Climbing High
A womans account of surviving the '96 Everest tragedy.

Format	Book	Category	Non-Fiction
Title	Climbing High	Pages	213
Author	Lene Gammelgaard	RRP	$36.95 AUD
Publisher	Seal Press	Reviews	1
Edition	1999 (though 1st published in Denmark 1996).	Ave Rating	(4.50 of 5)

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IdratherbeclimbingM9 7/27/2005

Lene is a strong-willed Danish woman who found herself feeling a bit of a misfit in a high-dollar guided expedition to Everest. It is a deeply personal account of her experiences in preparing for the trip right through to its victorious/tragic conclusion, and gives strong insight into what it takes to reach the summit of Everest and survive. You tend to feel her frustrations and by default also experience her highs and lows through her, at times, evocative writing. It throws a tangential light on her relationship/s with expedition leader Scott Fischer, and head guide Anatoli Boukreev; which makes interesting reading if combined with reading other books* about the same storm ravaged trip, when eight climbers died while others narrowly escaped death with some of them suffering major frostbite injuries. (*I recommend 'The Climb' by Anatoli Boukreev). She draws heavily from her diary but is a Writer as well as a Mountaineer, so her perceptions have a clarity of presentation that’s somewhere between documentary and narrative, which is a good mix when it comes to articulating her philosophies. It’s a hard book to put down when one nears the final chapters.