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Mountain Madness | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Birkby
Publisher: Citadel
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.41
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 179273
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0806528753
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.522092
EAN: 9780806528755
ASIN: 0806528753
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: K20081002111532G
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"You're either cruisin' or you're bummin', so you might as well cruise."--Scott Fischer Mountain climber Scott Fischer's mantra would lead him to scale the highest and most treacherous peaks on earth. Best known as one of the guides who perished near the summit of Mount Everest during the tragic spring of 1996, Scott Fischer became for many an iconic symbol of audacity, hubris, and the limits of human endurance. But to those who knew him well, Scott was much more than an action figure at the heart of a modern-day cautionary tale. Now in this vivid, candid biography, Robert Birkby--one of Scott's close friends--gives us a fascinating, in-depth portrait of who Scott Fischer really was and what led him to the top of the world. As a teenage athlete growing up in New Jersey, Scott felt a restless drive to reach beyond the limits of his suburban environment. He discovered the freedom he sought during summers in the rugged mountains of Wyoming. A natural mountaineer blessed with tremendous physical strength and willpower, Scott thrived on the challenges of climbing, the beauty of the high country, and the like-minded people he found there. With the creation of a guide service he called Mountain Madness, Scott meshed his need to climb with his joy in sharing with others the lofty, rarified realms he had made his own. In adrenaline-filled narratives that take us to the world's tallest places, Robert Birkby traces the expeditions that made Scott one of the most respected climbers of the close-knit mountaineering community. From Alaska to the Soviet Union, from the granite walls of Yosemite to the punishing storms of the Himalayas, Scott's achievements are hair-raising, inspiring, and always exhilarating--a relentless quest for new highs that builds inexorably to the rendezvous with disaster on Everest. Scott's life was a journey filled with adventures, deep friendships, and dramatic successes and failures in the obscure reaches of some of the world's most beautiful and dangerous places. A captivating homage to a man who eagerly went where few dare to go, Mountain Madness is an extraordinary account of courage, passion, and extreme living.
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| Customer Reviews:
Mountain Madness gets it right June 16, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Scott Fischer's name as a mountaineer was as well known within the international mountaineering community as it was little known by the general public until his tragic death on Mount Everest during the deadly climbing season of May 1996. That deadly season at the top of the world captured the public's imagination not only because of the significant loss of life, but also because for the first time, the mostly private business of challenging the world's highest summit was available for the first time to all who were interested on the internet, over satellite phones and through Jon Krakauer's presence as an "imbedded" journalist for Outside magazine.
With Scott's death, Birkby lost a close friend and an influence in his own life going back to 1982 when the two men, who had only recently met, climbed Mt. Olympus together in Olympic National Park. Although Birkby's evolution as a highly skilled and well known outdoorsman had taken him on a self described "horizontal approach to America's wild places" his new friendship with Scott inspired new types of vertical adventures with Scott and his commercial climbing company Mountain Madness that included expeditions to the summits of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Elbrus and even eventually, to the famous Everest base camp.
Birkby's healing from the loss of his good friend began on the SCA high school crew he led in Grand Teton National Park the summer following the tragedy. But even as the pain eased, Bob and other member's of Scott's community grew frustrated with the incomplete portrait of who Scott was as a man, a father and a mountaineer that emerged publicly in major accounts of the accident. And so he eventually began a search for the truth of who Scott was, mostly gained through the eyes and hearts of those who knew Scott best, that Birkby chronicled in a manuscript that he was never sure would be published.
It is to our great good fortune that not only did Mountain Madness eventually find its way to publication last February, but also that one of the book's most influential and articulate story tellers about Scott's life was Bob Birkby himself. This first person narrative tells great stories of adventures but also seeks - quite successfully - to ask and answer questions about why people seek out adventure in the outdoors and how we succeed or fail in balancing this need with other priorities in our lives.
Scott was both a charismatic and controversial character, a fact that Birkby both acknowledges and illuminates. From his tracing of Scott's boyhood in New Jersey, watching a documentary on television about the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) that led to his odyssey to Wyoming's highest places, to his early frustrations of trying to make a living by following his passion with his company Mountain Madness, the reader learns much about what drove Scott Fischer to the heights he sought.
