For an up-close outsider's view of the 1953 first ascent of Mount Everest, try reading James Morris' Coronation Everest. Morris was the Times correspondent attached to the expedition, who gained exclusive coverage in exchange for his employer's sponsorship. On the march to the mountain, Morris follows about a week behind the expedition, and throughout the narrative he stays well behind the front. He stays up-to-date both through radio reception and contact with the climbers as they descend the mountain. Morris climbs up the lower reaches of Everest on occasion, and actually makes it as far as Advanced Base Camp in time to hear the news of Tenzing and Hillary's ascent. He sends news dispatches using a crew of Sherpa runners who make the trip to Kathmandu in as little as six days. He also utilizes an Indian Army wireless station at Namche Bazaar to send his famous coded message that sounded like defeat but actually meant that Mount Everest had been ascended by Tenzing and Hillary on May 29th.
Morris is continually worried about maintaining his exclusive scoop on the climb. He is preceded up the mountain by Ralph Izzard (author of An Innocent on Everest), causing him great worry, and other journalists make it as far as Base Camp in their efforts. Outside newsmen harass his runners, and Morris has to be doubly sure both in the integrity of his runners and in the sealing of his packages. In addition, several news crews set themselves up in Kathmandu to scrounge any bits of information they can manage. You may remember Goswami, in Everest, Is It Conquered?, trying to sort out all the printed misinformation into a semi-logical storyline.
The author's style is currently a bit dated, though entertaining. A lot of his descriptions of people, especially ethnic, are not the sort of things one gets away with in polite company today. Though he's never scathing or malicious, there's plenty that might cause minor offense. At times, however, these characterizations bear enough truth to provide some insight, if not begrudging entertainment. Morris' sense of humor makes this book worth the read for me. He is able to make light of nearly any situation, but he remains respectful of both the climbers and his Sherpa employees.
Because Morris stays lower on the mountain, his personal narrative highlights plenty of details that don't get full coverage in other accounts. He talks glowingly of Mike Westmacott's daily maintaining of the Khumbu Icefall route during the second half of the climb. He relates stories about Griffith Pugh, George Band, and Michael Ward that I found interesting. He also reminds the reader that Michael Ward played a large part in any full-scale expeditions trying the South Col route by his insistence of a second, more detailed reconnaissance of the Khumbu Icefall and Western Cwm in 1951. Ward's being chosen as a reserve support climber for the assaults on the summit is seen as a poor choice by the author. Now I'm curious what Ward has to say about it in his autobiography, In This Short Span. I will have to investigate!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Soldiers and Sherpas, by Brummie Stokes
I'll bet I found out where Ian Woodall got his phony credentials before leading his expedition; he must have read Soldiers and Sherpas, by Brummie Stokes. According to this book, Stokes is the real deal, having actually been a special forces soldier that fought behind enemy lines as well as teaching mountain rescue and mountain warfare to NATO troops. He ascended Everest in spring of 1976 along with Bronco Lane as a part of the Joint British / Nepalese Army expedition, and went on to lead three additional Everest expeditions in the 1980s. His tale is an exciting one and I found it hard to put this book down.
Stokes primary career was as a member of Special Air Services (SAS) in the British Army, and he trains, teaches, and fights around the world. The first part of the book recounts his varied campaigns, including fights in Malaya, Oman, and Borneo. His sense of humor makes his early career entertaining, while the seriousness of the action makes it engrossing. He also travels to a range of other exciting locations, including British Guiana, Jamaica, Chile, the Canadian Rockies, and two years in Southern Germany for a wide-ranging career from the jungle swamps to the high mountains.
Stokes' friend Bronco Lane convinces him to sign up for the Army Mountaineering Association so that he can try for a spot on an upcoming Nuptse climb that would serve as a trial run for a climb of Everest. Climbing had already been an important part of Stokes' life, and he convinced the expedition leader through his actions on a shakedown trip to the Alps to include him on the team. He performs well on the Nuptse trip, despite multiple fatalities and the team's rejection by the mountain, and is invited along with Lane to the Everest climb. The pair works themselves hard from the beginning of the trek and find themselves selected for the first summit team. They suffer an extra tent-bound day and night on the Southeast Shoulder before their ascent and are caught in a whiteout on their descent, forcing a bivouac in a snow hole at 28,000 feet. Though both later receive multiple amputations because of their severe frostbite, they continue to climb and return to Everest.
Stokes' next expedition is planned by himself and Lane as an entirely SAS affair. They use a trip to Mount McKinley as a shakedown, before heading to Everest in the spring of 1984 to attempt the first British ascent of the Japanese North Face route that follows a series of couloirs close to the West Ridge. Things don't go quite as planned, and Everest sends them packing very early in the trip. (I'll let you read it!)
Stokes is back post-monsoon in 1986 for a go at the yet-unclimbed Northeast Ridge. He brings an all-star British cast, including Joe Brown, Mo Anthoine, Paul Nunn, and Clive Rowland. They make it as far as the base of the Pinnacles, but low jet stream winds and eight feet of new snow beat them back. Stokes also talks about what else is going on around the mountain, and discusses the efforts of Jean Troillet, Roger Marshall, and a Chilean expedition. In the epilogue of the book, Stokes talks about his 1988 return to the Northeast Ridge; though he was struck by cerebral edema on the East Rongbuk glacier and eventually had to retreat all the way back to London, two of his team, Harry Taylor and Russell Brice, managed to make the first ascent of the Pinnacles.
Stokes primary career was as a member of Special Air Services (SAS) in the British Army, and he trains, teaches, and fights around the world. The first part of the book recounts his varied campaigns, including fights in Malaya, Oman, and Borneo. His sense of humor makes his early career entertaining, while the seriousness of the action makes it engrossing. He also travels to a range of other exciting locations, including British Guiana, Jamaica, Chile, the Canadian Rockies, and two years in Southern Germany for a wide-ranging career from the jungle swamps to the high mountains.
