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The Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Through the Killer Storm | 
 enlarge | Author: Matt Dickinson
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 98395
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0812933400
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.522092
EAN: 9780812933406
ASIN: 0812933400
Publication Date: May 2, 2000
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Amazon.com
On May 10, 1996, a paralyzing storm killed 12 climbers on Mt. Everest, disfigured many others, and put the peak back on its lofty throne. While the disaster on the South Face has received nearly all of the publicity, most notably in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Anatoli Boukreev's The Climb, The Other Side of Everest details a novice's remarkable ascent through that same storm on the colder and more difficult North Face. With alarming details, author and cameraman Matt Dickinson describes the horror of the extreme altitude and crippling storm: the hunger, pain, fear, and exhaustion. At one point, the party comes face to face with failure: "As we stepped over the legs of the corpse to continue along the Ridge, we crossed an invisible line in the snow--and an invisible line of commitment in our own minds." For most of the journey, it must be said, Dickinson is uncomfortable with himself and his surroundings. But his honesty is refreshing. Through his travails, he develops a reverence for a mountain that demands respect, and as a result, the occasional moments of epiphany so central to the genre still retain a ring of truthfulness. Adventure buffs will welcome this addition to the Everest library. --Ben Tiffany
Product Description
This dramatic tale of the storm that hit Mount Everest in the spring of 1996 will resonate with anyone fascinated by life on the outer edge of physical and psychological limits. Before the killer storm subsided, some climbers reached the summit, others abandoned their quest, and twelve people froze to death. Matt Dickinson, a filmmaker and a novice climber, chose that fateful May for his first ascent of Everest, up the treacherous North Face. His story is one of discovery, tragedy, and personal triumph--told, literally, from the other side of the world's tallest peak. It will be cherished by all readers eager to experience adventure, from their armchairs to their own base-camp bivouac.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 Riveting "Thin Air" story from another angle July 26, 2007
One of hundreds who gathered at the foot of Everest during the ill-fated climbing season of spring 1996 which claimed the lives of 12 (eight during the famous storm described by Jon Krakauer in "Into Thin Air"), British adventure filmmaker Matt Dickinson had no intention of summitting. He had never been higher than 20,000 feet and had summitted only twice - a Himalayan trekking peak and an Ecuadorian volcano.
"To serious Himalayan mountaineers these were mere nodules, amusing warm-up molehills to be conquered before breakfast.
Climbing them had been extremely difficult."
He was there to document British actor Brian Blessed's third attempt at Everest. Now almost 60 and overweight, Blessed intended to follow the route up the North Face that his hero George Leigh Mallory and partner Andrew Irvine had disappeared from in 1924.
But neophyte Dickinson did summit. He and mountaineer Alan Hinkes, who had been hired to do the summit filming, were the only members of their expedition to do so and Dickinson's book, "The Other Side Of Everest" describes events on the North Face during that fateful season.
The book is a page-turner but it's hard to imagine a book about Everest that wouldn't be. Drawn by a challenge incomprehensible to most of us, all climbers risk death from cold, high winds, altitude sickness, dehydration, and sudden weather changes to say nothing of the forbidding terrain and chronic illnesses brought on by the inhospitable climate.
"The air is dry, adding to the draining effects of altitude. Throats become sore. Lips become cracked. Fingers split and get infected. Minds start to wander, thinking of home - thinking of anything but the terrifying mountain that sits above the valley.
I was excited to be at Everest Base Camp, but I can't say I liked it."
And this is only the beginning. Dickinson's persistent nausea, throbbing headaches and throat infections (during the 1924 expedition a climber nearly choked on the lining of his own larynx) only grow worse as they climb. Falling rocks, sinkholes and avalanches add themselves to the lengthening list of dangers, headed, as always, by altitude and dehydration which not only sap strength but cloud judgment.
Moving approximately one kilometer an hour, the team reaches an intermediate camp and chips ice for water. "I managed to get my gloves wet in the process of collecting the water and by the time I got back to the tent, the fabric had frozen as hard as iron. I had to prise my fingers apart with my other hand to remove them from the saucepan handle."
The water must then be boiled lengthily. Here, on Everest, water sources are badly polluted. Each new camp presents itself littered with food packets, discarded equipment, toilet paper and human waste. Years of it.
None of this sounds like any fun, to say the least. But though Dickinson doesn't say when it happens, probably doesn't know, his desire to summit takes hold. His team of five, including Blessed and Hinckes, reaches Advance Base Camp for their summit push May 9, the night before the killer storm.
Although the day dawns clear, the team leader nixes a summit try, citing unstable weather, much to Dickinson's frustration. This is not the last time he questions the judgment of those more experienced. But Dickinson honestly, disarmingly, describes his own obnoxious rashness - fuming as the day proceeds bright and sunny and the nearby Indian expedition's lead climbers head for the summit.
By 4 p.m. the weather had deteriorated. "Now I was extremely grateful that we were still at Camp Three." Three of the Indians returned, while three went on. And then the storm struck. Dickinson's description is full of drama and confusion - worry over the Indians, sporadic, fragmented radio reports and in the morning the astounding news from the South Face that 10 climbers were missing, including top guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.
As others have, Dickinson mulls over the motivations and actions of those who were on the mountain - the Japanese team that passed the dying Indians without helping, Hall breaking his own rules to help a client summit, Boukreev's descent from the summit. His conclusions, formed after his own summitting experience, are sympathetic and well reasoned.
But the crux of this book is Dickinson's obsession to summit despite the storm and after his team leader has aborted Blessed's attempt. The description of this nightmarish climb by a man who clearly had no real idea what he was getting into - yet would not stop - is mind boggling.
