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Title: The Climb: Tragic Ambitions in Everest by Anatoli Boukreev ISBN: 0-333-90715-9 Publisher: Pan Macmillan Pub. Date: 21 September, 2001 Format: Hardcover

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: the cost of standing on the top of the world
Comment: The more I read about the tragic days on Everest @May 10, 1996, the more I find myself needing to understand what motivated these people to climb, to risk their lives and to feel what it is like to be on the "roof of the world".

This novel focuses on the efforts of Anatoli, who participated in a major way to the survival and recovery of some of the victims from that fateful day. His story is reflected with precision and climbing minutiae that provides credibility for the more critically informed reader. This was a significant mountain tragedy that prompted important re-evaluation of the sport of making it to the top of Everest.

Rating: 3
Summary: CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN...
Comment: This is the story about the 1996 Everest tragedy told from the perspective of Anatoli Boukreev, who was one of the guides on the ill-fated Mountain Madness expedition. It is written almost as a rebuttal to the perceived criticism by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air) of Boukreev's actions on that ill-fated Everest climb.

This is a poorly written account which is oftentimes confusing. It has none of the clarity of prose found in Krakauer's "Into Thin Air". It is, however, an important chronicle from someone who was there on Everest, and who had a pivotal role in the tragic events. Boukreev provides an insider's view of the Mountain Madness expedition itself and of the preparations which go into such a journey. It is packed with many interesting details that will delight Everest junkies.

Whether Boukreev's actions on the mountain were irresponsible, in that he did not use supplementary oxygen to summit and immediately returned to camp after summitting, rather than remain with the expedition's clients, or whether he was just following the orders of the expedition leader, Scott Fisher, who himself died on Everest, is an issue which will long be debated in mountaineering circles. There is no doubt, however, that Boukreev did, in fact, single handedly rescue three of the climbers during a raging blizzard; climbers who without his intervention would have died. Given the extreme weather conditions, his foray up the mountain to rescue climbers is nothing less than heroic. Of course, the countervailing argument is that this heroic effort might not have been necessary, if he had remained with the expedition's clients during their summit attempt.

Boukreev's is an important voice in the Everest annals, more so now that his voice has been silenced. On Christmas day, 1997, Boukreev died in an avalanche on Annapurna. RIP.