Until recently, mountain climbing was a man’s world. Nowhere is that more in evidence than in Near Death in the Mountains: True Stories of Disaster and Survival, a testosterone-fired compilation of climbing stories. The guys in these stories are gutsy and they suffer. They inch their way up and down mountains in the face of devastating storms. They lose fingers, toes, and the occasional ear to frostbite. They break bones—lots of bones. They watch their friends die in horrifying ways. They rescue each other, sometimes. Other times, they leave each other to die in the name of self-preservation. They wrestle with guilt and grief and fear, with love and selfishness and betrayal. Still, except for Nando Parrado, a passenger on an ill-fated flight through the Andes, all of the men in these stories chose to climb mountains. They know that on even the best-planned trips, storms blow in and people die. As with many books of collected excerpts, there are some real gems here—and some duds. Bottom line: there are enough gripping, gory details to keep true adventure fans happy.
What does it feel like to fall hundreds of feet down a cliff? To hobble for days over icy slopes on a broken leg? To be swept along the face of Pakistan’s K2 in a sudden avalanche? Journalist Peter Potterfield’s In the Zone: Epic Survival Stories from the Mountaineering World is a collection of three haunting survival stories that show what can happen when mountain adventures turn into nightmares. Potterfield walks the walk: he includes a spellbinding account of his own horrifying ordeal on a tiny cliff ledge after sustaining severe injuries in a fall on Washington State’s Chimney Rock. Equally mesmerizing is his narrative of Colby Coombs’ agonizing journey down Alaska’s Mt. Foraker following the deaths of his two climbing partners in a freak avalanche. And his description of Scott Fischer and Ed Viesturs’ harrowing climb up K2—while not as captivating as the other two stories—showcases the life-sapping conditions on Earth’s highest peaks. It’s a gift for all of us armchair adventurers when a journalist takes up climbing: unlike many mountaineers, Potterfield can write like the wind—and he brings these stories to spine-chilling life.