His summit drive begins with the death of an experienced climber in a tent beside him, crosses over the bodies of those who died years - and days - before, continues in the dark in winds strong enough to pluck a man off the sheer cliff edge, persists after the discovery of frozen water supplies signals inevitable dehydration and triumphs despite high altitude sickness.
It's riveting and completely alien. Dickinson's excitement is palpable. Every minute of this trip grows more gruelingly unpleasant and terrifying than the moment before. It's hard to imagine how anyone would not seize the chance to abort, given so many reasonable opportunities to do so.
Dickinson does not involve himself in the argument about neophytes on Everest (for obvious reasons) and he does not even have much to say about the piles of litter that so clearly disgust him. He concentrates on the challenge of Everest and the pull that makes some people risk their lives and health to climb it. While most of us will never quite comprehend their desire, the vicarious fascination of the climb is reward enough.
Holds up well to "Into Thin Air" May 15, 2007
I enjoyed this book as much as "Into Thin Air". It was interesting to hear how the author, a fit, experienced trekking guide, learnt how to climb on this expedition. His descriptions of the expedition politics of the several groups there at the same time was nonjudgemental, and provided real insight to the difficult decisions that were made.
A 10-Plus!! One of the Top 10 Everest Books Ever May 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you're obsessed with Everest like a lot of us, you must NOT miss this book. I am booked for a 19 day trek through Nepal to Everest Base Camp this October just to see this great mountain in the flesh. It will be a humbling experience to walk where the "star mountaineers" have come to climb and die.
I haven't read it for a few years and it is loaned out now, but when I get it back I'm reading it again.Dickinson is not a professional climber which makes it all the better to read. I believe he had not climbed a mountain higher than nearly sea level since he lives in the UK. I think his level of training to tackle this mountain was jogging or something to that affect.
His narrative of driving through the brown, lifeless Himalaya valleys was riviting ,especially his description of the lone monk walking across this frozen desert clad only in a worn-torn blanket and barefoot. He puts us in the valley literally with word pictures. Also the description of being on a sheer frozen miles-down cliff on the north side of Everest with only a few inches of shelf to put a tent and no sounds of life but the sharp call of a lone raven circling the cliffs. I could just SEE what he was telling us and I could smell and taste the cold.
The fact that he made the summit when the "experts" could not or got killed is amazing. I don't remember many pictures in this book if any, but it's a book that must be put in your Everest collection.
Different, and excellent! January 5, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The south side of Everest gets most of the press, it would seem. Yet it's the north side that pioneers Mallory and Irvine nearly succeeded in scaling, in 1924; and the North Face had its full share of climbers during the now infamous spring 1996 season. Among those climbers was British film director Matt Dickinson.
From the expedition's start, this is a different adventure than the one so famously recounted by Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air. Dickinson, pursuing an adventure filming project that has his wife delivering him to the airport in tears, takes his readers along through the lengthy trip that brings Western climbers to Base Camp on Everest's Tibet side. For this 30-something father of three young children, who has never before climbed above 20,000 feet, summiting Everest personally seems like a fool's project. He's there to make a film. Not to come down with a life-threatening case of "Summit Fever" - but that happens to him just the same, in the wake of the May 10 blizzard that catches so many expeditions unaware on both sides of the mountain.
What makes this tale different from other author/climbers' accounts of May 1996 on Everest isn't just the fact that it offers a first-hand narrative of what happened before, during and after the storm on the North Face, where lives were also lost. It becomes truly intriguing as Dickinson's expedition, and others on the North Face that spring, pick up the pieces of their storm-savaged tents and equipment after the disaster. As climbers' bodies fail them, when the weather finally allows the expedition to proceed, and one by one they fall back, Dickinson finds himself joining forces with the only other expedition member able to continue.
This is a grittier work in many ways than those written by more seasoned mountaineers, because so much of what those other authors find familiar - and only to be expected - is new to Dickinson. It's therefore a great read for those of us who love climbing books, but wouldn't dream of ascending a snow-clad peak ourselves. The one thing that annoyed me was the editors' insistence on converting metric measurements for American readers, every single time a measurement was mentioned. We Yanks aren't quite that dumb, I think, and it quickly became so irritating that it kept jolting me out of the story. That's my only real criticism of an otherwise first-class book.
 The Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Trough the Killer Storm November 29, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The other side of Everest is a pretty good book. It's a little bit shaky and confusing in the beginning but it gets better. The book is about this guy, Brian, who wants to climb Mt. Everest. This will be his third attempt to climb Everest, failing to do so in the times before. Brian asks a guy named Matt Dickenson, the writer of the book; to film him climbing. Matt has photographed and made many other movies about wild adventures before, but never something like Everest. He has climbed some other smaller mountains before also. Because he is away so much filming things his wife and him are having some problems. She says that if he goes he would be risking his life, and would be away from his kids and her for a long time. Matt decides that it would be good to be apart from his wife for a while, to let things cool down, so Matt gathers a team and a month or two later, they head off to Everest. During the weeks before he leaves he builds his body and prepares to climb. After arriving at the mountain they start to acclimate. They do that by climbing up to Advance Base camp and back down to Base camp. They do this a couple times then start off for the attempt at the summit. It is soon realized; by some of the experienced climbers on the team, that they are moving too slow and if they keep going at this pace, that they will most likely die. They have to make a choice; either to take a chance and keep going or turn back, with Brian failing once again. During the narrative, there are other little stories about the other teams that are climbing Everest. The author, Matt Dickenson, has a nice flow to his writing; although in some parts it gets kind of confusing. Also there are some black and white pictures that Matt took, which are interesting to look at. Matt uses lots of descriptive words that make great images in my mind. Will Brian and the team keep going? Will they make it to the summit? Read The Other Side of Everest to find out.
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