Stokes' friend Bronco Lane convinces him to sign up for the Army Mountaineering Association so that he can try for a spot on an upcoming Nuptse climb that would serve as a trial run for a climb of Everest. Climbing had already been an important part of Stokes' life, and he convinced the expedition leader through his actions on a shakedown trip to the Alps to include him on the team. He performs well on the Nuptse trip, despite multiple fatalities and the team's rejection by the mountain, and is invited along with Lane to the Everest climb. The pair works themselves hard from the beginning of the trek and find themselves selected for the first summit team. They suffer an extra tent-bound day and night on the Southeast Shoulder before their ascent and are caught in a whiteout on their descent, forcing a bivouac in a snow hole at 28,000 feet. Though both later receive multiple amputations because of their severe frostbite, they continue to climb and return to Everest.
Stokes' next expedition is planned by himself and Lane as an entirely SAS affair. They use a trip to Mount McKinley as a shakedown, before heading to Everest in the spring of 1984 to attempt the first British ascent of the Japanese North Face route that follows a series of couloirs close to the West Ridge. Things don't go quite as planned, and Everest sends them packing very early in the trip. (I'll let you read it!)
Stokes is back post-monsoon in 1986 for a go at the yet-unclimbed Northeast Ridge. He brings an all-star British cast, including Joe Brown, Mo Anthoine, Paul Nunn, and Clive Rowland. They make it as far as the base of the Pinnacles, but low jet stream winds and eight feet of new snow beat them back. Stokes also talks about what else is going on around the mountain, and discusses the efforts of Jean Troillet, Roger Marshall, and a Chilean expedition. In the epilogue of the book, Stokes talks about his 1988 return to the Northeast Ridge; though he was struck by cerebral edema on the East Rongbuk glacier and eventually had to retreat all the way back to London, two of his team, Harry Taylor and Russell Brice, managed to make the first ascent of the Pinnacles.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Climbing Mount Everest: The Bibliography, by Salkeld & Boyle
I have been aware of Audrey Salkeld's and John Boyle's bibliography, Climbing Mount Everest, for quite some time, but was reticent to pick it up and read it too early in my Everest reading and blogging. It would have been all too easy to copy down everything they've done and make that my reading list (up to 1993, at least), but I think it would have felt too much like a guided ascent of this mountain of books. Now that I'm well into my project and have done quite a bit of my own research looking for Everest books, I feel like reading Climbing Mount Everest is more of a dialogue between fellow literary climbers, and I'm able to get some pointers from some more experienced researchers without feeling like they're taking me by the hand.
I've learned that I have a lot of languages to learn if I am going to read all the Everest books out there. Besides English, the number one language of Everest literature, I've got enough German to bumble through the books in the number two language, but I don't have any training in Japanese or Polish, the third and fourth most common languages for Everest books, according to Salkeld and Boyle. Besides these, there are books in French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Tibetan, Italian, Turkish, and many other languages. I don't have any intention of learning all of these, but I certainly intend to keep climbing to see where this adventure leads.
I've also learned that my research skills aren't half bad! I thought for sure that what I had dug up would comprise a small percentage of what was in this book, but I'm pleased to say that I've found most of the Everest books in English that Salkeld and Boyle did, and they really only have a major edge on me in languages that don't use Roman characters, such as Japanese and Polish. There are ways around knowing proper transliteration in foreign language research, and if I'm serious about my book lists, then I'm going to have to start seeking these titles out. In their bibliography, they also include promotional or educational booklets put out by expeditions for fund raising or lecturing that I do not intend to include on this blog.
In addition to a bibliography, Salkeld and Boyle include an expedition history for Everest, with cross-references to the books and journals that cover each expedition, as well as a separate section listing Everest-related journal articles. These were fun to read through: the first to get a sense of which expeditions get literary coverage and who's writing about them, and the second to see a wider demographic of authors, since it seems that a greater variety of people were trusted to write for journals and magazines than got to publish full-length books.
This is overall a great reference, though its publication in 1993 makes it somewhat out-of-date. I hope they come out with a second, updated edition. Otherwise, I may have to!
I've learned that I have a lot of languages to learn if I am going to read all the Everest books out there. Besides English, the number one language of Everest literature, I've got enough German to bumble through the books in the number two language, but I don't have any training in Japanese or Polish, the third and fourth most common languages for Everest books, according to Salkeld and Boyle. Besides these, there are books in French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Tibetan, Italian, Turkish, and many other languages. I don't have any intention of learning all of these, but I certainly intend to keep climbing to see where this adventure leads.
I've also learned that my research skills aren't half bad! I thought for sure that what I had dug up would comprise a small percentage of what was in this book, but I'm pleased to say that I've found most of the Everest books in English that Salkeld and Boyle did, and they really only have a major edge on me in languages that don't use Roman characters, such as Japanese and Polish. There are ways around knowing proper transliteration in foreign language research, and if I'm serious about my book lists, then I'm going to have to start seeking these titles out. In their bibliography, they also include promotional or educational booklets put out by expeditions for fund raising or lecturing that I do not intend to include on this blog.
In addition to a bibliography, Salkeld and Boyle include an expedition history for Everest, with cross-references to the books and journals that cover each expedition, as well as a separate section listing Everest-related journal articles. These were fun to read through: the first to get a sense of which expeditions get literary coverage and who's writing about them, and the second to see a wider demographic of authors, since it seems that a greater variety of people were trusted to write for journals and magazines than got to publish full-length books.
This is overall a great reference, though its publication in 1993 makes it somewhat out-of-date. I hope they come out with a second, updated edition. Otherwise, I may have to!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
To the Top of the World, by Mark Sufrin
Mark Sufrin writes a pretty good first ascent of Everest book for young readers focused on Sir Edmund Hillary in To the Top of the World: Sir Edmund Hillary and the Conquest of Everest. The book was written in the 1960s, and it has the inward-focused and naturalistic flavor of adventure books of the time period, somewhat like McCallum's Everest Diary, but more so. Sufrin tells of the expedition, from the gathering of the members right through to the lecture tours, and follows up with a brief telling of some of the adventures Hillary has afterward. There are copious photographic illustrations, including an impressive photo I've only now noticed for the first time, taken by Lowe or Gregory on the Southeast Ridge of Hillary and Tenzing struggling under the additional loads they picked up at Hunt's party's high point, with an eye-popping amount of space between them and the Western Cwm below.
