TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Going Downhill

ADVERTISEMENT

By STEVE TURNER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 4, 2008

"High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed," by Michael Kodas (Hyperion, $24.95)

"Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season," by Nick Heil (Henry Holt and Co., $26)

There's a chill in the thin air of Mount Everest.
Political unrest is widespread as China strives to carry the Olympic torch to the top of the world.

But more down-to-earth problems have become common: drug use, prostitution, and theft of precious supplies at base camp and up high on the mountain. Unscrupulous guides and even sherpas are not above extorting money from climbers.
Two new books look at the dark side of climbing Everest in the 21st century and the sometimes tragic results.

"High Crimes" recounts the 2004 Connecticut expedition to Everest that writer-photographer Michael Kodas convinced his employer, the Hartford Courant, to help sponsor.

What must have seemed a grand adventure, however, eroded into infighting among the team members, particularly the guide who seemed to have his own agenda of bagging another summit climb.

Yet, Kodas continued to believe things would get better, even to the slopes of Everest, where he eventually abandoned the climb, convinced that if he ran into trouble up high that he could no longer trust his guide and the sherpas to help him.

Although Kodas didn't know it at the time, on the other side of the mountain, Nils Antezana, a 69-year-old Bolivian physician who lived in the United States, faced a similar decision. Antezana decided to press on to the summit but became incapacitated shortly after starting down. His guide continued ahead, while two sherpas stayed with Antezana and tried to get him moving. Eventually, though, they left him with a bottle of oxygen to face certain death.

These two stories form the bulk of "High Crimes." While Kodas seems to spend too much time on details of the Antezana family, his portrait has an emotional payoff as they look for answers to Antezana's tragic end.

Move ahead two years to the 2006 climbing season, forever marked by controversy over two climbers left for dead, as others passed them by, an act that ignited a storm of criticism, including from Sir Edmund Hillary.

In "Dark Summit," Nick Heil, a former senior editor at Outside magazine, turns in a carefully researched look at how things went wrong in 2006, and why.

He's particularly skilled at portraits of some major players on the Everest stage, including Russell Brice, the New Zealand owner of one of the bigger commercial climbing operations on Everest. If you think you know Brice from the Discovery Channel documentary series "Everest: Beyond the Limit," then you likely will be surprised at the scope of his career both on and off the slopes.

Heil also digs deep into the death of British climber David Sharp, who tried to scale Everest on the cheap, with no radio or Sherpa support and only two bottles of oxygen. Ignored by many other climbers, he died on the mountain - his arms frozen up to the elbows, his legs frozen up to his knees, his face blackened by frostbite.

Another climber, Australian Lincoln Hall, was also left for dead, but he survived a night on the upper slopes of Everest, a bright spot in an otherwise grim season.

Either of these books is worth the read for armchair adventurers looking for new material about the world's highest peak. They may be the safest way to go.

Steve Turner is a page designer for the Tribune.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT