Climbing Everest: A Meditation on Mountaineering and the Spirit of Adventure [Hardcover]

Pat Ament (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2000

This text focuses on why people climb Everest and what they find up there. The book looks at the musings and observations of a tired, emotional member of a climbing expedition which has summited Everest and is now struggling to descend. It is also an introduction to the history of mountaineering.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Definitely one of the best things I've read about Everest. Great work. . . . Very philosophical, thought provoking, and almost mystical." -- Gary Neptune, Everest and Himalaya veteran

"No Everest collection is complete without it." -- Climbing

"Poetic spoof, metaphysical romp, and volcano of intriguing reflection." -- Royal Robbins, legendary rock climber

From the Back Cover

"I've read most of the book about Everest, and Ament's is one of the finest. I enjoyed this remarkable book immensely. It belongs on the shelf of every armchair and active mountaineer alike."--David Breashears

"Definitely one of the best things I've read about Everest. Great work. . . . Very philosophical, thought provoking, and almost mystical."--Gary Neptune, Everest & Himalaya veteran

"Poetic spoof, metaphysical romp, and volcano of intriguing reflection."--Royal Robbins, legendary rock climber

"To your mountaineering library now add a title sure to be the most original work on your shelves, by an original himself. Expert climber from his earliest teens, Pat Ament has mellowed: from fearless young Turk and maverick to poet-philospher. At our house his every book has long been admired, but this--his latest and best surprise--reveals new elevation and depth."--Reg Saner, award-winning author and poet

"This beautiful book is Pat Ament's best work to date. His poetic descriptions of Everest . . . leave an indelible imprint in the mind. . . . I am given a glimpse of something unknowable ultimately, that is concealed in the swirling snows and icy bastions of Everest. . . . This is a marvelous book. I love it. Everest is truly a metaphor for life."--John Gill, bouldering champion

"This is Ament at his best; poetic, philosphical, and witty. His years of reflection and meditation on why we climb and what we gain from our efforts, and the risks we take, are finally, and with great insight, brought to focus on the Everest experience. . . . The irreverent, satirical cartoons had me laughing out loud and alone are worth the price of the book. Climbing Everest is a treasure I will pick up over and over again."--David Breashears, four-time summiter of Everest, and chief photographer for the IMAX film, Everest

"I am utterly amazed at the mind that conceives such language. Pat treads a thin line between delicate, moving prose and sheer comic genius."--Tim Shultz, climber, writer

"No Everest collection is complete without it."--Climbing

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing; 1st edition (September 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071364455
• ISBN-13: 978-0071364454
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,810,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars portraits, December 28, 2000

By 

Pat Ament (Idaho Falls, Idaho, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Climbing Everest: A Meditation on Mountaineering and the Spirit of Adventure (Hardcover)

Rembrandt often did self-portraits, and a few of his critics called him vain. My book "Climbing Everest" is a type of self-portrait. It is a book about progression, how each of us moves upward through the various storms and camps of life. We each try to gain the next height, the next level of awareness or spiritual insight. The fact that I know my subject, climbing, very well is almost incidental to the real meanings of the book which are to be found somewhat between the lines. As with Everest, this book will require a little effort. You will have to be the measure of the task. I write these words in the spirit of encouragement. Give the book a chance, find a place to quietly and honestly and truly read and feel it, absorb its messages, and see if it doesn't speak of life itself. It will speak of the struggles required of us and the joys. Life, like Everest, is at once both beautiful and terrible, rewarding and painful. This is a book about climbing, yes, but it is more a book about the inner soul and aspiring to the high realms of appreciation, friendship, art, strength, love, and deeper meanings. Everest is simply one of an infinite number of places the soul and spirit seek and need to attain. -- Pat Ament

5.0 out of 5 stars Journey with a poetic plunge to rise to Everest heights, October 16, 2001

By 

Ms. Uma D. Pochampalli "uma" (Sugar Land, Tx United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Climbing Everest: A Meditation on Mountaineering and the Spirit of Adventure (Hardcover)

Everest, that noble word derives its meaning not from the height it represents nor the atmosphere. It has the meaning derived from the great souls that have been a part of it and make it a part of themselves. The journey through a thousand words into the heart of Everest can never be more enjoyable and dynamic and challenging and sometimes surprisingly and ironically funny than when accompanied with Pat Ament's book: Climbing Everest.