Sufrin does a lot of quoting of characters and relating their thoughts that I don't remember from other sources. It all makes a good story, but it seems to me like he's adding to a non-fiction work. For example, there were quoted conversations from the divvying of loads on the Southeast Ridge that sound perfectly reasonable, but I have doubts since they are fairly interesting, yet never made in into any of the other books I've read. (Perhaps they came from Hillary's High Adventure; I still haven't gotten around to that important work.) The author, unfortunately, did not provide a bibliography.
There's an anecdote from this book about an Everest book I don't imagine I'll ever read. Noyce had brought a copy of War and Peace on the Everest expedition, and loaned it to Westmacott, who passed it along to Hunt when he was finished. Evans took it along on his trips to Baruntse and Kanchenjunga, where George Band acquired it. Band read it on a trip to Yalung and loaned it to Lowe, who read it on his way to the South Pole. Now that's a well-traveled book.
Lastly, there's a chart of a plan-of-attack for the mountain on page 54 of the book that I'm curious about. Does anyone know where this came from? It has routes drawn for Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse, with only seven camps (rather than nine) for Everest, and an advance base camp at Camp II, rather than Camp IV. Camp IV is on the Lhotse face, where the routes for Lhotse and Nuptse split off from the Everest route.
Sufrin does a lot of quoting of characters and relating their thoughts that I don't remember from other sources. It all makes a good story, but it seems to me like he's adding to a non-fiction work. For example, there were quoted conversations from the divvying of loads on the Southeast Ridge that sound perfectly reasonable, but I have doubts since they are fairly interesting, yet never made in into any of the other books I've read. (Perhaps they came from Hillary's High Adventure; I still haven't gotten around to that important work.) The author, unfortunately, did not provide a bibliography.
There's an anecdote from this book about an Everest book I don't imagine I'll ever read. Noyce had brought a copy of War and Peace on the Everest expedition, and loaned it to Westmacott, who passed it along to Hunt when he was finished. Evans took it along on his trips to Baruntse and Kanchenjunga, where George Band acquired it. Band read it on a trip to Yalung and loaned it to Lowe, who read it on his way to the South Pole. Now that's a well-traveled book.
Lastly, there's a chart of a plan-of-attack for the mountain on page 54 of the book that I'm curious about. Does anyone know where this came from? It has routes drawn for Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse, with only seven camps (rather than nine) for Everest, and an advance base camp at Camp II, rather than Camp IV. Camp IV is on the Lhotse face, where the routes for Lhotse and Nuptse split off from the Everest route.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
I'll Climb Mount Everest Alone, by Dennis Roberts
The mystery of Maurice Wilson comes to light with amazing clarity in Dennis Roberts' I'll Climb Mount Everest Alone. Roberts was the first writer to have access to Wilson's personal diary and letters, and he puts together one of the few accurate stories of Wilson's life. After surviving a 35-day fast followed by some heartfelt prayer prescribed by a crank for a particularly nasty ailment, Wilson decides that the world must know of this miracle cure. He knows that it would takes something spectacular to convince the general populace of this difficult, but heaven-sent cure, and hatches a plan to fly to Mount Everest, crash into its lower flanks, and climb to the top alone. Unfortunately, Wilson knows neither how to fly a plane nor proper mountaineering. He'll just have to learn! Roberts recognizes both Wilson's triumphs and shortcomings in his doomed quest to approach and scale the world's highest peak.
Roberts shows that Wilson was a man driven by faith and a sense of purpose, rather than the desire for fame or some sort of general neurosis. Unlike other accounts, I'll Climb Mount Everest Alone reveals that Wilson did much to prepare for his attempt, especially considering the short time-frame he gave himself before he left. He took flying lessons and practiced for long hours, though he was certainly not a natural pilot; he studied everything he could find both on climbing Everest and his proposed flight plan; and he gathered the very best equipment for climbing, including many of the same items as used by the 1933 expedition (They had actually prepared and left by boat several weeks before his own departure.) and a surprisingly lightweight oxygen set. Additionally, Wilson tries first to work with the authorities to get the proper permissions for his adventure, and leaves the country believing that he has or will be able to obtain all the right paperwork. He only works around such authority when they obstinately try to stop him using whatever means at their disposal.
Even if Wilson died in his attempt on Everest, his journey included an amazing amateur flight, given the resources he had available. His plane was an open-cockpit two-seater Gypsy Moth biplane, and he put both its manufacture and its range to serious test. The airfields in Africa and Asia were not well-provisioned, while the authorities were generally less-than-happy to see him, yet he often managed to outwit them while keeping things legal. As he arrived in Cairo, where his permit to fly through Persia should be waiting, he found that no one was willing to produce it. This should have ended his quest, as he would be arrested upon landing in Persia without a permit, but he finagles a re-route over Saudi Arabia and the Indian Ocean, including a flight longer than the apparent range of his aircraft.
When his plane is impounded in India, Wilson finds other means of approaching Mount Everest. After an illegal trek through Tibet from Darjeeling in record time, he heads up the East Rongbuk Glacier, only to find that his mountaineering skills are less-than-adequate for the trip ahead and above him. His inability to climb the glacier, and then later to surmount the North Col does little the quell his sense of purpose. He throws himself repeatedly at the mountain to the point of complete exhaustion. His final diary entry, from below the ice wall that blocks access to the North Col from the east, sums up his determination: "Off again, gorgeous day." I find it fitting and perhaps ironic that Reinhold Messner, in Everest's first solo ascent (in The Crystal Horizon), followed Wilson's planned route to the top.
