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Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy
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List Price:
$25.00
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$5.55
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Manufacturer: Seal Press
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.522092
EAN: 9781580050234
ISBN: 1580050239
Label: Seal Press
Manufacturer: Seal Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 264
Publication Date: 1999-06-09
Publisher: Seal Press
Studio: Seal Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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On May 10, 1996, Lene Gammelgaard became the first female Scandinavian climber ever to make it to the top of Mount Everest. By nightfall, however, treacherous weather and human error conspired to turn triumph into catastrophe. Eight climbers, including her team leader and longtime friend, Scott Fischer, would ultimately perish. This gripping account, illustrated with photos, recounts vividly the author's experiences on Everest -- including the horrible night she spent huddled in the death zone with seven other climbers -- and puts the 1996 tragedy in a new perspective. Unlike Jon Krakauer, Gammelgaard was part of Fischer's team, and she sheds new light on this legendary climber's larger-than-life personality and leadership during the ascent. And unlike other climbers who wrote about the tragedy, Gammelgaard was an amateur whose only agenda was to conquer Everest.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Moving, personal journal of an adventure and a disaster
Comment: I'm surprised @ the negative reviews here. No, you wouldn't count on this book as a sole journalistic exposition of the May 1996 Everest disaster. But after you're devoured "Into Thin Air" and "The Climb" Ms. Gamelgaard's book does, in fact, perfect the symmetry of Everest's three faces with a graceful and heartfelt book. It's infinitely more human than anything else I've read on Everest in general. Her reflections and observations provide a dimension missing in other narratives. The book feels feminine compared to the ice-and-steel books on the same expedition. Very highly recommended.
You might also want to read "Mountain Madness" to better understand Scott Fischer (shared ridgeline to Lhotse to extend that metaphor from above).
Customer Rating:
Summary: EVEREST AS A TROPHY MOUNTAIN...
Comment: This is yet another perspective of the 1996 Everest tragedy by a survivor of the fiasco. Written in journal style, the author at times frames her thoughts in a staccato, stream of consciousness, rambling fashion, coupled with new age psycho babble. At other times, she intones in a pseudo profound way about Everest. The author comes off as a silly, vapid individual.
It is interesting to note that while the author refers to Scott Fischer's expedition (of which she was a member) as an environmental one with a mission to clean up the debris on Everest left by expeditioners, nowhere does she state what it was that those on Scott Fischer's expedition were going to do to ameliorate the mess on the mountain. While she climbs up and down Everest, acclimatizing herself, she does not appear to be doing anything that remotely resembles conservation or clean up. Nor does she indicate any affirmative interest in doing anything constructive to that end.
She intones about the consequences of hubris up on the mountain. Yet, she, who had never before climbed Everest, was insisting that she would climb it without oxygen. She was even getting into arguments about it with Scott Fischer, who had the sense to tell her she would be climbing with oxygen. As it turned out, he was right. She could barely make it with oxygen. She should thank her lucky stars that he was so insistent that she climb with oxygen, otherwise she, too, would probably have died on Everest.
She also incessantly refers to herself as a mountain climber, but she didn't even know what gear she should take, relying on the recommendations of others, and then criticizing their recommendations when they ran counter to her expectations. It is clear, no matter how she wants to dress up her reasons for climbing Everest, that it was just a trophy mountain for her. She hoped that climbing Everest would gild the path for her to some psuedo celebrity status in her country of Denmark.
Her take on Anatoli Boukreev is much more sympathetic than was Jon Krakauer's in his book Into Thin Air. She saw Anatoli as an asset and misunderstood because of his taciturn demeanor. Anatoli comes off very well in this account. In fact, her take on him is much more sympathetic than her take on Scott Fischer, in whom she was apparently disappointed as an expedition leader. I must say if she acted the way she described in her book, then Scott Fischer, who was a true mountaineer, must of been heartily sick of her bravado about climbing Everest without oxygen. Her inflated sense of self is truly staggering at times. When she talks about hubris, she would do well to look no further than her own mirror.
Notwithstanding all of this, her account has some merit. As an Everest junkie, I found parts of her journal to be of interest, which is why I rated it three stars, rather than two.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's About The Big Thing: Me, Myself & I. Oh! And Everest!
Comment: I am a rabid Everest-phile, reading everything I can get my hands on and I've got all the books by the best and brightest to have ever climbed Everest.
Lene's book wasn't the worst, certainly not the best. Definitely readable because I looked forward to reading it each night before I fell asleep.
The problem with Lene is she is not comfortable in here own skin or life. She has had a laundry list of occupations: sailor, attorney, drug counselor, psychotherapist, journalist and on. I think summitting Everest was supposed to finally make her feel worthy or complete. Of what, I don't know. I don't think she found what validation she sought on Everest either and all she preached about for pages, like a mantra, was "must summit, must return safe" as if that was the secret to eternal happiness and self-acceptance: summitting Everest!
Curiously, she only writes of her small enclave of friends on this ill-fated climb and there were tons of people in Scott Fisher's group and Rob Hall's. Possibly because NOT a lot of people LIKED her. She never mentions Jon Krakauer as if he did not exist on that trip. Maybe because he had a HUGE bestseller and she didn't.
I also wonder about the relationship between she and Scott as they had a history of constant mail correspondence and running off to exotic mountains together. She does not delve deep into this.
It was a readable book however, and I loved that there was the entire climb itinerary from Base Camp to the final standby at Camp 4. Her narrative was excellent when it came to describing being trapped by the unexpected storm on Everest and what the other climbers were going through.The photos, unfortunately black & white, were quite informative though.
If you've read ALL the other books on Everest and are still hungering for more, this is NOT by far the worst of the series, just not the best.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A badly written and researched book - saving grace? the few photos!
Comment: This book is pooly written - I dont know if this is the author's insistance or some kind of translation error from danish to english, but the style of writing really puts you off.
I find it hard to believe that any american publisher's editors did not notice the bad translation, maybe this is just the style of the writing insisted by the author.
The book is about the authors trip to everest summit. There is very little substance in the book. This is more a fit for a one page or two page article in a magazine than to be published as a hard bound.
After you read Krauker's book, you are bowled over by the style, the research and the facts crammed into it. Even though Krauker may have titled it as a personal narrative, there is no disputing the fact that 'Into Thin air' provides all the information that you may want to know about the expedition, and is essentially a 'History' of the tragedy. This book on the other hand offers zilch.
The only saving grace are a couple of photos - one showing the hillary step from the bottom, the other showing the areas of the camp and'the huddle' on South col. Avoid it if you can.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not the best book out there about Everest 1996
Comment: What it is about:
In May 1996 Lene Gammelgaard became the first Scandinavian woman to reach the peak of Mount Everest. This is another book about the 1996 Everest tragedy.
What it is good about it:
It is interesting to have a woman's perspective on what happened during that season on Mount Everest. She is more sensitive to expedition's leaders than other authors who have written about this tragic event. It is also good to know that she didn't write this book after seeing all the fame that other authors received and try to cash in on this tragic event but in fact she was one of the first writers of the event and was only published later in the US.
What is bad about it:
I have a lot more bad to say then good. This is a steam of consciousness sort of writing and it just rambles. I am also in awe that this woman would write this way about herself. I don't know if that is bravery, some sort of moral adherence to the truth or if she hasn't figured out that she sounds like a high paying amateur that she complains about. She didn't even know what kind of equipment to use and she kept arguing with her expedition leader on whether or not she could climb w/o oxygen (which is very rare)!
Conclusion: There are better everest books out there!
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