Joe Simpson's part autobiography and part sombre condemnation of commercial greed on Everest and elsewhere. Well crafted but depressing reading.
In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent. He was filmed in his last hours for a television feature. Why did onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse in Peru in 1985 - 'because it might compromise their summit bid'. It is an ethical question that Joe is forced to confront as he climbs a hazardous route on Pumori. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Joe wonders if the noble instincts that once characterised mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced - as in politics, in business, in the media and in other facets of society.
A few photos.
By Joe Simpson.
Card cover, 20cm x 13cm, 207 pages.
First published 1997. This edition 1997.
ISBN: 978-0-099-75611-8.