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Comment by bhickey | Hacker News Reader

Wade Davis was a speaker at the 2012 American Alpine Club meeting at the Ford Assembly Plant in Richmond, CA. He had a line that stuck with me: death is the price we pay for living. Side note, Davis is mentioned in at least one episode of the X-Files, owing to his work on zombies in Haiti.

These aren't Everest specific recs, but if any of you are looking for mountaineering reading:

_The White Spider_ by Heinrich Harrer

_The Beckoning Silence_ and _Into the Void_ by Joe Simpson

_Eiger Obsession_ by John Harlin. Part of my enjoyment came from my familiarity with the geography of the book.

_Solo Faces_ by James Salter, fiction, loosely based on Gary Hemmings and Royal Robbins.

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Good list! Some of my favorites:

- The Shining Mountain by Pete Boardman (one of my favorite of all books, two pretty normal guys doing something absolutely epic)

- Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).

- Touching The Void by Joe Simpson (I avoided reading this for such a long time, because it's something of a cliche, but it's actually great).

- Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in).

- Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.

The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of exploration that makes the best of these books so fun to read.

Arlene Blum is another mountaineer author worth mentioning. She's written about her expeditions including Annapurna I, as well as her work as a chemist campaigning to ban toxic flame retardant from upholstery.

Any books in particular or anywhere to start?

Annapurna A Woman’s Place and Breaking Trail. The first is about the namesake first American expedition to the top which she led, the second is her memoir. Both great reads, thankfully lacking much of the big headed bravado of other mountaineering books.

> - Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.

I adored Into Thin Air, but cannot get through Eiger Dreams. Frustrating because the stories are indeed great!

> Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).

I dunno. Joe seems to be an okay guy.

Great suggestions. I've read "The White Spider" multiple times. Every time I imagine climbing the Eiger in hobnail books, my palms sweat. A lot.

"K2: Triumph and Tragedy" by Jim Curran is an excellent book about the 1986 disaster.

I can also highly recommend the recent film "Broad Peak" directed by Leszek Dawid about the Polish mountaineer Maciej Berbeka.

> Every time I imagine climbing the Eiger in hobnail books, my palms sweat.

My guess is that they were using Tricouni [1] nails in their boots, by all accounts they work well over a different range of conditions to a rubber sole and crampon combination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricouni

Moments of Doubt by David Roberts is also enjoyable.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112066.Moments_of_Doubt

I thought Escape from Lucania and by Roberts and No Shortcuts to the top by Viesturs were both good as well.

I did not care for Roberts personal memoir On the ridge between life and death.

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