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Streamlining would have made for a better read. No photo. Readers must wait 200 pages to get to the meat of this tale, the author's 'night out' atop Everest when he was left for dead. I wanted to know more about the frostbite because of the cover photo, but we never really see what happened afterward. Still, in the genre of deadly Everest literature, this one is worth wading through the dross to reach the shining nuggets. Seemingly every random thought and event that entered the writer's head before, during and after are recounted here, leaving the reader a bit antsy. Pages of 'hallucinations' weigh things down.
Unlike many other Everest climbers-turned-authors, Hall does express awe and wonder regarding the natural beauty of Everest and its surroundings. The author does not stray into the broader issues - environmental, social, political, economic, cultural, etc. - of the commercialization of Everest. This book complements, rather than competes with or overlaps, other descriptions of ascents on Mt. From this standpoint, I consider Hall to be operating on a higher plane of awareness than those climbers for whom an Everest summit attempt is just an exercise in self-aggrandizement. There is occasional superfluous detail, but it's easy to skim through. Everest. This is a very personal account of Hall's 2006 expedition.
I say don't waste your money and check it out from a library rather than buy it. I do however take exception to how poorly this book is written. He rambles and there are paragraphs of boring minutia, that not only don't reveal any insight into who he is, nothing of any real interest regarding the "story" is added. But this guy.hmmmm he professes to be a writer.
I'm an avid reader and find especially interesting the personal accounts of extreme survival situations. Buy. Yes he survived an event that most people would not have and thus obviously has a story to tell, but his editor should have reined him in and kept his rambling under control. I am in awe of strength of the human spirit and the will to survive.
Whoa, I struggled with much of the book, because it was/is so poorly written. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, instead. Lincoln Hall's ordeal is no exception. Now I know not all and actually most people that do have these experiences aren't authors and so some forgiveness is required.
And he had thought scaling Everest was going to be the real challenge.In this account, Hall speaks in real terms of his battle with his mind and body to get through the night on Everest- something that no-one else had done. Lincoln Hall's climb on Everest was supposed to be in support of a young Australian's attempt to be the youngest ever climber to reach the summit. This book is truly an inspiration read. A revealing tale of the human body's ability to overcome adversity and to come back from the warm comforting reach of death, the strength of a family's love and the connection with the natural world. When he was forced back, Hall took the opportunity for one last go at reaching the summit himself. In a year where a dozen climbers died on the mountain, Lincoln Hall was also left for dead just below the peak of Everest as night fell.
It's like he fails to really see & connect to other people completely.The humanity you find in the books by Krakauer & Kodas seem to be completely missing in this book. being attached to a highly impractical diversion, claiming to oneself that it will bring some kind of fulfillment of happiness, when in reality it seems to be the epitome of needless suffering.But using religion to one's own purposes & for appearances, or being a religious hypocrite, is not something self-proclaimed Buddhists have a monopoly on, of course. Being a connoisseur of human folly, I'm a fascinated spectator of high altitude mountaineering stories. And I'm afraid this guy is among them. And it's very ironic really - because it seems to me that the aspiration & commitment to climbing Mount Everest is by its very nature, the ultimate of what Buddhism teaches to stop. That reviewer also said, more or less, that she was disappointed that he failed to describe his fellow climbers in any way that would give you a sense of who they were & what it was like to be on a team with them. But I guess not.
And some actually seem to use their religion to justify what appears to be the exact opposite of right action. They're all hung up on the trappings of rituals and a facade, that they seem oblivious to their attachment to the most ridiculous desires that even most non-Buddhist materialistic people don't attach themselves to.
Hall seemed almost detached from the story he was penning", and I sensed that from the get-go, and couldn't even force myself halfway through the book. Sadly, I've noticed that many western Buddhists I've come across seem to miss the forest for the trees.
And on a mountain that, by it's very nature, seems to attract an inordinate proportion of sociopaths & narcissists, I'm not really surprised when I realize some mountaineer I'm reading about is self-centered, emotionally immature, and/or lacking the normal social connections & human motivations most of us have. And as for the author's professed religion.
Seems that every religion has its share. One review I read said, "Mr.
And then, what's the point.It's very disappointing, because by his interviews, and the fact that Andrew Brash calls him "friend", I'd assumed he had some measure of humility & gratitude about the importance of other people to him.
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