Customer Reviews

Fatal Mountaineer: The High-Altitude Life and Death of Willi Unsoeld, American Himalayan Legend

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Picture thousands of notes on 3" x 5" file cards and 100 pages of John Roskelly's "Nanda Devi, The Tragic Expedition". Throw them up in the air. Wherever they land, pick them up and submit them as a manuscript. That is the only way I can conceive this disorganized, unedited book was published.

It is hard to categorize this book. It is not a biography (see Laurence Leamer's "Ascent"). It is not a memoir; I don't believe the author knew Willi Unsoeld in life. "Fatal Mountaineer" concentrates mainly on three defining moments in Willi's life: his brilliant traverse of Everest via the West Ridge in 1963 when Unsoeld was at the peak of his ability, the tragic death of his daughter Devi on her namesake mountain, and Willi's death in an avalanche on Mt. Rainier at age 54. There are explanations and definitions of Bergson and John Muir's philosophies throughout. These two philosophers supposedly had a significant influence on Willi's spiritual outlook.

Sometimes it was hard to tell who was the main subject of this book, Willi or John Roskelly. The author seems to have a love/hate relationship toward Roskelly referring to him as the "Buffalo Demon" and a wily self-promoter while praising his mountaineering abilities to the skies. Mr. Roper's extensive quoting from Roskelly's book is unacknowledged by the author except for an asterisk on page 265.

The Nanda Devi climb that culminated in the mysterious death of Unsoeld's daughter, aged 22, is given the most attention. As the expedition leader and as a father, Unsoeld's behavior was strange to say the least; his exploitation of this tragedy afterward via lectures, slideshows, and presentations was inexcusable. His death in an avalanche while a leading a student expedition in the dead of winter was his last tragedy in that he took another 22 year-old girl with him. His judgment was fatally flawed to even think of taking such an inexperienced group on such a venture. It speaks well for the other 20 students that they managed to survive.

When closing the book, I had gained no additional insights about this compelling, charismatic man who had great leadership abilities, was larger than life and had a continual adoring coterie of fans around him right up to and including the time of his death. Mr. Roper obviously had no endorsement from Unsoeld's family, he cites no printed sources, has no endnotes, and no bibliography. The book seemed nothing more than an exercise in self-indulgence.

I do not recommend this book because I knew Willi Unsoeld, and this book does not talk about the man I knew. Willi was my teacher in the classroom and in the mountains and I spent many hours with him. The author does not capture the spirit or the vitality of Willi Unsoeld and actually wrote this book against the wishes of Willi's family. Even the title of this book is offensive to people who knew Willi because it is so far from the man who really existed. The author includes many assumptions and speculations about Willi that are far off the mark. I would love a book that explored Willi's life and his remarkable accomplishments, but this is not it.

I agree whole-heartedly with sweetmolly's review--it's a fair assessment and right on. Further, I can add that "Fatal Mountaineer" is full of distortions and inaccuracies, more than I have ever seen in any mountaineering novel intended to be non-fiction.

Myself being a writer, a collector of mountaineering lit, a climber, and knowing about Willi's life and his expeditions, I was highly disappointed in this book. Overall, the book and subject were very poorly researched; bad preparation and bad writing go hand-in-hand. Knowing that many of Roper's statements are nothing more than second-hand, inaccurate speculations, it was painfully difficult to read. Besides painting John Roskelley as an "enfant terrible" and "buffalo demon" (both of which he is not) throughout the entire novel, Robert Roper (no relation to honorable climber-writer Steve Roper) couldn't even spell Roskelley's name correctly. Never are there citings or resources given--nor is there defined reasoning--for Roper's speculation and suppositions, of which this is one: "Roskelly (sic) is a special sort of bully, someone who tromps all over others in their most uncertain places, who gets his way by his willingness to say hateful things."

If you're thinking of reading Roper's "Fatal Mountaineer," don't. Read instead Roskelley's first-hand account of the expedition that fills most pages of Roper's novel, "Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition." And even though it has it's own shortcomings, a much better biography of Unsoeld is Lawrence Leamer's "Ascent: The Spiritual and Physical Quest of the Legendary Mountaineer Willi Unsoeld."

It's obvious the reviewers here who gave more than a couple stars to "Fatal Mountaineer" have not read Roskelley's book, nor were they previously knowledgable about Unsoeld's life and his tragic Nanda Devi expedition. I'm sure they would have thought differently had this piece of fiction not been their introduction to Willi Unsoeld. While Unsoeld was not perfect, he was a great man and mountaineer, and his memory deserves better than this false attempt of a treatise. And the same is true for John Roskelley, who Roper especially--and wrongly--excoriated.

Well, what can I say about this book? Not too much. This book read like an opinion column in your local Sunday newspaper or, better yet, like a trash tabloid. The author seemed hell bent on destoying John Roskelley every chance he got. It seemed un-ending, low-brow and ultimately childish, hence, the title to my review.
At times this book was irritating , other times it made me yawn. Roskelley's book on the Nanda Devi tragedy is a much more engrossing read and hard to put down. Now I'm not comparing this books section on the Nanda Devi tragedy to Roskelley's book but, I do find it interesting that a person who wasn't even remotely associated with the climb can so easily pick it apart and smear the good names of some of its members all the while effectively cannonizing others.
Which leads me to my next point: This book is supposed to be an homage to a great mountaineer, Willi Unsoeld, but the author doesn't even do his books subject honor. The author re-hashes the American Everest climb from 1963, but this has all been done before, there is no new insight, no new offerings.The author talks about Unseold's untimely death but, again, nothing new. This book, is in effect, boring. It is also aggravating. I found myself getting quite irritated as the author continued to take his perpetual pot shots at Roskelley and Jim States.
The author wasn't on Devi, he wasn't on Everest in '63 and he wasn't on Ranier with Unsoeld when he died.The author had no first hand experience and I found his biased slop a let down and boring.

