Book Review: Climbing High

Climbing High – A woman’s account of surviving the Everest Tragedy by Lene Gammelgaard

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In this book Gammelgaard, a 34 year old Danish mountaineer, recounts her successful attempt to become the first Scandinavian woman to summit Everest. It was also the first account of the 1996 Everest disaster to be published in book form and appeared within six months of the event.

Gammelgaard was a fee paying client on Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness expedition which planned to summit along the original 1953 first ascent route via the South Col. The expedition was formerly titled the “Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition” with the laudable aim of cleaning up equipment debris left on the mountain by previous expeditions but alas she gives very little mention of this work. Clearly participation in the cleanup was a matter for the Sherpa team rather than the clients. A cynic may conclude, perhaps, that the environmental aspects were simply a marketing ploy for Fischer ‘s company or to gain favour with the Nepalese authorities in granting the mandatory climbing permits.

Gammelgaard uses a diary or journal format throughout the book which is both its major strength and its major weakness. On the positive side the diary was written as events actually unfolded which should result in a more accurate account than may have been produced after the event – at high altitudes hypoxia (lack of oxygen) can muddle the memory. Whilst the book couldn’t be influenced by those that were to follow it is impossible to say, without access to the original diaries, whether the media coverage at the time or the initial accounts by Jon Krakauer published in Outside magazine (later to be expanded into one of our review books) influenced the editing.

Giving Gammelgaard the benefit of the doubt I agree with her when she states that “in this book I have tried to act as camera lens, recording what I experienced, presenting my teammates as I saw them”.

The weakness of the diary style is that it can come over in places as rather self indulgent, rambling and a mere brain dump. However, those seemingly irrelevant trivialities recounted add some insights for the armchair mountaineer that may be lost to the editor’s red pen in more polished accounts.

Like most diaries then, it is a very immediate and personal account – her oft quoted mantra “To the summit and safe return” she hopes “will drive me up and back down, even when my brain tells me I am exhausted and can do no more”.

But she does a good job of balancing her ambitions with the potential reality - “The hazard of my little experiment is that focusing entirely on the summit victory becomes all encompassing and may be so powerful a motive that I will be incapable of turning around before the summit, even at the cost of my own health … or my life. Sometimes the true victory is to let go, to be capable of turning around in due time without suffering defeat”

Ten years after the tragedy not much has changed - Viewers of the 2006 documentary “Everest Beyond the limit” watched on as two climbers caught in summit fever refused to be turned around by the expedition leader and climbing Sherpa.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/everestbeyond/everestbeyond.html

Gammelgaard is realistic about the inherent dangers and about the effects that climbing can have on those around her. But she is focused on her goal of getting to the top of the world before starting a family - “I imagine that when I decide to have children, I will give up my participation in the race to summit the fourteen 8000m peaks. The way I see it now, its an either/or situation because the risks of dying whilst climbing are so high. Just study a few expedition reports to calculate the odds – they are bad”

“One of the reasons I respect Anatoli” – referring to Anatoli Boukreev – a guide on the Mountain Madness team and arguable the strongest mountaineer on Everest that year - “is his sense of reality … he knows he risks dying out here and, therefore, has not started a family”.

Sadly Anatoli was killed whilst attempting a new winter route on Annapurna on Christmas Day the following year. He was caught in an avalanche above 6500m caused by a falling cornice.

Whilst Gammelgaard spends more time discussing the weaknesses of those around her than describing the scenery there are some nice passages – notable amongst these is her first ascent through the Khumbu icefall into the Western Cwm and the summit day ascent itself.

At first the brevity of her account of the fatal storm is surprising, given the space afforded to it in other accounts, but it fits her style. The blizzard hit as she was returning to the South Col and the ensuing whiteout made it impossible to find the relative safety of the nearby tents at Camp IV.

The description that follows makes gripping reading as she huddles lost in a group of fellow climbers who are each in turn running out of bottled oxygen, warmth, energy, time and life and too afraid of falling to their deaths down the Kangshung face to wander aimlessly around looking for the tents.