High Crimes

Quick quiz:

High Crimes is:

a.  The bestselling book that Snakes on a Plane is based on

b.  A harrowing tale about a family of trapeze artists

c.  Insight into the altered mental state of convicted drug users

d.  The extremely dubious nature of business on Earth's highest peak

If you answered anything other than (d), then you didn't take a very good look at the picture.

High Crimes:  The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas takes us on a journey to the slopes of the world's highest peak and proceeds to tell one ghastly tale after another about how it's not just the altitude, lack of oxygen, and freezing temperatures you should be worried about.

This book generally garners favorable reviews, but some detractors use "sour grapes" on the part of the author (who didn't summit in two attempts) to point to his biases and overall negative experience.  The short answer to that is, "Well duh."  Kodas didn't write this book because it was all smooth sailing and they had the world's first ever game of Everest Summit Volleyball.  He wrote it because he was more than a bit shocked to see vast amounts of money being spent, and in spite of that (and partly because of it), people can still find themselves abandoned on the mountain by the very people they paid to help them out.  In light of this, I thought it was reasonably balanced.  Nobody came out smelling like a rose, but few people were entirely villanized either.  Many of the woes up there are a burden shared by the climbing community.  Sour grapes can't explain away a climber who hired a guide at great personal expense because he believed that guide had actually summited before (when he in fact hadn't, wasn't particularly experienced, and had caused a very serious incident with that last attempt).  It doesn't explain away his own guide knocking his wife (the guide's) unconscious and throwing her out of the tent.  It doesn't explain away rampant theft of often life-saving supplies, or highly problematic oxygen equipment.  No, there's more going on here than sour grapes.

I've never personally had any aspirations to climb Everest.  After reading this, should I ever hear of anybody else who does, I'll certainly encourage them to do their homework.

Now, how'd the book flow you ask.  I agree with some who found it disjointed.  The narrative concerns itself with two major story arcs in particular, and I think the intent was to break it up to perhaps heighten the intrigue a bit.  The result was unnecessary and often confusing.  There are enough people and places in here, and the true stories of people dying on Everest are sufficiently compelling that there was no need to break it up so thoroughly.

That said, yeah, I'd recommend it.  The stories of big money (upwards of $60+ thousand per climber), shoddy knock-off equipment, amateur climbers, and unscrupulous guides and Sherpas makes for interesting (if disturbing) reading.

Some people make the point that you never know what you're going to do when you're up on the mountain, your energy's drained, etc. etc.  I'll concede that yes, somebody on their way back down after many miles of hiking, physically exhausted, perhaps almost out of oxygen themselves would be hard pressed to additionally shoulder the burden of getting somebody else who's in trouble off the mountain.  They just might not be able to do it, and might need to save themselves.

Where I have a hard time is, there seems to be story after story of people on the way UP the mountain...as fresh and energetic as they're going to get...passing by people in trouble because hey, they paid their money to summit, and they're not about to give up that opportunity to stop and help some poor hapless soul.  Should that person go on to succeed, how can they sleep at night with that memory playing over and over.  That's a sad commentary on human nature.  Equally sad are tales of this going on, and people can't so much as radio back to base camp to let others know that somebody is in trouble.  Or, they do radio, but nobody at base camp can step away from their parties to mount some kind of rescue.

Overall, the book is a mix of heroism and the corruption of the human spirit.