Continuing on with my current obsession with mountaineering stories (which started with Jon Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air') I picked up Ed Viesturs's 'No Shortcuts to the Top', wanting to understand the other 13 peaks higher than 8000 m. (Krakauer's book talks of the 1996 Everest tragedy only.) Viesturs climbed the peaks over a period of a decade and a half - all without bottled oxygen. Overall, I found the book hardly as inspirational or riveting (compared to Krakauer's, which arguably though has far more interesting base material) as advertised. It is the story of a man who had the physiology and the common sense at most times to let go of summit attempts, and to go through climbing all fourteen 8000'ers without even losing a digit to frostbite. Beyond that, there is not much going on for the book, except if you are a hardcore Viesturs or mountaineering fan. Some of the peak stories are disappointingly described: for example, "climbing peak XXX alpine style in 3 days" is not really what you expect when you read a book with such a title.
What I found interesting were the human stories, whenever Viesturs (and his ghost writer) step away from himself or mountaineering or his theory of "Summiting is optional, getting back is mandatory" and tell stories of real human beings who died or survived the mountains. People like J. C., Chantal, Scott Fischer, Rob Hall, et al bring an otherwise very very niche book alive.
Read only if you want to understand mountaineering.
No comments:
Post a Comment