Yes, we are all human, and have egos. Mr Roper did more to erode the human Mr Unsoeld with his speculation, grandiose words and tangential philosophy, than to give us insight into the great man himself. I recommend this book to only those who want more 'fluff' and less 'stuff'.

Roper's mixture of first-rate journalism and top-notch story telling make this thrilling and tragic biography of mountaineer Willi Unsoeld unfold with page-turning immediacy. The use of the present tense and the beauty of the descriptive writing make the reader feel as though he is on each expedition. As one life-and-death scenario after another unfolds, the story never becomes sensationalized, and the medical and technical information is always handled clearly. This is a fascinating look at a subculture rife with egos, infighting and betrayals, in which Unsoeld emerges as a true hero for our time. As Roper explores what, exactly, mountaineers are after and what, if anything, they owe the rest of us, Unsoeld's life ultimately serves as a microcosm for the history of mountaineering, and for man's place on the planet. But this isn't just a guy's guy book; it also explores and celebrates the role of women mountaineers, such as Unsoeld's beautiful and spirited daughter, Devi, who's remarkable relationship with her father and heartbreaking demise make this an unforgettable read.

Having admired Roskelley's accout of the '76 Nanda Devi expedition, I was curious when I found Roper's book on Willi Unsoeld at the Albuquerque library.
Unlike other reviewers, I felt that Roper's "digressions"--on Bergson, Muir, and on the CIA's attempt to place a tracking device atop Nanda Devi in order to spy on Chinese nuclear testing--were all fascinating, and essential to Unsoeld's (and Devi's) story.
Roper is a fine writer, capable of vivid, even poetic prose, in an era when we seem to demand nothing but spare, no-frills accounts. Indeed, few books can match Joe Simpson's TOUCHING THE VOID or Herzog's ANNAPURNA in mountaineering lit, but I found this book riveting, both for its accounts of the three central climbs that informed Unsoeld's life and death (Everest, Nanda Devi, Rainier) and for the philosophy that informed his life.
I would have liked a bit more on Unsoeld's experiences as a guide in the Tetons and on his pre-Everest climbs, but overall, I found this book extremely well-written.

Robert Roper has written a gripping account of one of mountain climbing's most charismastic figures, Willi Unsoeld. "Fatal Mountaineer" will appeal both to mountaineering and adventure enthusiasts and to any serious reader looking for a wrenching drama set in an exquisite landscape.

Framed by the story of Unsoeld's eventual demise in an avalanche on Mt Rainier, the centerpiece of the book is the detailed narrative of a fateful ascent of Nanda Devi, India's tallest mountain, by a group of elite climbers. Roper carefully dissects the tensions that emerge from Day One of the expediton between the hard-charging, summit-oriented alpha males of the pack and those sympathetic to the transcendental, growth-oriented perspective of Unsoeld. Included among this latter contingent is Devi Unsoeld, who was named after this mythopoetic mountain, and tragically becomes, or merges with, its resident goddess.

Roper's writing is crisp and nuanced, and he is able to bring an immediacy to events he has reconstructed from multiple and often contradictory or sanitized versions of events. Within the first chapters, I felt as though I were in the tent debating whether an ill member of the team, and thus potentially the weakest link (it does not help that this particular climber is also a woman)should make the trek or head back to base camp.

Roper tells not only the outward bound story of a mountain-climbing expedition but also draws us within the psyches of the characters, explicating the motives behind this most enigmatic of human undertakings.

I would urge readers to go out any buy this book before the Spring thaw.

As one of Willi Unsoeld's former students at Evergreen, and a friend of Devi's, I appreciated Robert Roper's thoughtful attempt to explain the philosophical roots of Willi's life and actions, and the circumstances surrounding Devi's death. Some of the details are off, such as a few ridiculously inaccurate claims on pages 170-75 concerning my fellow student Keith Hillsbury, but in the end Roper has succeeded much better at evoking Willi's complex, larger-than-life personality than Lawrence Leamer did in his earlier biography, Ascent, which I found frustratingly one dimensional. This is the best account I've seen of a man who not only was one of the great mountaineers of our time, but also a charismatic teacher and important pioneer of outdoor education.

I don't think I have ever read a book that gets on my nerve pretty much from the start. I plodded through it because I REALLY wanted to review this book and in good conscience could not do so without finishing it. I have read dozens of mountaineering books and this is the worst of them all.

Whatever Mr Roper attempted to do, he managed one thing well: every single one of the characters in the book appears to be either self serving or an irresponsible airhead. Even Devi Unsoeld is not spared. The main subject of the book himself, Willi Unsoeld, comes across as an annoying, pigheaded, irresponsible leader who does not lead. The whole book reads as a mean-spirited, gossipy, tabloid trash talk. Almost every page includes some snide or mean remark on someone. Mr Roper even manages to make digs at Galen Rowell in a tangent unrelated to the book. His main preoccupation seems to be to do a job on John Roskelley.