|
| 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Kodas
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $10.36
You Save: $14.59 (58%)
New (39) Used (18) Collectible (2) from $4.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 22390
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1401302734
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.522
EAN: 9781401302733
ASIN: 1401302734
Publication Date: February 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New Condition. Hardcover.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Everest Guide Whisleblower-A Can't Put It Down Book March 21, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
ANYONE CONSIDERING CLIMBING EVEREST AND HIRING A GUIDE: BEWARE!!
READ THIS BOOK FIRST!!
Being an Everest-ophile I just had to get this one.
Right now I'm about half way through. I have to force myself only to read a few pages a night. If I would let myself, I'd have read this in a day!
I know it has problems with chronology, but if you just read each chapter as is, it's not a problem.
Having been to the Solu Khumbu it really hit home. I got sucked into thinking Kathmandu was a magical, pristine village because of the IMAX Everest movie. Nope, it's a huge, huge filthy, poverty-ridden city sitting in the most beautiful geography you could find, but the hideous smog and poverty (Nepal is 70% Hindu, so it's basically India North) blots all that out.
The author also has some interesting stuff about Tibet. I thought they were nature loving,peace loving, gentle fuzz bunnies, but he describes in Tingri, Tibet of watching children stone a puppy to death which the author suspects he may have had for dinner. Then the graphically described "sky burial" in which the dead are dismembered for the vultures to eat. Whatever person who could do that to a body, I don't want to get around!!! Basically the body, bones and all,beaten with rocks, is rendered into a giant meatball for the birds so that there is nothing left.
One climber on Everest had such a bad time with all the really immoral things like leaving sick people on the mountain due to climbers overcome with "summit fever" that he walked all the way back to Lukla from Everest. He was sickened by the behaviors whole mess of climbers and had to get away from the mountain and the idiot people that badly.
The Sherpas I met I suppose they were pretty honest people, now I'm not so sure. Kodas said 2% steal from climbers but the other 98% stood by and let it happen. Thieves would steal items meant for life while a climber was summiting. I.E. stoves, sleeping bags, crampons. They even cut the ropes and took the pitons as one climber was coming down dangerous mountain. He saw the end of the rope as he was repelling, with only 3 feet of rope left. If he'd not seen this, he'd have fallen for miles. Thieves would steal KNOWING that the returning climber could die without this equipment!Even the guides were stealing from clients!\
If you are interested in Mt. Everest, this is a soap opera on a grand scale! You will not be bored! When I finish the book I will write more.
I was thinking about going back to see Everest from the Tibet side but cannot with good conscience give China the money due to their brutal treatment of humans and animals. Kodas's book has made me see Nepal and Tibet in a whole other light. Great book!
I have now finished the book. Wow, be sure to check your guide's credentials before you go! Some of the people have never even been to the summit but allegedly have stolen summit pictures of those who did.Some have left clients to die just so they could make their own summit bid. Climbers climbing in the name of charity, but using those dollars to fund their own trips; Sherpas hiding under rocks so that they don't 'see' the dying hiker that they would have to rescue, people who climb Everest, not as mountaineers, but as trophy hunters (peak baggers), just another thing to do on their lists of worldly experiences. Pretty reprehensible behavior.
I had always pictured Everest as a big, noble mountain and I was over there. But after reading this book, all the evil that goes on among climbers has made the mountain small and soiled. I was thinking about going back, but now the whole experience has been dirtied. If you go, skip Everest season in April/May, go in October. There are some climbers at EBC but not like spring and the weather is very decent.
Definitely informative and insightful March 18, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book. It really gives the reader a detailed account of the many things that can go wrong on the mountain, and the importance of really researching your guides, if you want to climb Everest with one. I think that it is a must read for anyone thinking of climbing Everest, because the information about oxygen is crucial, since you probably won't make it to the top and back without it. I met Michael Kodas at a book signing and I think he is a man with great character and I do not believe that he is just bitter about not making it to the top and wanting to blame others. He is a journalist and he felt that this information needed to be out there and I couldn't agree more. Plus, it was a very entertaining read.
Engaging and Entertaining March 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this book because I never have and never will have what it takes to climb Mount Everest. I lived this adventure through the tale Michael Kodas has so skillfully told. Yes, the characters are plenty but this is what adds to the richness of the book. Telling a story chronologically and objectively is the stuff of fifth grade research projects. If you want to read a thoroughly fascinating book read "High Crimes". The way that Kodas has so artfully injected the lives of so many people with the same goal of climbing Everest is what makes this book so engaging. The fact that so many tales are being told from so many different points of view is what keeps it entertaining. The ease of reading this work is the mark of a truly talented author.
 A stellar thesis bogged down by the author's own personal tale March 3, 2008
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
High Crimes tells two narratives: (1) journalist Michael Kodas's Everest summit journey and (2) a separate, concurrent summit bid in which an elderly climber was led to this death by a sociopathic, inexperienced, freeloading guide. Kodas combines these two experiences to make his case that Everest is a modern day cesspit of greed, crime, and man-made disaster waiting to happen at every turn.
Kodas makes many valid claims about the conditions on Everest. Sickness isn't always caused by nature - now fistfights and STDs are prime reasons for visits to the medical tent. Climbers are pushing themselves with performance enhancing drugs, or cutting costs and equipment to the minimum and assuming other climbers will bail them out in a pinch. Theft is rampant, and unscrupulous businessmen sell unfit oxygen tanks, putting climbers in peril when they gamble their life on their tank in a final summit bid.
In Kodas's own experience, he ran across teammates willing to steal or lie to get ahead as well as a cheapskate guide who shirked responsibility and sponged off others. The weakest parts of the book arise in Kodas's descriptions of his own adventure, however. He airs a laundry list of gripes about every trifle of a disagreement on the team. The team engaged in back-and-forth spats via their blogs, and Kodas was clearly hurt that "their side" got published first, or more believably, in his opinion. He uses his book to set the record straight on every single detail, bogging down an otherwise gripping multi-faceted adventure story.
High Crimes is worth it for the story of Dr. Nils Antazana alone. Antazana, a skilled but older climber, fell prey to a con man of a "guide" who abandoned the doctor for dead and used his money and equipment for a personal summit bid. The story, which is told piecemeal throughout the entire text of High Crimes, reinforces the lawless frontier picture Kodas paints of the Everest base camp and man-eat-man world of the slopes.
Good Read March 2, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The book was interesting but I found myself being bored in the end with the stories about Dr. Antezana, maybe because I already knew the story behind it. Yes, the doctor picked a bad guide but he could have died with a good guide like so many others and he took more of a risk because of his age. I would like to have heard more about Mr Kodas own team. I felt he never really made it clear what happened between his team mates. In the end I felt most sorry for Lhapka Sherpa's kids, one left in Katmandu and the other abandon by Lhapka and George for months at the time in order for them to climb a mountain over and over again.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