Roberts shows that Wilson was a man driven by faith and a sense of purpose, rather than the desire for fame or some sort of general neurosis. Unlike other accounts, I'll Climb Mount Everest Alone reveals that Wilson did much to prepare for his attempt, especially considering the short time-frame he gave himself before he left. He took flying lessons and practiced for long hours, though he was certainly not a natural pilot; he studied everything he could find both on climbing Everest and his proposed flight plan; and he gathered the very best equipment for climbing, including many of the same items as used by the 1933 expedition (They had actually prepared and left by boat several weeks before his own departure.) and a surprisingly lightweight oxygen set. Additionally, Wilson tries first to work with the authorities to get the proper permissions for his adventure, and leaves the country believing that he has or will be able to obtain all the right paperwork. He only works around such authority when they obstinately try to stop him using whatever means at their disposal.
Even if Wilson died in his attempt on Everest, his journey included an amazing amateur flight, given the resources he had available. His plane was an open-cockpit two-seater Gypsy Moth biplane, and he put both its manufacture and its range to serious test. The airfields in Africa and Asia were not well-provisioned, while the authorities were generally less-than-happy to see him, yet he often managed to outwit them while keeping things legal. As he arrived in Cairo, where his permit to fly through Persia should be waiting, he found that no one was willing to produce it. This should have ended his quest, as he would be arrested upon landing in Persia without a permit, but he finagles a re-route over Saudi Arabia and the Indian Ocean, including a flight longer than the apparent range of his aircraft.
When his plane is impounded in India, Wilson finds other means of approaching Mount Everest. After an illegal trek through Tibet from Darjeeling in record time, he heads up the East Rongbuk Glacier, only to find that his mountaineering skills are less-than-adequate for the trip ahead and above him. His inability to climb the glacier, and then later to surmount the North Col does little the quell his sense of purpose. He throws himself repeatedly at the mountain to the point of complete exhaustion. His final diary entry, from below the ice wall that blocks access to the North Col from the east, sums up his determination: "Off again, gorgeous day." I find it fitting and perhaps ironic that Reinhold Messner, in Everest's first solo ascent (in The Crystal Horizon), followed Wilson's planned route to the top.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Ultimate High: My Everest Odyssey, by Göran Kropp
Ever since I read about Göran Kropp in Krakauer's Into Thin Air, I've wanted to read more about him, yet somehow I've waited until now to get around to Kropp's Ultimate High. Kropp takes climbing Everest to a new level: riding his bike from his home in Sweden to Kathmandu with a trailer for all his gear, carrying everything he'll need for the mountain on his back from Kathmandu to Base Camp, climbing the mountain unassisted and without supplementary oxygen, and then walking / riding back home. During his climb, he gets tangled into the 1996 Everest mess, though because of his schedule, he is recovering at base camp from his first attempt when things start looking ugly.
Kropp, in addition to climbing mountains, knows how to gossip! When he is interviewed by Elizabeth Hawley in Kathmandu, he mentions that Carlos Carsolio, who was also on his climbing permit, came close, but did not actually summit K2, as claimed. About the events of the 1996 season, he includes a lot of details and hearsay that did not make it into other books. He mentions that Linda Wylie spent a great deal of time in Anatoli Boukreev's tent in Base Camp. He mentions that Sandy Hill Pittman and David Breashears' spouses were having an affair together, and that Pittman had a token snowboarder for her tent. According to this book, Pittman is the icon of everything that is wrong on Everest, and just might be the bride of Satan. He calls the South African camp the psychiatric ward, and says that he helped some of the team figure out how to walk on ice. In the process one slipped and knocked themselves unconscious. You may also remember from Ken Vernon's Ascent and Dissent that Kropp put up the South African journalists after they were prevented from entering their own camp. I did not realize that he also put up Charlotte Noble, the South African team's doctor, for a night, but had to kick her out when she started climbing in the Icefall the next morning. I had no idea she even made it to Base Camp.
Gossip and intrigue aside, Kropp does some amazing climbing. After scouting his own route through the Khumbu Icefall and making some acclimatization trips up the mountain, he is the first to approach the summit, but arrives at the South Summit too late to continue on safely. After the dust settles from the tragedy of May 10th and 11th, he makes another attempt as far as the South Col, but is stopped by two days of jet stream winds. He then returns once more, this time climbing to the summit, but barely summoning the energy to get back to Base Camp. All this is the equivalent of ascending two Everests and another 8000-meter peak in less than a month! Also amazing, Kropp's sirdar, Ang Rita, makes his 10th ascent of the mountain, later gaining the moniker, "Ten-Time Ang Rita."
Kropp is very careful to document the assistance he did receive. On Everest, after he turned back from the first attempt, he realized his freeze-dried rations were not going to build him back up for a second try and turned to eating the fresh food being cooked for his film team and girlfriend. He also admits to eating a piece of cheese offered to him by Scott Fischer in the Western Cwm and having the ceremonial food during his team's puja. On his way down the mountain from his third, successful, attempt, he uses the normal route through the Icefall, because he is too smashed to return using his own. He gets an amusing bit of assistance on his bike trek in, when he stops at a "hotel," and is offered the services of the madam's daughter in addition to a complimentary room. He takes the room only.
For someone so critical of others on the mountain, Kropp needs to analyze his own actions a bit more. He complains that Pittman spent $2000 for a helicopter ride away from Pheriche after the disaster, yet he spends $5000 to have someone fly by and take summit photos of himself. He makes an amazing journey and effort, seemingly as a response to the way Everest is being commercialized and trashed, yet he brings a team of people with him who do not bike there or carry in their own food. Also, he complains about people disrespecting the god of the mountain by having lovers in their tents, but I imagine his girlfriend was doing more for him than rubbing his feet.
Though I am blown away by Kropp's adventure, I'm not sure I like this book all that much. I was somewhat disappointed by the incidental coverage of his bike journey and also by the reconstruction of the events of May 10th and 11th through the popular media, rather than sticking to his personal perspective from Base Camp. At other times, however, he gets too personal, especially regarding a certain commercial expedition client. He didn't spend much time talking about his climb on the lower reaches of the mountain, such as his solo trips through the Icefall or any of his acclimatization runs. On a side note, one of the climbers successfully sued Kropp for libel because of this book. This adventure deserves a better book!
