a collection of climbers, a paramedic, and Glyn. They get off to a good start, make contributions to the stringing of the route, and are fortunate to have a somewhat average and uneventful climb of Everest, though with a surprise ending.

It's Glyn's writing, however, that makes this book worth the read. Though stuck in Base Camp, she makes the most of things with good humor and a some friendliness/nosiness with the other expeditions on the mountain. Her writing is deliberately un-adventurous, jokingly calling nights on the mountains "sleepovers" and commenting on the many ironic joys of the grand pastime of high-altitude mountaineering. She turns a relatively mundane (for Everest) Everest climb into a gem of the literature with her off-kilter style.

Even if they managed to get someone to the summit, this is not the expedition in which Sibusiso Vilane made his first climb of Everest. He summited as a part of the Jagged Globe commercial operation. See his To the Top from Nowhere for details on his climb.

The Will to Climb, by Richard Harris

Richard Harris writes about his climbs with his son, Christopher, including their quest for the Seven Summits and their attempt on Everest, in The Will to Climb. Christopher starts his climbing life early, becoming the youngest climber to scale Mount Cook, at 13, in 2002. Father and son climb together, working on higher and more technical mountains with an eye towards Everest. Sponsorship gets them to Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, and Aconcagua, before landing a last-minute gift that covers enough to get them, and a film crew, to Everest in 2006. Harris writes about his Everest experience in a diary-style, with daily entries and a blow-by-blow of events. Much of the narrative focuses on the author's experiences, though it's clear he has high regard for his son. Fate is not so kind to father and son on Everest, but their high-altitude cameraman, Lincoln Hall (originally famous for his 1984 Everest climb chronicled in White Limbo), gets the chance of a lifetime to climb to the summit with a cadre of their team's Sherpas. Ultimately, their team is but one of many dramas that Abramov's Seven Summits Club expedition faces, with deaths of climbers and near misses by others.

Hall, of course, has a great climb to the summit, but faces cerebral edema, madness, and seeming death on the trip back to high camp. (See his Dead Lucky for a first-person perspective.) Harris' team had the foresight to tape the radio traffic after things started getting out of hand, and he provides transcripts of the
English-language radio messages between the summit, Advanced Base Camp, and Base Camp. The story takes an odd twist as they discover that Hall is actually still alive the next day, but they are already on their way home, as they had planned on his safe return and being back to travel with them. Also, they had already informed Hall's family of his death, and had to contact them once again.

I was hoping to discover the further adventures of Christopher Harris online after reading this book, but alas, I'm out of luck. The youngest yet did manage to scale the Seven Summits in 2006---20-year-old Danielle Fisher. Jordan Romero would later, in 2010, climb Everest at 13 and finish his Seven Summits at 15, when all the red tape was cleared to get him to Vinson, in Antarctica. (See Katherine Blanc's The Boy Who Conquered Everest.)

Incredible Ascents to Everest, by Sumati Nagrath

Sumati Nagrath writes about some of the most inspiring climbs of the world's highest mountain in Incredible Ascents to Everest: Extraordinary stories of ascents from a blind man's success to a Sherpa's record 21 climbs; from the oldest on the mountain to one who was first to ski down Mt. Everest. This large, photographically-illustrated volume tells a selected history of climbing Mount Everest, in which a climb's inspirational value, rather than its technical challenges, warrants its inclusion. The author picks a great set, given these parameters, for a book that should appeal to a wide audience, with the most important climbs of Everest's history mixed in with some of its great stories. The chapters focus on individuals, such as Junko Tabei or Min Bahadur Sherchan, but Nagrath includes a number of other notable climbers alongside, including Tamae Watanabe and Davo Karnicar. I like the international scope of this book, as so many Everest histories are Anglo-centric, and I appreciate Nagrath's attention to detail in her storytelling. The book is well-formatted, with an interesting mix of text, full-page photographs, quotes from climbers, and sub-sections. I found this book both entertaining and well-informed. Enjoy!

