The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest » (Unabridged)

Anatoli Boukreev was one of the world's foremost high-altitude mountaineers, arguably the finest of his generation. He had summited eleven of the world's 8,000 meter peaks without the use of supplementary oxygen, some of them, including Mount Everest, multiple times. In all, he attempted twenty-one times he was successful. Born in Russia where he received the Master of Sports with Honors, Boukreev had made his home in Kazakhstan where in 1998 the President of that Republic awarded him posthumously the "Erligi Ushin" Medal for his contributions to high-altitude mountaineering and for his personal courage.

G. Weston Dewalt is a writer and investigative filmmaker who specializes in human rights issues, the confluence of humankind and the environment, and biography. His film Genbaku shi: Killed by the Atomic Bomb compelled the U.S. Department of Defense to acknowledge that American POWs had been killed during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and London.

This is the gripping true account of the worst disaster in the history of Mt. Everest. On May 10, 1996, two commercial expeditions headed by experienced leaders attempted to climb the highest mountain in the world, but things went terribly wrong. Crowded conditions on the mountain, miscommunications, unexplainable delays, poor leadership, bad decisions, and a blinding storm conspired to kill. Twenty-three men and women, disoriented and out of oxygen, struggled to find their way down the side of the mountain. In the dark, battered by snow and driven by hurricane-force winds, some of the climbers became hopelessly lost and resigned themselves to death. But head climbing guide Anatoli Boukreev refused to give up hope. Climbing blind in the maw of a life-threatening storm, Boukreev brought climbers back from the edge of certain death.

Booknews

Weaving together first-hand accounts by the head tour guide of the Mountain Madness expedition and an investigative narrative based on interviews with other expedition members and mountain climbing specialists, the authors explore the conditions that led to the May, 1996 disaster on Everest. The authors counter many of the claims that were made in Jon Krakauer's , written on the same subject.