Mountains, Part II

A photo of me from our road trip somewhere on the Oregon Coast in 2002.

My interest in learning more about mountaineering on Everest continues.  Since my last post, I finished reading Anatoli Boukreev's The Climb.  It's actually a well-written book that tells the story from Boukreev's perspective.  His focus, of course, is on the Scott Fischer expedition and on different facts than those in Krakauer's book.  It's worth the time to read if you're interested.

In the meantime, I also read Beck Weathers' book Left For Dead.  It was surprisingly fun to read as Weathers (or his ghostwriter) has a way of saying things.  Only the first part of the book details the 1996 Everest climb; the rest of the book is autobiographical with some interesting details about Weathers' other climbs that eventually propelled him to Everest.  Again, worth the time if you're interested.  I also watched the Frontline episode produced by Breashears - another good telling of the events surrounding the Everest tragedy.  Right now I'm reading a couple of books by Ed Viesturs on climbing Everest and K2.  He's one of the best American high-altitude climbers so I like to read what he has to say but the writing is not so good.

So where does that leave me?  It leaves me looking at expeditions that take you to Everest base camp. That's a thing now where you go on adventure travels and hike to base camp.  It may not sound impressive but I've read that it's an arduous trek.  I don't know how serious I am about this - it's a huge time and money commitment and there's a lot more other places I'd like to visit before that.  But it's a thought.