Customer Reviews

Below Another Sky: A Mountain Adventure in Search of a Lost Father

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Because the "Lost Father" in the title of this book was a close friend and had, and continues to have, an enormous impact on my life, I picked up Rick's book with anticipation and some trepidation as well. Any fears were groundless.

Rick has woven a marvelous fabric of adventure intertwined with a young woman's courageous journey into unknown parts of the world to search for the answers to questions she has asked her entire life. He binds the story with the thread of his own soul searching and past adventures, described in a straightforward, heartful manner.

This book touched me deeply. And also entertained me. Rick is a great story-teller, using simple, matter-of-fact language to describe hair-raising, and even life-threatening situations.

This is a book for lovers of adventure, for those in the middle of their lives, taking time to look back as well as forward, for those with unanswered questions in their lives, and for anyone with a father - known or unknown.

I highly recommend this book

I had originally read the story of Rick and Asia's journey in Outside Magazine. I could not wait to pick up the book. I have to say, whether you are a fan of the outdoors or not, this is a book for everyone. It is a book about friendships, family, life and death. The playing field just happens to be in the Himalayan Range. Rick has done such a fantastic job of writing that you don't just read this book, you join them on their trek to find a father and friend.

As a climber and lover of mountains, I have read many mountain adventure books. They provide an enjoyable vicarious pleasure, and occasionally even penetrate to a significant illumination of the mysteries of the human spirit that make the experience of hardship and danger in nature (be it mountains, desert, ocean, etc.) such a powerful lure for many. This book, while it had those elements, was something totally different.

My wife lost her father when she was eight years old, also in the mountains. From there the stories diverge in many ways, but the central theme of trying to find, and restore into her life, the father who she never knew, made Asia the star of this book, and her gift in allowing such an intensely personal story to be shared by the world is simply extraordinary. From my own experience I felt I understood her quest and her reactions, and yet the literary grace of the book, along with the beautiful design of the trip itself, left me with a far better understanding of my own wife (and a whole lot of tears).

This book is about the living, not the dead; and that is the real lesson at the end. Thank you Asia, and thank you Rick, for sharing it. It is a glorious gem.

This is the recounting of a trip Rick Ridgeway made with Asia Wright through the Himalayas enroute to searching for her father's grave. Her father was Jonathon Wright, who was killed in an avalanche on Minya Konka when she was an infant. Throughout the journey he tells her of her father's life as well as of his own past as a mountaineer and adventurer. This was a difficult book for me to get through, and it was some time before I could pick it up without my hands shaking. I didn't think it would have such an emotional impact on me, and I'm bemused to think that Jonathon can still affect people when he's been dead for twenty years. We knew Jonathon, and I remember vividly the shock of returning from a trip and receiving a telegram saying he'd been killed. Certainly we were familiar with death's capaciousness, but it was a classic case of, "Why him, of all people? Where's the meaning in this?" It's a curious experience to read a book twenty years later where someone asks those questions about the same person, but we've all known someone who died too soon.

They're difficult questions and Ridgeway does as credible a job of the philosophical answers as anyone can, with his acceptance of life and death, and change. However, his denouement at the end, that we should live each day as if it were our only one, felt flat. We've heard it before and it's been boiled done to a kitchen plaque cliché that I've always found irritating when it's not further explained. I don't think I'd plan on spending my only day on earth wondering if the roof should be redone this year or next and booking dental cleanings, as I'm doing today. My grudge with the cliché is that it seems to imply that we should regret whatever it is we've been doing up to now, rather than accepting that some days are simply going to be filled with the mundane details of living. It also holds an inherent suggestion that we should seek pleasure. But the kind of pleasure that makes life worth living is an elusive phantom and comes only after we've sought experience. Pain or regret may also result, regardless of our intentions. We have to embrace the experience regardless of outcome; if it's pleasurable, it's a bonus and we've earned it. Jonathon tried to focus on the experience rather than the goal or glory at the end, and I think that's what was meant in the book, but perhaps each of us sees it differently.

But Jonathon's effect on people was the result of more than what he did, it was the result of his personality, and Jonathon simply being Jonathon. We all affect the people we contact each day. Whether it's for good or ill is up to us. Partly because of his own innate goodness and partly because of his efforts, Jonathon had a positive effect on the people who know him. The lesson I would take from his life is that we could all have a similar impact if we made the effort to be nice - and I apologize for the lackluster word, but there it is - nice. The circumstances in which I first met him was one where egos could become inflated, inflamed, or deflated in an instant, and the silly posturing and puffy tempers certainly were a contrast to Jonathon's calmness. It's an odd thing, given that I didn't know him that well and it's been a long time, but I am still influenced by him and try (not always successfully!) to behave in difficult situations as he would have. Our lives do indeed affect others.

The book focuses on personalities, and that gives it a heart and poignancy which are often lacking in adventure stories. As for his journey with Asia Wright, it begins in Nepal, continues on to Mount Kailas, across the Chang Tang Plateau in Tibet, and ends at Asia's father's grave. The book is nicely-written and over-all the description is strong enough, although there were places where it lacked the vitality that would really bring an area to life for me. I will say (and this truly is surprising, since he recounts a fair number of disasters, not to mention numerous other assorted miseries) that Rick Ridgeway managed the impossible - he made mountain-climbing sound appealing even to me.

