The Climb
Anatoli Boukreev
G. Weston DeWalt
14 June 2018
9781509867998Synopsis
In May 1996 a number of expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route. Each group contained world class climbers and relative novices, some of whom had paid tens of thousands of pounds for the climb. As they neared the summit twenty-three men and women, including the expedition leaders, were caught in a ferocious blizzard. Disorientated, out of oxygen and depleted of supplied, the climbers struggled to find their way to safety.
Experienced high-altitude guide Anatoli Boukreev led an exhausted and terrified group of climbers back to safety before going back out into the blizzard to help others stranded on the mountain. Rescuing a number of people from certain death, he emerged a hero.
The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev is an honest and gripping account of true endurance and contains interviews with most of the surviving climbers, medical personnel, Sherpa guides, and families of the dead who experienced the tragedy.
This edition also includes the transcript of the Mountain Madness debriefing, recorded five days after the tragedy, as well as G. Weston de Walt's response to Jon Krakauer.
Powerful . . . a breath of brisk, sometimes bitter clarity . . . Boukreev did the one thing that denies the void. He took action. He chose danger, and he saved lives.New York Times
The Climb has a story that will grip and haunt you.Alex Garland, author of The Beach and The Tesseract
This is essential reading for anyone who has read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air . . . Krakauer painted Boukreev as an irresponsible Russian villain; but that night, Boukreev effected on of mountaineering history's most remarkable rescues.Guardian
