K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

[Sam Page]

This book is the second collaborative work by Ed Viesturs and David Roberts. Viesturs was the first American to summit all fourteen 8,000 meter peaks (and he did them all without supplemental oxygen) and Roberts is a prolific author of mountaineering literature, in addition to being the author of several harrowing first ascents in Alaska. The book was prompted, or at least made more relevant, by the disaster high on K2 in 2008, in which eleven climbers were killed after the partial collapse of the notorious serac above the crux "bottleneck" section. The dangerous traverse below this serac is featured on the front cover of the book. When this incident was first reported, I remember thinking that someone would write a book about it. This is that book. Well, sort of.

Read the rest of my review.

[DWill]

Thanks, I enjoyed your review of the book. I suppose there aren't many of us visiting this website who are up on mountaineering (I am not). It seems that the pursuit of mountaineering comes to the public's attention mostly when disasters occur, as with the 1996 season on Everest. I don't even recall whether those events were widely known before Krakauer wrote his famous (and somewhat controversial) book. But I wondered if you, as someone with uncommon knowledge of the subject, have a perspective on Krakauer's reporting in Into Thin Air.

[Sam Page]

But I wondered if you . . . have a perspective on Krakauer's reporting in Into Thin Air.

I read Into Thin Air twice, and had no problems with his telling of the events. A certain amount of confusion and forgetting is to be expected in such harrowing circumstances.

Incidentally, David Roberts was Jon Krakauer's literary mentor. They have since become close friends and colleagues.