Addicted to Danger [Paperback]

Jim Wickwire (Author), Dorothy Bullitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

Adventurist Jim Wickwire, an eyewitness to glory and terror above 20,000 feet, has braved bitter cold, blinding storms, and avalanches to become what the Los Angeles Times calls "one of America's most extraordinary and accomplished high-altitude mountaineers." Although his incredible exploits have inspired a feature on 60 Minutes and a full-length film, he hasn't told his remarkable story in his own words -- until now.

Among the world's most fearless climbers, Jim Wickwire has traveled the globe in search of fresh challenges. He was one of the first two Americans to reach the summit of K2, the world's second highest peak, the toughest and most dangerous to climb. But with the triumphs came tragedies that haunt him still. During several difficult climbs, he was forced to look on helplessly as four of his climbing companions lost their lives. A successful Seattle attorney, Wickwire climbed his first mountain in 1960. Deeply compelled by the thrill of risk, he pushed himself to the limits of physical and mental endurance for thirty-five years, before facing a turning point that threatened his faith in himself and his hope in the future. How he reassessed his priorities and rededicated his life -- to his family and his community -- completes a unique and moving portrait of one man's courage and commitment. Addicted To Danger is a tale of adventure in its truest sense.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1978 Jim Wickwire became the first American to top 28,250-foot K2, the second highest peak after Mt. Everest (for some, his solo bivouac near the summit the same night is an even greater feat). But it is a previous expedition to K2 three years earlier--and the author's unflinching assessment of that trip--which sets the tone for the book. "K2, the mountain that would one day represent my greatest success," he writes, "was in 1975 the scene of my greatest failure. It was a failure not because someone died or suffered a serious injury, but because my obsession to reach the summit helped doom our expedition to disappointment, discord, and, for a time, disgrace." Wickwire's memoir of a climbing life is riveting when he sticks to the mountains--including attempts on Everest, Denali, and Aconcagua--and particularly fascinating for its candid look at the internal machinations of big-time climbing expeditions: the planning, logistics, and training as well as the egos and rivalries that can derail an expedition. The lugubrious details are also here. More than one climbing partner doesn't escape from a crevasse, but it is a price exacted by the mountains, and Wickwire treats both his lost friends and the terrain with due respect. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Terrible title, but a good adventure story mixed with meditations on the meaning of life and death and dying. Wickwire is one of the world's most accomplished mountain climbers. For over 30 years he has challenged the great summits: Everest, K2 in the Himalayas, Mt. McKinley, and so many others. Some of these mountains he has conquered, some have conquered him, but he has never lost his desire to climb. The descriptions of his adventures are gripping tales. Yet ``off the mountains,'' the writing is unengaging, despite the stylistic contributions of co-author Bullitt (Filling the Void: Six Steps from Loss to Fulfillment, not reviewed). Wickwire's family, for instance, is present throughout the book, and hes clearly devoted to them, yet the reader does not get more than a one-dimensional understanding of them. On the other hand, the people with whom he climbs are finely sketched; they are real and complex. Perhaps this is because when hes not climbing, life is, both literally and figuratively, flat; perhaps only when he is in danger does he truly become alive and observant. Wickwire, however, spends little time being introspective here, until (and very effectively) near the end of the book. Both author and reader suddenly realize this book has been about death, the deaths of so many friends on the slopes: fellow climbers, a young woman he dearly loved. The brutal murder off the slopes of his law partner causes him to question hoary clichs about adventure: Is dying while doing what one loves any less terrible, any less terrifying, than dying another way? Why purposely put oneself in harm's way? Seemingly disillusioned, this aging athlete responds to his crisis of faith in perhaps the only way he knows how: He climbs a mountain. In the end, the reader knows little about why people like Wickwire are addicted to danger. It may be an unanswerable question. (b&w photos) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671019910
• ISBN-13: 978-0671019914
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,174,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Story, A Cold Book, August 9, 2000

By 

Thomas Breit (Shoreline, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Addicted to Danger (Paperback)

I'm climber, and I live in Seattle. Being a climber in the northwest means you spend a lot more time thinking about climbing and waiting for good weather to climb, than actually up in the mountains. So, you read a lot of climbing books. Some, like Galan Rowell's "In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods" or Jon Krakauer's "Eiger Dreams" and everyone's favorite "Into Thin Air" are vivid, transporting writing. Others, like Reinhold Messner's books, remind you that the skills and drive that make you a world-class climber don't necessarily make you a good author. Eric Shipton, a great climber in his own right, wrote a completely dry, bloodless book about the history of Everest expeditions.