Kropp, in addition to climbing mountains, knows how to gossip! When he is interviewed by Elizabeth Hawley in Kathmandu, he mentions that Carlos Carsolio, who was also on his climbing permit, came close, but did not actually summit K2, as claimed. About the events of the 1996 season, he includes a lot of details and hearsay that did not make it into other books. He mentions that Linda Wylie spent a great deal of time in Anatoli Boukreev's tent in Base Camp. He mentions that Sandy Hill Pittman and David Breashears' spouses were having an affair together, and that Pittman had a token snowboarder for her tent. According to this book, Pittman is the icon of everything that is wrong on Everest, and just might be the bride of Satan. He calls the South African camp the psychiatric ward, and says that he helped some of the team figure out how to walk on ice. In the process one slipped and knocked themselves unconscious. You may also remember from Ken Vernon's Ascent and Dissent that Kropp put up the South African journalists after they were prevented from entering their own camp. I did not realize that he also put up Charlotte Noble, the South African team's doctor, for a night, but had to kick her out when she started climbing in the Icefall the next morning. I had no idea she even made it to Base Camp.
Gossip and intrigue aside, Kropp does some amazing climbing. After scouting his own route through the Khumbu Icefall and making some acclimatization trips up the mountain, he is the first to approach the summit, but arrives at the South Summit too late to continue on safely. After the dust settles from the tragedy of May 10th and 11th, he makes another attempt as far as the South Col, but is stopped by two days of jet stream winds. He then returns once more, this time climbing to the summit, but barely summoning the energy to get back to Base Camp. All this is the equivalent of ascending two Everests and another 8000-meter peak in less than a month! Also amazing, Kropp's sirdar, Ang Rita, makes his 10th ascent of the mountain, later gaining the moniker, "Ten-Time Ang Rita."
Kropp is very careful to document the assistance he did receive. On Everest, after he turned back from the first attempt, he realized his freeze-dried rations were not going to build him back up for a second try and turned to eating the fresh food being cooked for his film team and girlfriend. He also admits to eating a piece of cheese offered to him by Scott Fischer in the Western Cwm and having the ceremonial food during his team's puja. On his way down the mountain from his third, successful, attempt, he uses the normal route through the Icefall, because he is too smashed to return using his own. He gets an amusing bit of assistance on his bike trek in, when he stops at a "hotel," and is offered the services of the madam's daughter in addition to a complimentary room. He takes the room only.
For someone so critical of others on the mountain, Kropp needs to analyze his own actions a bit more. He complains that Pittman spent $2000 for a helicopter ride away from Pheriche after the disaster, yet he spends $5000 to have someone fly by and take summit photos of himself. He makes an amazing journey and effort, seemingly as a response to the way Everest is being commercialized and trashed, yet he brings a team of people with him who do not bike there or carry in their own food. Also, he complains about people disrespecting the god of the mountain by having lovers in their tents, but I imagine his girlfriend was doing more for him than rubbing his feet.
Though I am blown away by Kropp's adventure, I'm not sure I like this book all that much. I was somewhat disappointed by the incidental coverage of his bike journey and also by the reconstruction of the events of May 10th and 11th through the popular media, rather than sticking to his personal perspective from Base Camp. At other times, however, he gets too personal, especially regarding a certain commercial expedition client. He didn't spend much time talking about his climb on the lower reaches of the mountain, such as his solo trips through the Icefall or any of his acclimatization runs. On a side note, one of the climbers successfully sued Kropp for libel because of this book. This adventure deserves a better book!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
On Top of the World, by Arjun Vajpai
Before Jordan Romero topped the world at the tender age of 13, Arjun Vajpai, author of On Top of the World, was the youngest non-Sherpa summiteer of Everest. The 16-year-old climbed the mountain only hours ahead of Romero from the South Col route, and remains the youngest Indian to climb Everest. His book is aimed at fellow teens, and it tells the story of his trip to the summit of Mount Everest as a part of Dawa Steven Sherpa's Eco Everest Expedition in the spring of 2010.
This is the story of an Everest climb where everything goes right. The weather works in the team's favor, Vajpai is both in great shape and good health, and the Icefall and snow conditions are more than reasonable. Vajpai handles the altitude better than any of his older teammates, and he even finds the biggest piece of trash in their cleanup effort (a 40-kg rotor from the 1973 Italian expedition's helicopter crash). For those of you who are used to reading Everest literature, a telling paragraph states that he had his own tent in Camp II, but there was no heater in the mess tent and the food wasn't the best. Not exactly high adventure, but all good news for the climber!
There are perhaps more interesting things to be gleaned from this book than the principal storyline. Vajpai's ascent coincides with Apa Sherpa's (his team's climbing leader) twentieth ascent of Everest, who now climbs principally to bring awareness to the environmental degradation of the area. (You can read about his first ascent of Everest in 1990 in Colin Monteath's Hall & Ball, Kiwi Mountaineers.) There's a photo in the book taken from the South Col of a frighteningly snow-free Southeast Ridge, where even the two principal ascent gullies are almost bare rock. After his graduation from the advanced course with high marks, Vajpai's instructors at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering recommended he attempt Everest. Also, Vajpai's father was a friend of Jai Bahuguna, Harsh Bahuguna's brother, both of whom died on Everest in nearly the same location.
Arjun Vajpai's adventures are just beginning. Look out for his attempt on the South Pole later this year!
This is the story of an Everest climb where everything goes right. The weather works in the team's favor, Vajpai is both in great shape and good health, and the Icefall and snow conditions are more than reasonable. Vajpai handles the altitude better than any of his older teammates, and he even finds the biggest piece of trash in their cleanup effort (a 40-kg rotor from the 1973 Italian expedition's helicopter crash). For those of you who are used to reading Everest literature, a telling paragraph states that he had his own tent in Camp II, but there was no heater in the mess tent and the food wasn't the best. Not exactly high adventure, but all good news for the climber!
