One Mountain Thousand Summits: The Untold Story of Tragedy and True Heroism on K2

My appetite for extreme mountaineering books appears to have some limits, and Freddie Wilkinson's One Mountain Thousand Summits: The Untold Story of Tragedy and True Heroism on K2 (New American Library, 2010) exceeds them. 

Billed as an insider's account of a 2008 tragedy on K2 (the world's second-highest mountain) which ended with eleven climbers dead, One Mountain somehow manages to drain the events of drama.  And Wilkinson is nothing resembling an insider.  He wasn't part of any of the excursions; in fact, he's never climbed K2 himself.  He wasn't involved in the tragedy in any way as it unfolded.  So he's chasing a story after the fact.  And with no firsthand experience on which to draw, he pads the book out with a great deal of barely-related information that far exceeds the cover blurb's suggestion that it will tell some previously unknown story of Sherpa heroism.  While the information is good, the lack of organization or focus is amateurish and annoying.  This should have been a much shorter, tighter book.

The early part of the book is a description of the events on the mountain, as best they can be reconstructed.  But unlike Jon Krakauer, whose Into Thin Air sets the standard for mountaineering disaster coverage, or Ed Viesturs, whose No Shortcuts to the Top I just finished, Wilkinson not only wasn't there, he's never been there.  So he can't transport the reader there.  It's a fine enough factual account, but after a briefly promising start, he doesn't manage to build any sort of storyline or drama into it or make the climbers come alive as individuals.  I've never before been mildly bored by a story of people freezing to death on a mountain.

After this -- only about a third of the way through the book -- the focus shifts around somewhat aimlessly.  There's a great deal of information about the reporting on the tragedy as it unfolded and afterward.  That's of interest to anyone studying media coverage, but not inherently all that exciting.  There's a lot about the history of Sherpa mountaineering, which is very interesting information but dilutes the book's focus, especially when he goes off on a long digression about the relationship between Pemba Bhote and American professor Virginia O'Leary.  The only relationship this has to the book's subject is that Pemba's brother was one of the Nepalese (Bhote and Sherpa are culturally distinct groups) victims of the disaster.  That's not enough for me to care about Pemba, his mother, his siblings, and Professor O'Leary, no matter how clever Pemba is about improving his family's economic situation. 

Finally, we move to Annie Starkey, the partner of one of the dead climbers, who is furious that early reporting on the tragedy suggested that her partner, Gerard McDonnell, abandoned other climbers to their deaths.  Wilkinson makes a convincing case that this is the very opposite of the truth, and that McDonnell actually perished because he stayed behind to assist others.  That could have been a great tale, a unifying focus for the whole book, but Wilkinson just doesn't have the storytelling chops for it.  Similarly, the case he makes that the Sherpas (both guides and those Sherpas climbing as members of the expeditions) were cheated of credit for their heroism is a good one, but it gets diluted by the long description of Sherpa history and how Wilkinson traveled back and forth to Nepal repeatedly to speak to the Nepalese climbers.  I'm sure Wilkinson is a nice guy, but I have no desire to read about him and his travails.

I was somewhat handicapped in my reading by my comparative lack of familiarity with K2 and these particular mountaineers.  After reading about Everest for years, I have a basic knowledge of the geography of the mountain (the South Col, the Hillary Step, and so forth) and some knowledge of some of the major players in Himalayan mountaineering whose names come up over and over again.  But K2 is a new mountain for me, and of the enormous cast of climbers and support personnel (Sherpas, Bhotes, and Pakistani porters), not a single name was familiar to me.  And Wilkinson throws them all in at such a pace and with so little personal detail or background that I had trouble keeping the cast straight, even with his helpful chart of the various expeditions, and thus trouble reacting emotionally to their fate.  But I started Into Thin Air in the same position and didn't have nearly the same difficulty; Krakauer knows how to start with a tight focus and spread it out at a manageable pace.  And Wilkinson has an unfortunate tendency to introduce people and places without context -- Annie Starkey turns up several times before Wilkinson bothers to explain who she is relative to McDonnell.

All in all, I'm a little sad about this book.  The bones of a very good story are there, but the telling is so poor and the focus so diffuse that it never really catches fire or becomes the page-turner I'd hoped for.  The fact that Wilkinson was not actually present and had no personal connection to the climbers is a huge handicap.  Without knowing them and knowing the mountain, he can't make the reader know them or -- worse -- care.  A good editor could have done a great deal with this book, but apparently no one bothered.

So while there's plenty of interesting information here, as a whole, One Mountain Thousand Summits is just not very good and certainly doesn't push any of the emotional buttons that I look to get pushed in a survival-in-extremis tale.  I can't really recommend it. 

But just in case anyone wants to ignore me:

Comments

[Serge]

I am now awaiting reports from Susan that she has taken up climbing. Combined with hooping, possibly.

Top of the world, Ma!

[Susan de Guardiola]

One thing I've learned from reading these books is that I certainly have no business whatsoever attempting high-altitude mountaineering. If nothing else, I have a real problem with heights and the idea of dangling from ropes over an abyss does not remotely appeal. And I don't like being cold.

I believe my sister has been to Everest Base Camp. But I'll just see the IMAX film to experience as much of Everest as I need to.

My mother is a hiking guide in the Catskills and Adirondacks -- for a retiree, she has a formidable amount of energy -- and at some point this fall she hopes to take me to do a little gentle up-and-down strolling in Harriman. Nothing I can't do in high-top sneakers. Nothing technical.

[Serge]

a little gentle up-and-down strolling

Mom to herself: "The fool believed me. Bwahahahah!!!"