So it isn't all that surprising that Wickwire's book doesn't have a lot of insights. There isn't much of what literature professors like to call an interior life. It was to me a strangely emotionless and slightly troubling book. And I have to agree, it's a poor choice for a title

All the basic facts of his climbing life are laid out. You certainly learn a good deal about the first and second K2 expeditions, and his triumphs of Mt. Rainier (first winter ascent of the Willis Wall) and near-death experiences. Years ago I saw a movie made about a climb to an unclimbed peak in the Fairweather range in Alaska; it was interesting to read here more fully what happened. It's chilling to learn how thoroughly a body can disintegrate on a fall down a rock face (after the fall, where two of the climbers died, they recovered bits of scalp, bone fragments, pieces of camera, and so on.)

But it's all facts, straightforwardly laid out, without much apparent interest in interpretation. Perhaps this comes from Wickwire's professional life as a corporate attorney, writing legal documents. It's interesting that the description of Wickwire's famous bivouac below the summit of K2 is related much more vividly in John Roskelley's book, than in Wickwire's own book. Perhaps that's because Wickwire wrote twenty years after the events. At the REI "flagship store" in Seattle, you can see the bivouac sack in which Wickwire spent that night., and REALLY get a feel for how cold and alone he really was.

The troubling bit: from reading the book, one comes to the conclusion that the great love of Wickwire's life isn't Mary Lou, his wife, but Marty Hoey, the woman he climbed with on Acancagua and Everest. There are excerpts of what can only be described as love notes between him and Marty. For Mary Lou he expresses respect and appreciation, and there are numerous passages where he expresses regret at the time spent apart from his children, but the expressions of passion are all directed towards Marty. I suppose the honesty is laudable, but this must be a very hard book for his wife to read.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just Awful, May 7, 2005

By 

afraydknot (St. Louis, Mo. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Addicted to Danger (Paperback)

Instead of a testament to his climbing expeditions, this book might best serve as a testament to what seems to be Jim Wickwire's blatant misogyny and egocentrism.

After detailing how he decided his wife should leave college to support him, Wickwire regales us semi-boastfully with anecdotes relating how he expected his wife to be nothing more than a housekeeper, child-rearer, and "sex object" (his words). After insisting on a large family, and getting offended at a well-meaning priest who gently suggested birth control, Wickwire (by his own admission) proceeds to by-and-large shirk his duties as a father to all five of his children, supporting them only in the economic sense.

We then get to read his thoughts about the innate subordinism of female climbers, and their tendency toward sexual hijinks on the mountains. The brunt of Wickwire's finger-pointing rests solidly on the shoulders of the female climbers he discusses, until he falls "in love" with Marty Hoey, a talented female climber with the sense, it seems, never to have gotten seriously involved with Wickwire, despite his attempts to the contrary. Wickwire seems to read much into incidents like feet (separated by different sleeping bags) accidentally touching in a overcrowded tent. After the reader is forced to endure reading a series of desperate, petulant, and adolescent notes and conversations directed from Wickwire to Hoey, he recounts her death on Everest perfunctorily, for the most part, and in terms of how his wife forgave him for this one-sided indiscretion. All things considered, I'm not sure who should be more outraged: Mary Lou Wickwire, reading her husband's embarassing account of "falling in love" with Hoey (and knowing all her friends and peers will be reading it too), or Marty Hoey herself, to whom Wickwire attributes a number of childish and maudlin love notes, and who is no longer here to defend herself.

To be fair, Wickwire may not be the narrow-minded boor he appears to be as when, in 1985, he sadly acknowledges of the inevitable entry of women into the legal profession (one wonders what rock he was living under, or climbing over, not to know that women entered the legal profession long before then). The book, while also hampered by a ridiculous title, is full of stilted prose and dialogue. In Wickwire's world, climbers never say things like "We've gotta get down the mountain, fast." Instead, they make proclamations like, "We must descend quickly, or we shall perish upon the mountain." If they were climbing in King Arthur's time, maybe; in this day and age, no one speaks like that. As a result, the dialogue sounds stilted and fictitious, even if it had a basis in fact. The prose lingers too long, and clumsily, on Wickwire's relationships with those around him, even though his relationships seem rather shallow. Again, this may be the fault of the co-writer or the source, one never knows.

I would heartily recommend saving your money and time, and reading a more climbing-related and less self-centered and angsty text.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How depressing!, July 10, 1999

By 

Phelps Gates (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Addicted to Danger (Paperback)

Jim Wickwire is certainly one of the top climbers of recent years, but he doesn't seem to have had much fun doing it! This book dwells at great length on one disaster and failure after another (on and off the mountains), while skipping over many of Wickwire's successful climbs, often with a comment over what a letdown it was after reaching the summit. And the part of the book about his greatest triumph (the K2 ascent) ends up being mostly about bickering among the team members! My suspicion (just a guess) is that the negative slant may be largely the fault of his co-author. Incidentally, peeking ahead while reading, I saw the picture of Wickwire's wife near the end, and was fully expecting the last chapter to be about her filing for divorce! To my surprise, she hasn't (she's willing to put up with more than I would have, I guess), but I wish Jim more enjoyment from his retirement from climbing than he had from his climbing.