The Mountain: My Time on Everest, by Viesturs and Roberts

Ed Viesturs, with David Roberts, writes about his ten expeditions to the world's highest mountain, along with a commentary on selected climbs throughout its history, in The Mountain: My Time on Everest: The Irresistible Lure of the World's Highest Peak. The book follows much of the same pattern as his two earlier volumes, on K2 and Annapurna (K2 and The Will to Climb), in that he relates his own experiences on the mountain in question (and others) to many of the great climbs of the past, and he gives much fuller details of his own expeditions to the mountain than in his No Shortcuts to the Top, the tale of his climbing the fourteen 8000-meter peaks.

I appreciated getting full details on his early climbs, including ones that did not get him to the summit. His trip to the Kangshung Face gets a lot of attention, especially his wavering back and forth, as a relatively young climber, between going for it despite the dangers and listening to his survival instincts. His first attempt, via the Great Couloir, that got him within 300 meters of the summit, establishes his abilities at altitude; I had no idea previously that it was a paid-for trip by a group of Arkansas climbers, who decided that some professional guides might make great substitutes for Sherpa. His solo attempt, via the Japanese Couloir, is more than just a bum trip, but rather a trial against horrendous snow conditions and the limits of his mountaineering instincts. More details of the 1990 International Peace climb emerge, in which Viesturs makes the summit for the first time, without supplementary oxygen.

His commercial trips, including his guiding climbs in the early and mid 90s, his film projects, and his Eddie Bauer climb, also come to life. He leaves the details of his 1996 IMAX climb to his earlier works, but he writes considerably more detail on his two early Everest guiding trips, such as how he ended up climbing to the summit without oxygen after his client was too exhausted to continue on his first guided expedition, and his good impression of Erling Kagge, the first to reach the "three poles" under his own power (You may remember that Edmund Hillary drove a tractor to the South Pole, and took a flight with Neil Armstrong to the North Pole...), on his second. His 1997 NOVA climb sounds like a lot more fun than he originally portrayed it, and the crowds during his recent climbs sound like more of a problem than he wanted to admit earlier. Even so, Viesturs doesn't knock commercial climbing, or even say that having so many people on the mountain is necessarily wrong.

His history is perhaps a little more ordinary than his two previous books covering a single mountain. While he can get away with picking favorites while relating the history of K2 or Annapurna (since they've overall had considerably fewer climbs and their histories are familiar to quite few), Everest has an established timeline for English-speaking audiences that's a bit hard to ignore. He gives credit to Mallory's mountaineering judgement on the 1921 reconnaissance, though less so in subsequent years. He's impressed by Norton's great effort in 1924. Shipton and Tilman's minimalist ethic catches his attention for the 1930s, stating that if they'd just had better weather in 1938, the history of high-altitude climbing might have been completely different. The 1963 American ascent, via the West Ridge, impresses him as one of the most daring and phenomenal climbs in Everest's history. He also discusses the historical canon of China's two North Ridge climbs, Bonington's Southwest Face climbs, Messner and Habeler's bottle-free ascent, and Messner's return to climb Everest solo. I'm glad he took time to add to the English-language record with his descriptions of the 1980 Polish winter ascent and Loretan and Troillet's 1986 40-hour midnight dash to the summit (See Loretan's Den Bergen Verfallen.). I appreciate that even if Viesturs and Loretan have completely opposite climbing styles, that Viesturs can still show a lot of respect for Loretan's achievements in the mountains. Though I'm grateful for the foreign-language information he did cover, I'm a bit sad he didn't continue on and perhaps discuss the Soviet climb of the Southwest Pillar, the Yugoslav or Bulgarian West Ridge Direct climbs, or the Japanese climbs of either the North Face or the Northeast Ridge Direct. He does help the world out a bit, by bringing attention to the two American climbs on the Kangshung Face in 1981 and 1983, which culminated in six climbers making the summit. Then again, his own Great Couloir climb would have made a lovely parallel to the Australians' climb in 1984, and his Kangshung Face climb would have made an interesting comparison to the 1988 climb nearby by an incredibly small team of four.

I enjoyed this book. I appreciate reading a highly-experienced climber's opinion on the history of Everest, and I'll take whatever I can get. Since I have read so much about Everest already, I most enjoyed getting the gritty on Viesturs' less-vaunted attempts. His history is pretty accurate, and his analysis makes sense. This might be a book directed towards previous Viesturs/Roberts readers, but it is certainly accessible to anyone who's read a climbing book or two. I'm looking forward to more collaborations by Viesturs and Roberts in the future. Hope you like it!