There are perhaps more interesting things to be gleaned from this book than the principal storyline. Vajpai's ascent coincides with Apa Sherpa's (his team's climbing leader) twentieth ascent of Everest, who now climbs principally to bring awareness to the environmental degradation of the area. (You can read about his first ascent of Everest in 1990 in Colin Monteath's Hall & Ball, Kiwi Mountaineers.) There's a photo in the book taken from the South Col of a frighteningly snow-free Southeast Ridge, where even the two principal ascent gullies are almost bare rock. After his graduation from the advanced course with high marks, Vajpai's instructors at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering recommended he attempt Everest. Also, Vajpai's father was a friend of Jai Bahuguna, Harsh Bahuguna's brother, both of whom died on Everest in nearly the same location.
Arjun Vajpai's adventures are just beginning. Look out for his attempt on the South Pole later this year!
Monday, March 21, 2011
My Vertical World, by Jerzy Kukuczka
If Reinhold Messner was the man to break down the psychological barriers of high-altitude mountaineering, then Jerzy Kukuczka, in My Vertical World, was the man to break down the physical ones. Messner may have been the first to climb all 14 8,000-meter peaks, but Kukczka did it in style. Save Lhotse, his first summit, all his climbs were first winter ascents or new routes. He states, "I have something inside me that makes me have no interest in playing for low stakes. For me it is the high bid or nothing. That's what fires me." In the early and mid 1980s, Kukuczka participated in the first winter ascents of Kanchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Cho Oyu, and Annapurna, with Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu in the same season and Annapurna by the bitterly cold North Face. His new routes included the daunting South Face of K2 and the difficult Southeast Pillar of Nanga Parbat.
Kukuczka brings to light an entirely different Himalayan experience than the Western reader knows. On his first Himalayan expedition, to Nanga Parbat, team members could not even afford a Coke on the trip to the mountain, because every bit of foreign currency they had was needed to pay expedition expenses, even after several days of tense negotiations on porter wages. A telling episode occurred well into his 8000-meter quest on his trip to climb the South Face of K2 as part of Herrligkoffer's international expedition. The team was required to provide proper footwear to the local porters, and Herrligkoffer arranged for them to receive Swiss-made wool socks of a make and brand that Kukuczka had always wanted to own, but could never afford. At the beginning of his career, he helps pay for expedition expenses by painting industrial chimneys on weekends in exchange for donations to his local climbing club. As he works through the 8000-meter peaks, his renown helps him somewhat in his fund raising, but his Polish expeditions are never extravagant affairs. He works the system as best he can, getting in trouble for climbing Gasherbrum II without a permit, ascending Broad Peak as "acclimatization" for K2, and informing the expedition leaders of the Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu winter climbs that he was on both permits at the last moment.
The dual winter ascent is possibly the most amazing voluntary physical feat I've read about. His Dhualagiri ascent involved four bivouacs in the open in -50 degrees and colder, mostly in snow trenches, and three days without food or water. (He received frostbite in both feet.) The day after arriving in Base Camp from said winter hell, he leaves via a shortcut to the nearest airport, heading over two very high and treacherous passes alone, again often spending the night in the open, and finding the flights canceled, walks the distance of the flight in three days. He catches a plane to Lukla and hikes to Cho Oyu Base Camp in another three days, and the next day heads up Cho Oyu, days later summits, and barely lasts through the descent, again without food or water and with open bivouacs. Somehow, he's feeling pretty good as the Cho Oyu team descends to Namche Bazaar. I swear this man loves pain!
On Everest, Kukuczka joins the second half of a Polish expedition in 1980. The first climb was the first winter ascent of the mountain (by Wielicki and Cichy), which he missed to attend the birth of his first child. His was a follow-up spring ascent that put up a new route on the South Face of the mountain. He and a partner ascended slightly to the East of the South Pillar and followed the face (bypassing the South Col) up to the South Summit before finishing the Southeast Ridge to the main summit. Also during the story of his 1979 Lhotse trip, he comments on the 1979 international Everest expedition that put Ray Genet and Hannelore Schmatz on the summit, but did not bring them home. (Hannelore was a bit of an icon in Everest lore, since her well-preserved and comfortably reclining body greeted climbers just above the South Col for over 20 years after her death until her remains finally blew over the Kangshung Face.)
This book serves as an excellent introduction to the Polish Himalayan mountaineering phenomenon. Polish climbers have gained a reputation for ascending extraordinarily hard routes in the worst of conditions. The book is hard to come by (Copies are currently going for $130 and up online.), but I found it a very hard book to put down once I started reading it. I'm not sure any book is worth $130 to read it, but if you can borrow a copy (as I have), or find one at a store that doesn't know what it has, go for it!
Kukuczka died a couple years after completing the 14 8000-meter peaks while trying to mend the asterisk in his list (his normal-route ascent of Lhotse) by attempting the unclimbed South Face of Lhotse. He fell to his death after his second-hand rope snapped during a fall.
Kukuczka brings to light an entirely different Himalayan experience than the Western reader knows. On his first Himalayan expedition, to Nanga Parbat, team members could not even afford a Coke on the trip to the mountain, because every bit of foreign currency they had was needed to pay expedition expenses, even after several days of tense negotiations on porter wages. A telling episode occurred well into his 8000-meter quest on his trip to climb the South Face of K2 as part of Herrligkoffer's international expedition. The team was required to provide proper footwear to the local porters, and Herrligkoffer arranged for them to receive Swiss-made wool socks of a make and brand that Kukuczka had always wanted to own, but could never afford. At the beginning of his career, he helps pay for expedition expenses by painting industrial chimneys on weekends in exchange for donations to his local climbing club. As he works through the 8000-meter peaks, his renown helps him somewhat in his fund raising, but his Polish expeditions are never extravagant affairs. He works the system as best he can, getting in trouble for climbing Gasherbrum II without a permit, ascending Broad Peak as "acclimatization" for K2, and informing the expedition leaders of the Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu winter climbs that he was on both permits at the last moment.
