The apt subtitle to this new book is THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE SHERPA CLIMBERS ON K2’S DEADLIEST DAY. This is a great page turner, and it has been reviewed exhaustively since it’s release this past Spring, so allow me a few bullet points of impressions as I finished the book yesterday:
- I’m glad the book concentrates on the local expert climbers, the Pakistanis and ethnic Napalese that do the real heavy lifting (literally) during mountain ascents, and not the sponsored Western attention-getters that follow trails broken for them by locals, but are the first to step in front of a camera at the summit.
- The sport changes micro-economies in the Himalayas. The unsustainable popularity of climbing the same mountain over and over pours tens of thousands of dollars per climb into the hands of a few locals, thus luring even more young men away from farming and into cities with no jobs other than carrying loads up mountains.
- While the authors spent significant time and money researching on-site, and developing the lives and stories of the sherpas and their families, the reader is still absorbing background about millennium-old war lords and local myths 120 pages into a 235 page book.
- The last point notwithstanding, the last 100 pages of the book are riveting. It’s worth the wait, and describes a level of courage and endurance in the first days of August, 2008 that uplifts humanity in the midst of tragedy.
berowne.com 