The challenges of Everest are there in everyone's life, however the Team spirit, vision and direction and guidance make any Everest in ones life a successful venture. Whether you are an armchair Philosopher or an avid mountaineer you would love the way the lines lead you to the heart and heights of the Himalayas and bring you back with new power and grace in a different level of awareness back to where you belong. Oh Everest, how I wish I am Mallory's companion or Robert Frost,s poem..may be I am, for I am lost totally in the laps of Himalayas and can never descend.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Climbing Everest, December 4, 2001

By 

kelly craig (Charlotte, N.C. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Climbing Everest: A Meditation on Mountaineering and the Spirit of Adventure (Hardcover)

(...) It is not hard to understand why someone who made it to the top would want to write about the trek and all that entailed. Pat Ament is one of many mountaineers to climb Everest and return from the summit to write about it. His book is about the thrills of climbing Everest and the general mentality of all successful mountaineers.
To get right down to it, I honestly didn't like the book and didn't get a whole lot out of reading it. In the book Climbing Everest the author Ament writes more about the feelings that his memories of the climb invoke as he is sitting down to write about his adventure and less about the actual climb and the physical toll it took on him. He says things like "The Everest climber comes back to the regular world, returns home, and then in his manner, built into him, is a bearing, a small shiver, something fixed, as though he never will cease to shake in the dark airspace of a tent" (...). This in my opinion makes the book a little hard to read when you can hardly understand what the man is really talking about. This also makes it a little difficult to comprehend what the author is trying to get across to his readers. Ament might be doing this and not even realize what he is doing. (...) Although Ament did not write the kind of book I was expecting to read, I think that the book was well written. Personally I told you that I really didn't like it, but it was a well written book. He tells us some of the feelings that you might experience when on the mountain or while you are climbing it. He also tells some interesting facts about how people of all skill levels can climb a mountain.
So in a sense he is saying that with the right preparation you can overcome Everest no matter what class mountaineer that you are.
He also speaks of some of the people he has climbed with over the years . An important fact that Ament put in the book was when Chomolungma, the name given the mountain by Tibetans, was renamed Everest after the surveyor-General of India, Sir George Everest, in 1865, it was about 56 years before actual climbers(or at least any of which we know) would go up onto the mountain and map what might be learned of themselves. And another very important statement that Ament quoted "The mountains give, the mountains take" (...). This statement is important to me in the fact that he is saying that you climb at your own risk, and you just hope that on the trip no one gets injured or looses his or her lives. I think this statement refers more to the fact that there is very little control on the mountain. It doesn't matter to the mountain who's climbing - the climber might get lucky and have great climbing weather or the climber could get killed by an avalanche. You can't predict what the climb will be like because it's all up to the mountain.
Ament's Climbing Everest was not what I expected. It had some good qualities - some history about the peak and it's references to Shakespeare as well as the encouragement he offered his readers who might be interested in climbing Everest - but overall, the book was not a very good one. I think Ament was writing more for himself than for his audience because he included to many feelings and not enough descriptions about his experiences as he strove to reach the top of Everest. If you were to judge the book by it's cover, like I did, and use just the title to choose the book, I think you would be disappointed by the story that came after the cover. Ament wanted to reflect on his memories of the climb and the emotions that he felt as he was remembering instead of looking back on the adventure he had as he ascended Mt. Everest. The general public is more interested in Ament's actions than in his feeling's and I think that he had catered more to that sentiment, the book would have been much more interesting to read.