The dual winter ascent is possibly the most amazing voluntary physical feat I've read about. His Dhualagiri ascent involved four bivouacs in the open in -50 degrees and colder, mostly in snow trenches, and three days without food or water. (He received frostbite in both feet.) The day after arriving in Base Camp from said winter hell, he leaves via a shortcut to the nearest airport, heading over two very high and treacherous passes alone, again often spending the night in the open, and finding the flights canceled, walks the distance of the flight in three days. He catches a plane to Lukla and hikes to Cho Oyu Base Camp in another three days, and the next day heads up Cho Oyu, days later summits, and barely lasts through the descent, again without food or water and with open bivouacs. Somehow, he's feeling pretty good as the Cho Oyu team descends to Namche Bazaar. I swear this man loves pain!
On Everest, Kukuczka joins the second half of a Polish expedition in 1980. The first climb was the first winter ascent of the mountain (by Wielicki and Cichy), which he missed to attend the birth of his first child. His was a follow-up spring ascent that put up a new route on the South Face of the mountain. He and a partner ascended slightly to the East of the South Pillar and followed the face (bypassing the South Col) up to the South Summit before finishing the Southeast Ridge to the main summit. Also during the story of his 1979 Lhotse trip, he comments on the 1979 international Everest expedition that put Ray Genet and Hannelore Schmatz on the summit, but did not bring them home. (Hannelore was a bit of an icon in Everest lore, since her well-preserved and comfortably reclining body greeted climbers just above the South Col for over 20 years after her death until her remains finally blew over the Kangshung Face.)
This book serves as an excellent introduction to the Polish Himalayan mountaineering phenomenon. Polish climbers have gained a reputation for ascending extraordinarily hard routes in the worst of conditions. The book is hard to come by (Copies are currently going for $130 and up online.), but I found it a very hard book to put down once I started reading it. I'm not sure any book is worth $130 to read it, but if you can borrow a copy (as I have), or find one at a store that doesn't know what it has, go for it!
Kukuczka died a couple years after completing the 14 8000-meter peaks while trying to mend the asterisk in his list (his normal-route ascent of Lhotse) by attempting the unclimbed South Face of Lhotse. He fell to his death after his second-hand rope snapped during a fall.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Life on an Everest Expedition, by Patricia Netzley
If you're a young reader and want to learn all about what it's like to climb the world's highest mountain, try reading Life on an Everest Expedition, by Patricia Netzley. She writes it textbook-style, both in prose and formatting, and includes a wealth of quotes from Everest climbers. She fills the book with information and includes many details that others gloss over. Also, Life on an Everest Expedition is part of "The Way People Live" series, so part of its purpose is to dispel myths and stereotypes about the subjects. As such, Netzley includes a lot of words like "generally," "most," and "sometimes," avoiding a lot of the half-truths found in other books for young readers. She writes about a range of expeditions from the early trials to the modern commercial expeditions. She focuses most of her attention on the commercial expedition life, however, since this is the most likely way someone will experience Everest currently.
A couple small things bothered me about this book. For a book from a series geared towards dispelling stereotypes, there are still a couple more in the text than I would have liked, most notably about the Sherpas, but also about climbers' motivations. A couple of the photographs bothered me, but shouldn't detract from the overall book, because they had been flipped, and the summit ridge had cornices hanging off the wrong direction (or in one, Lhotse is on the wrong side of the ridge line). There was also an amusing statistic about 400,000 people visiting Everest Base Camp in 1996.
All that said, however, this is a good book. Netzley has done her homework, and she cites a number of sources. What's more, it seems like she actually read them! Though to some degree this book is Everest as viewed through books, it's the only Everest I know, and it all was quite familiar and enjoyable to me. I always appreciate a fellow reader, and I appreciate even more a careful writer. Life on an Everest Expedition rates highly with me.
A couple small things bothered me about this book. For a book from a series geared towards dispelling stereotypes, there are still a couple more in the text than I would have liked, most notably about the Sherpas, but also about climbers' motivations. A couple of the photographs bothered me, but shouldn't detract from the overall book, because they had been flipped, and the summit ridge had cornices hanging off the wrong direction (or in one, Lhotse is on the wrong side of the ridge line). There was also an amusing statistic about 400,000 people visiting Everest Base Camp in 1996.
All that said, however, this is a good book. Netzley has done her homework, and she cites a number of sources. What's more, it seems like she actually read them! Though to some degree this book is Everest as viewed through books, it's the only Everest I know, and it all was quite familiar and enjoyable to me. I always appreciate a fellow reader, and I appreciate even more a careful writer. Life on an Everest Expedition rates highly with me.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir, by David Pye
I wanted to read a special book for my 100th blog post, but David Pye's George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir took a little longer to arrive than planned. Since the work is now in the public domain (published 1927), you can always buy a print-on-demand version for as little as $15. I had the opportunity, however, to read from a borrowed first edition. I'm a fan of reading from older books, and this one has especially nice paper and printing; the printer, John Johnson, even included his name on the endpapers.
Pye was a close personal friend and climbing partner of Mallory's, and more than any other I've read, Pye's book reveals the personal, rather than the legendary, attributes of the man of Everest. (Dudley Green comes in a well-written, but more academic than familiar second in his Because It's There.) He includes in his memoir a number of letters from Mallory to him and other close friends that show a much more complete man than the energetic climber and man obsessed that you find in the official accounts and the history books. While this book includes Mallory's three trips to Mount Everest, it gives them equal space with his many other passions and activities that filled his life. Instead of the traditional review, I thought it might be fun to share some unlikely or otherwise interesting quotes from Mallory's writing found in George Leigh Mallory:
"A day well spent in the Alps is like some great symphony. Andante, adantissimo sometimes, is the first movement---the grim, sickening plod up the moraine. But how forgotten when the blue light of dawn flickers over the hard, clean snow! The new motif is ushered in, as it were, very gently on the lesser wind instruments, hautboys, and flutes, remote but melodious and infinitely hopeful, caught by the violins in the growing light, and torn out by all the bows with quivering chords as the summits, one by one, are enmeshed in the gold web of day, till at last the whole band, in triumphant accord, has seized the air and romps in magnificent frolic, because there you are at last marching, all a-tingle with warm blood, under the sun. And so throughout the day successive moods induce the symphonic whole---allegro while you break the back of an expedition and the issue is still in doubt; scherzo, perhaps, as you leap up the final rocks of the arete or cut steps in a last short slope, with the ice-chips dancing and swimming and bubbling and bounding with magic gaiety over the crisp surface in their mad glissade; and then, for the descent, sometimes again andante, because, while the summit was still to win, you forgot that the business of descending may be serious and long; but in the end scherzo once more---with the brakes on for sunset."