What a wonderful story this is! Rick Ridgeway writes and reflects with maturity and humility of his initial climb up Minya Konka in China's Sichuan province, the loss of his friend Jonathan in an avalanche during the climb and then his return to the mountain a decade and a half later with Jonathan's now-grown up daughter, China. I read this entire book in two long sittings and as with all great books hated to see it come to an end. The narrative, which weaves together earlier climbs and adventures, growing up and taking risks, along with the trek back to Nepal, Tibet and China is a spiritual as well as a geographical journey. Ridgeway has learned much from his incredible life -- about things that are of consequence and things that are not. His wisdom and common decency, his kindness and his loyalty to friends and to memories, and they way in which he imparts this to his friend's surviving daughter is inspiring and touching. I'll read this book again sometime soon and I'll think about it for a long long time because although it is a story that begins with tragedy and death and concludes with a visit to the site of that tragedy, it is at the same time a superb hymn to a life lived full and well and true.

I bought this book after reading Seven Summits which recounted Rick Ridgeway's involvement with Dick Bass's and Frank Well's attempt to be the first to bag the "seven summits".
This is a moving story of not only the loss of Rick Ridgeway's friend and climbing buddy in an avalanche in the himalayas where he also almost died but an account of his return voyage with the friend's twenty year old daughter to where the avalanche had occurred some 18 years before. It is a travel narrative, mountaineering book, great insights on Nepal and Tibet with interesting sidetrips through his memories, trips to Patagonia, being in a Panamanian jail when he was but twenty and what it taught him...etc. You have got to like this guy! A perfect read for the introspective armchair adventure traveller who loves Asia; which is the name of the twenty year old girl who finds her father's grave and her way in life on this trip.

Ridgeway is the best....

I've been reading adventure non-fiction for a couple of years now and Rick Ridgeway has never let me down...

His writing is complete...informative, emotional, and structured. A very fine writer.

This book is a solid read! Very touching story of pilgramic voyage between two searching souls....one for closure and one for exposure. Excellent.

After reading Shadow of Kilimanjaro, I was interested in reading more by Ridgeway. The premise of Sky is for the author to accompany the daughter of a friend who died in his arms while climbing Minya Konka. It was to be a trip of discovery for the daughter, to learn about her father and understand what drove him to the mountains of the Himalayas. But I think the author spends more time trying to understand the decisions he's made over his own lifetime.

Extremely well written, packed with accounts of the author's own near death adventure experiences, and full of personal introspection, I found it hard to put the book down once I started it. Not only a memoir and adventure book, but a book that makes the reader stop and think about the decisions they have made in their lives, and the consequences that result. Also makes you question what your true motivations in life are.

this was my first time reading Rick Ridgeway's work. I found his story telling absolutely inspirational. I could not put the book down, in fact I have just ordered two more of his works. Whether you are into climbing mountains or not, this story is a wonderful adventure about a man and young woman who learn so much in their journey to find Jonathan's grave. The entire time I was reading I could feel Jonathan travelling along with both of them, gently steering them along.

This book is a trek into memory and is one that is held together by two riveting and story-unifying scenes. It's scenes like these that keep the book still haunting my own memory two weeks after finishing it. The book, just like real life, is merely a cycle - a repetition of connected events.

Both scenes involve the author's dead friend, Jonathan Wright, once a professional photographer and mountaineer who was tragically killed by an unpredicted avalanche.

The author, Rick Ridgeway, is asked by Wright's daughter to take her back to the grave site of her father on the flanks of Minya Konka in "wild Tibet." While hiking the well-worn trail to Tengbocke Monastery, Ridgeway describes himself identifying the white-capped river chat on the banks of the Dudh Kosi. He is perhaps a few hundred yards of Asia Wright, the dead climber's daughter. Ridgeway is suddenly reminded of doing the same identification some twenty years earlier when Jonathan came upon Ridgeway at the river's edge. Back then, they together thumbed through the bird book until they indentified it as the same one they were looking at. Now years later, in almost the exact same spot, Asia Wright comes up the trail, and seeing Ridgeway squatting next to the river, stoops and says, "What are you looking at?" Dizzying deja-vu.

The second motif occurs at the end (don't read this if you don't want to know the surprise). Here, Ridgeway has found the grave site where twenty years before he had buried Jonathan after the fatal avalanche. He approaches the tumbled stones that still partially cover the body. He shifts a rock and sees the hair of his friend. Ridgeway reaches down and holds the strands between his fingers, rubbing them slowly and gently. Years before, Ridgeway had done the same right before Jonathan had died. Ridgeway held Jonathan in his arms. He remembers when he moved his fingers through his hair while Jonathan's lips changed color and suddenly his face paled and something "went out of him," and he died.

These scenes are lasting memories for Ridgeway. I connect with the author as he connects with his past. Below Another Sky is a touching account of an aging mountaineer with a rich heritage and valuable advice to those of us too timid to climb mountains and risk our lives.