And while Birkby had no intention to add yet another book to the considerable cannon of Everest disaster literature, the quality of his research and the trust his interviewees obviously placed in his integrity and commitment to tell Scott's story does in fact shed some new light on that fateful May expedition. But perhaps more importantly the author has succeeded in telling the story of a man, his community and what came to be a far more fleeting moment in the history of high elevation mountaineering than any of the real people living in that moment could have recognized at the time.
As readers come to different conclusions regarding the who the real Scott Fischer was and how well Scott met the challenges of his own life and goals, Mountain Madness succeeds fully in articulating the call that wild places has on so many of us. And by the end of the book too, we realize that with his crisp descriptive prose, his own vast experience and deep sensitivity to human triumph and fragility, Bob Birkby was our perfect guide to this remarkable story.
High Adventure and Thoughtful Portrait June 1, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I got caught up in Mountain Madness and barreled through it in a week. Because Fischer's life is so crammed with the incredible, in the hands of the wrong writer, it could easily become a boring litany of outrageous feats. However, Robert Birkby gets it right. Each climb is unique in its setting, challenges, and personalities. And make no mistake, the book is crammed full of incredible adventure, both terrifying and triumphant.
It was a lot of fun to read about the camaraderie and good times the climbers have when they are not risking their lives on the mountains. I'm afraid of heights, but I sure would have enjoyed hanging out with this guys on level ground. In fact, one of the things I appreciated was not feeling like an earth-bound outsider, looking in on the gods of climbing. Through Birkby, who was a friend of Fischer's and is also admittedly more of a horizontal hiker, I felt squarely anchored in the book. I also appreciated that Birkby is an outdoorsman, and I always felt like I was in the hands of someone who understood the process of climbing.
Lastly, this is an excellent portrayal of a fascinating person. I got a good understanding of the drive behind Fischer's climbing. He seemed like a man with a relentless hunger, and yet a thoughtful man, who was struggling for balance in his life.
Colorful Story of a Colorful Climber March 5, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Everyone who met Scott remembered him. His energy and enthusiasm always left an impression. Robert captures the person, but also captures the communities of people with whom Scott spent his life. This is a remarkable book on a remarkable person.
Mountain Madness/Story Greatness February 26, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Anyone who likes mountain climbing/adventure books will really love this portrait, as the author takes the reader through the experiences of Scott Fischer's most memorable life. A great pleasure to get the "behind the scenes" view of so many aspects of Fischer's multiple adrenaline filled challenges. When asked the question "Whom would you like most to have a beer with", Scott Fisher would be at or near the top of the list of any person who appreciates an action adventurist's life story. One cannot but feel a sense of real loss at not having had the opportunity to have met this person, "in person". This book, is I suspect, as near to being a close second, as one can hope for. I expect it most likely will be a best seller within the genre of mountain climbing/true adventure books.
Mountain Madness--Kirkus Book Review February 1, 2008
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
World-class mountain climber and guide gets a posthumous tribute from a mournful, devoted friend and fellow mountaineer.
Birkby opens atop the 18,000-foot Himalayan peak Kala Patar. It's 1996, and Scott Fischer (1955 - 96) is showing him the skyline of Mount Everest, where Fischer will shortly lose his life. That climb was a far cry from the pair's initial adventure back in 1982, when Fischer convinced a then-inexperienced Birkby to scale Mount Olympus.
The author details Fischer's childhood, when a love of camping and a penchant for thrill-seeking blossomed into challenging hikes as a teenager with the National Outdoor Leadership School. He would later join NOLS as an instructor, counting among his students Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm, 1997, etc.).
Birkby tenderly recalls Fischer's clumsiness in his early 20s, when he miraculously survived more than 12 deadly plummets and was nicknamed "the Fallingest Man in Climbing." After gaining increased experience and acumen, he left NOLS and formed Mountain Madness, a company offering guided climbs whose motto was "Make it happen."
Deftly detailing Fischer's life in conversational prose, Birkby shares stories about encountering bears and traversing frozen terrain in the Alaskan wilderness, adventures ascending Kilimanjaro and the death-defying challenges of the Annapurna Circuit trail. As his son neared his first birthday, Fischer became more determined than ever to scale Everest. Climbing down from its 29,000-foot peak in May 1996, the group he was guiding got caught in a blizzard. Everyone managed to descend to safety except Fischer, who perished from exposure. The tragedy received widespread media attention and a lasting memorial in Jon Krakauer's eyewitness account, Into Thin Air (1997).
A fitting homage to one of the great outdoor extremists.
(Kirkus Reviews)
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