"The great majority of men are in a sense artists; some are active and creative, and some participate passively No doubt those who create differ in some way fundamentally from those who do not create; but they hold this artistic impulse in common: all alike desire expression for the emotional side of their nature."
"I was just wishing the other day that I could know the individual minimum, as I call it to myself, for every one---the least a man would be content to leave behind as his share of life accomplished. Wouldn't one know something if one could know that?"
"We must think with all our minds; . . . think with imagination and sympathetically; think passionately and, not less, think calmly, without prejudice and critically---think, and when we think, devote ourselves to learning what is right for England."
before descending the Lhakpa La at the end of the reconnaissance of 1921: "I begin to feel that sort of malaise one has before putting a great matter to the touch. At what point am I going to stop? It's going to be a fearfully difficult decision; there's an incalculable element about other men's physical condition, and all the more so under these strange conditions. I almost hope I shall be the first to give out!"
during the 1921 reconnaissance: "I sometimes think of this expedition as a fraud from beginning to end invented by the wild enthusiasm of one man---Younghusband, puffed up by the would-be wisdom of certain pundits in the Alpine Club, and imposed upon the youthful ardour of your humble servant. Certainly the reality must be strangely different from their dream. The long imagined snow slopes of this Northern face of Everest with their gentle and inviting angle turn out to be the most appalling precipice, nearly 10,000 feet high . . . The prospect of ascent in any direction is about nil and our present job is to run our noses against the impossible in such a way as to persuade mankind that some noble heroism has failed once again."
before the third attempt that killed seven porters in 1922: "Frankly the game is not good enough. The risks of getting caught are too great; the margin of strength when men are at great heights is too small. Perhaps it's mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt?"
from his last posted letter before disappearing into the clouds: "I can write but one line. We are on the point of moving up again and the adventure appears more desperate than ever."
Pye was a close personal friend and climbing partner of Mallory's, and more than any other I've read, Pye's book reveals the personal, rather than the legendary, attributes of the man of Everest. (Dudley Green comes in a well-written, but more academic than familiar second in his Because It's There.) He includes in his memoir a number of letters from Mallory to him and other close friends that show a much more complete man than the energetic climber and man obsessed that you find in the official accounts and the history books. While this book includes Mallory's three trips to Mount Everest, it gives them equal space with his many other passions and activities that filled his life. Instead of the traditional review, I thought it might be fun to share some unlikely or otherwise interesting quotes from Mallory's writing found in George Leigh Mallory:
"A day well spent in the Alps is like some great symphony. Andante, adantissimo sometimes, is the first movement---the grim, sickening plod up the moraine. But how forgotten when the blue light of dawn flickers over the hard, clean snow! The new motif is ushered in, as it were, very gently on the lesser wind instruments, hautboys, and flutes, remote but melodious and infinitely hopeful, caught by the violins in the growing light, and torn out by all the bows with quivering chords as the summits, one by one, are enmeshed in the gold web of day, till at last the whole band, in triumphant accord, has seized the air and romps in magnificent frolic, because there you are at last marching, all a-tingle with warm blood, under the sun. And so throughout the day successive moods induce the symphonic whole---allegro while you break the back of an expedition and the issue is still in doubt; scherzo, perhaps, as you leap up the final rocks of the arete or cut steps in a last short slope, with the ice-chips dancing and swimming and bubbling and bounding with magic gaiety over the crisp surface in their mad glissade; and then, for the descent, sometimes again andante, because, while the summit was still to win, you forgot that the business of descending may be serious and long; but in the end scherzo once more---with the brakes on for sunset."
"The great majority of men are in a sense artists; some are active and creative, and some participate passively No doubt those who create differ in some way fundamentally from those who do not create; but they hold this artistic impulse in common: all alike desire expression for the emotional side of their nature."
"I was just wishing the other day that I could know the individual minimum, as I call it to myself, for every one---the least a man would be content to leave behind as his share of life accomplished. Wouldn't one know something if one could know that?"
"We must think with all our minds; . . . think with imagination and sympathetically; think passionately and, not less, think calmly, without prejudice and critically---think, and when we think, devote ourselves to learning what is right for England."
before descending the Lhakpa La at the end of the reconnaissance of 1921: "I begin to feel that sort of malaise one has before putting a great matter to the touch. At what point am I going to stop? It's going to be a fearfully difficult decision; there's an incalculable element about other men's physical condition, and all the more so under these strange conditions. I almost hope I shall be the first to give out!"
during the 1921 reconnaissance: "I sometimes think of this expedition as a fraud from beginning to end invented by the wild enthusiasm of one man---Younghusband, puffed up by the would-be wisdom of certain pundits in the Alpine Club, and imposed upon the youthful ardour of your humble servant. Certainly the reality must be strangely different from their dream. The long imagined snow slopes of this Northern face of Everest with their gentle and inviting angle turn out to be the most appalling precipice, nearly 10,000 feet high . . . The prospect of ascent in any direction is about nil and our present job is to run our noses against the impossible in such a way as to persuade mankind that some noble heroism has failed once again."
before the third attempt that killed seven porters in 1922: "Frankly the game is not good enough. The risks of getting caught are too great; the margin of strength when men are at great heights is too small. Perhaps it's mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt?"
from his last posted letter before disappearing into the clouds: "I can write but one line. We are on the point of moving up again and the adventure appears more desperate than ever."
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