Book Review: Left for Dead

Left for Dead – My Journey Home from Everest by Beck Weather with Stephen G. Michaud

Review Rating:

Beck Weathers a Pathologist from Dallas was on a quest to join the elite band of climbers who had climbed the highest mountain on each of the seven continents as detailed by Dick Bass, the first to accomplish this task in his account “Seven Summits” (see future review). For Beck summiting Everest would be tick number six on a peak bagging list that is only surpassed by an ascent of all fourteen of the world’s 8000 metre mountains.

The year before Beck had undergone a radical eye operation and this combined with the increasing effects of high altitude on his cornea had left him practically blind on summit day. He reached as far as The Balcony some five hundred vertical metres below the top by 7:30am but knew he could not continue unless his vision improved. He agreed with Rob Hall, his expedition leader, to stay put until Rob could safely escort him back to camp after guiding fellow climbers to the summit. Beck wasted nearly ten hours in attempt to keep a rendezvous that would tragically never happen before agreeing to descend with Mike Broom. So Beck was part of the group of climbers and guides that included Lene Gammelgaard who were stranded at the South Col when the storm struck.

Unlike Gammelgaard, however, Beck never makes it back to Camp IV that night and slips in to unconsciousness exposed to the full force of the storm. Many hours pass but miraculously Beck regains consciousness during the afternoon of May 11th and is shocked into action by a combination of his own condition, thoughts or his family and the realisation that the “cavalry was not coming”. Indeed the cavalry had already been and gone assuming that he was beyond help and giving rise to the title of the book.

- "I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling — quite literally a dead man walking — into camp and the shaky start of my return to life"

The following chapters cover the ensuing rescue – how Beck was aided down the mountain, received basic medical treatment for his horrendous frostbite injuries and evacuated from above the Khumbu Icefall by a record breaking and almost suicidal helicopter rescue.

Divided into four parts, "Left for Dead" is predominately concerned with events after his return from Everest – his rehabilitation and reconciliation with his wife and family. Those most interested in an account of the tragedy or mountaineering in general will be gripped by Part One but may be tempted, as I was, to stop reading thereafter.

I was hoping to learn more of the human side and cost of high altitude mountaineering and while this book provides much that is thought provoking I would recommend “Fragile Edge” by Maria Coffey, partner of the late Joe Tasker ahead of it.

Book Review: Climbing High

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

Review Rating:

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.

Everest 1996 - Running Order

To be clear the planned running order for the book reviews will be as follows:

22 Mar - Climbing High by Lene Gammelgaard (Client - Mountain Madness)

29 Mar - Left for Dead by Beck Weathers (Client - Adventure Consultants)

05 Apr - Doctor on Everest by Kenneth Kamler (Client and Team Doctor - Alpine Ascents)

12 Apr - The Death Zone by Matt Dickinson (Filmaker - Himalayan Kingdoms)

19 Apr - High Exposure by David Breashears (Leader & Film Director - IMAX)

26 Apr - Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (Client - Adventure Consultants)

03 May - The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev (Guide - Mountain Madness)

10 May - Touching My Father's Soul by Jamling Tenzing Norgay (Deputy Leader - IMAX)

11 May - Roundup and recommendations

Everest 1996 - setting the scene

The 1996 Everest tragedy is a big subject and provides a fascinating insight into the world of high altitude mountaineering.

Each week for the next seven weeks I’ll be posting a book review by an author who was on the mountain that year and who observed or participated in the unfolding events.

Finally, in week eight of this mini-series and to mark the 11th anniversary of the tragedy on the 10th May, I’ll bring everything together and give you my final book recommendations.

Firstly I should set the scene for you … or better still let one of our authors, Matt Dickinson, do it for me:

“The timing was uncanny, as bad as it was possible to be. If the storm had struck in winter then no one would have been hurt. But as chance would have it, the tempest arrived on the busiest day of the Everest calendar”

Above 8000 metres “in the ‘Death Zone’ more than thirty climbers were fighting for their lives … The night that faced them was a night from hell. By the end of the following day, the three Indian climbers on the north side and five of the climbers on the south, were dead”

“The storm left a mountain of questions in its wake. How could world-class mountaineers like Rob Hall and Scott Fischer lose their lives on a mountain they knew so intimately? Why were so many inexperienced climbers high on the mountain when the storm hit? Why did a team of Japanese climbers and their Sherpas pass the dying Indian climbers and yet fail to try and rescue them?”

We’ll return to Matt’s book later in the series, but its more logical to start on the south side of the mountain with the first book published, Climbing High by Lene Gammelgaard and so that is where we will begin….

Book reviews

With over a hundred mountaineering books on my shelves you could be forgiven for thinking my nose is in a book whenever it isn't sampling mountain air.

Come and join me in a review of mountain literature - some of the books you may own already and I hope this prompts you to dust them off for a re-reading, others I am sure will be new.

To make things a bit different from the usual reviews found elsewhere on the web I will break the collection down into sub-genres and compare and contrast various authors.

To give you the idea, I'll start next week with a review of the 1996 Everest disaster, perhaps the most written about mountaineering event since the first ascent in 1953. (or was it 1924? - more on that another time)

On May 10th 1996 twenty three men and women were caught in a desperate struggle for their lives as they battled against a ferocious storm high on Everest - and eight of them would lose that battle.

In all we will review seven books covering the events of that day and the recriminations that followed. We'll hear from a man left for dead and from the doctor who later treated him at base camp. We'll hear from a journalist, a woman climber, a couple of film makers and a high altitude guide - all were present and give their own perspective on this extraordinary event.