- Paperback: 322 pages
- Publisher: Mountaineers Books (April 30 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0898867231
- ISBN-13: 978-0898867237
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.4 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 762 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,141,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The avalanche deaths of climbers Alex Lowe and Dave Bridges have renewed attention to Tibet's 8,027-meter Shisha Pangma and past climbs on its sheer, glacial faces. One of the more infamous is the 1982 ascent by Alex McIntyre, Doug Scott, and Roger Baxter-Jones, who summited from the unclimbed southwest face. Open to foreign tourists for less than four years, Tibet had been hobbled by the military presence of the Chinese, and the resulting communist bureaucratic minefield proved more formidable, at times, than the mountain. For two years, Scott, McIntyre, Nick Prescott, Elaine Brook, and Paul Braithwaite struggled with paperwork and revolving regulations. Meetings with mountaineering officials in Lhasa turned into maddening nights of drinking rancid tea and arguing through interpreters. Food was scarce and frequently spoiled, the yaks issued to the team were sick, and personalities in the group clashed intensely by the time they reached base camp.
By the acclimatization climb to Nyanang Ri, at 7,071 meters, two of the original six team members were on their way out. "I'm sorry, but charity ends at 5,000 meters," McIntyre tells Nick Prescott, the least experienced of the climbers. Indeed, McIntyre is on a summit mission to be stalled by no one, and Scott, in his trademark philosophical approach to mountaineering, tries to make peace between the group's remaining members. But a second acclimatization climb on 7,445-meter Pungpa Ri hastens the division, as Scott questions his own age and lack of ice skills, while McIntyre and Baxter-Jones leave him in their frozen dust. It isn't until their summit attempt that harmony seems possible and the three set out in ideal conditions. By morning, however, Scott is coughing up blood, Baxter-Jones is vomiting his meal of rotten fish, and McIntyre, who is irrepressibly itchy to move ahead, barely dodges a falling rock (an ominous omen, as he would die from a rock strike only two months later). But the trio still manages to summit flawlessly in light alpine form, lending support to Prescott's wise summation: "Mountains are all about decisions. The climbing is the easy part."
Anyone looking for an Annapurna-style drama may be disappointed with this straightforward account told in interchanging entries by McIntyre and Scott, but readers who savor a realistic description of the misery, personal discord, and sudden catharsis that define high-altitude climbing will feel duly sated by Scott's wizened reflections and McIntyre's technical detail. --Lolly Merrell
Book Description
This adventure classic captures everything from the historical to the deeply personal in a gripping account of an ambitious first ascent of the Southwest Face of Shishapangma. As Alex MacIntyre describes it, "To climb it became an ambition, but not just to climb it, we had to make the ascent with style, as light, as fast, as uncluttered as we dared, free from umbilical cords and logistics, with none of the traditional trappings of a Himalayan climb. The wall was the ambition, the style became the obsession."
Placing the expedition into a historical context, Doug Scott presents a wealth of historical detail about the region while Alex MacIntyre provides a unique commentary on the "big peak" way of life-from the frenzied preparations to the clashes of personality, the affection, and the humor.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Something of a disappointment, Jun 5 2000
By K. Freeman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shisha Pangma Expedition (Paperback)
I expected this book to be excellent, given its subject and authors, but I was disappointed with it. Like many books about Himalayan expeditions, Shishapangma focused on disagreements within the team. But whereas in other cases this has been amusing or affecting, here it seemed dreary, and unfortunately tinged with misogyny. The climbing itself is described in rather dull terms; one gets little sense of excitement or danger. Scott's informational/philosophical postscripts may actually be the best part of the book. Don't read this one unless you're studying the route or are a real completist.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Boardman Tasker Ward winner, July 25 2010
By High Words - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shisha Pangma Expedition (Paperback)
The 1984 Boardman-Tasker Award was given to this book about the 1982 Shishapangma expedition to the 14th tallest mountain.I concur with the choice.(Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker were lost on the North-East ridge of Everest in 1982. Their lives and writings have since been honored by the Boardman-Tasker Award.)
Co-author Alex MacIntyre was killed by stonefall on Annapurna in 1982 after the Shishapangma trip, but before the book came out.
I judge mountaineering books by their insightful quotations, both in terms of quality and frequency. This is poignant:
"By now Alex's mother will have put up a stone at Annapurna Base Camp which reads:
It is better to live one day as a tiger than a hundred as a sheep."
Roger Baxter-Jones in
Scott & MacIntyre, The Shishapangma Expedition.
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