Customer Reviews

K2: Challenging the Sky

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

 

 

-although the text may just have suffered in the translations. If you want to see the single best collection of K2 photographs I've ever seen, and I have them all, this is the book for you. A bargain at anything less than about $250.00, it's bound and published beautifully (at least my copy was!)

If you've read all the classic historical books of ascents on K2 except this one, your library is incomplete. The power of this book is in part within it's outstanding photography and also has to do with how well it pulls so much information together. This is a complex mountain but the information is presented clearly such that one feels more comfortable with the different sides of the mountain and their challenges to the climber.

This book is a very good one. I found it to be the best companion (for the beautiful photos in large format e for showing clearly the several attempted routes on K2) to another 5-star book, "K2, Triumph and Tragedy". Bravo Roberto Mantovani!

K2 is an endlessly fascinating. Beautiful and cruel, savage and mighty, mysterious and far away - seen by few and successfully ascended by even fewer - it draws and repels simultaneously.

Robert Mantovani does a superb job on the magnificent photographs, all in color, beautifully sharp and clear. The vistas and detail take your breath away. A special commendation goes to Patricia Lovicetti, the Graphic Designer. At [item price], it is a bargain at twice the price. It is a BIG book (10" x 14"), so it will need a place of honor on the coffee table.

Most of the text is from Kurt Diemberger's previously published "Endless Knot" (though this fact is not mentioned in the book). However, the pictures are well captioned and informative. Mr. Diemberger is a legend, the only man living with two first ascents of 8,000-meter mountains to his credit. He is also is among the elite few who have successfully ascended and descended K2, though at terrible personal cost. (See "Endless Knot")

This book would be a terrific gift to a climbing enthusiast or just as a wonderful indulgence to yourself!

A beautiful coffee-table type book with spectacular photos and good information mostly from Kurt Diemberger's book Endless Knot. The book covers the history of climbing K2 from the earliest explorations up to the latest ascents completed in the 1990s.

Kurt Diemberger: A mountain as large and difficult as K2, with its height of 8,616 metres, and its unusually steep faces, and absolute atmospheric variability, is a whole "stage" higher than other 8,000-metre peaks in the Karakoram. Even though it cannot match Everest for its height, K2 is far more dangerous. Here even the very best climbers are tested to the limit. The mass climbing which is now common to most of the "lesser" 8000-metre peaks (and the classic Everest route), has no place on Quogir, "the Big Mountain". Otherwise the death toll could only increase.

I bought this book years ago and never tire at the wonderful pictures of this austere and formidible peak that most mountaineers in the know call the toughest mountain to climb in the world. The photographs are classic and inspiring...I frequently pull it out and marvel at the stark beauty of this deadly peak. This undoubtably is of the finest coffee-table mountain picture books available.

One would buy this type of book mainly for the pictures. From the perspective of the text, however, this book leaves something to be desired. It was published after the Robert Marshall translation of Walter Bonatti's "Mountains Of My Life", where Bonatti related how the summit team of Compagnini and Lacedelli changed the previously agreed upon site of Camp IX, to where Bonatti and Hunza Porter Mahdi were carrying those critical oxygen sets in an almost superhuman effort. Both Bonatti and Mahdi were left to bivouac in the open at 8000 meters, which easily could have cost them their lives. This because Compagnini wanted to ensure Bonatti had no chance to summit. The official account written by the despicable Expedition "Leader", Ardito Desio, downplayed the heroic role of Bonatti and Mahdi in the expedition's success, while quietly accusing Bonatti of responsibility for Mahdi's extensive frostbite to assuage Pakistani officials outraged at Mahdi's injuries. Compagnini further attempted to slander Bonatti by accusing him of using the oxygen intended for the summit team during his epic bivouac by distorting the time and place the summit team ran out of oxygen.

The Italian 1954 expedition was rocked with scandal and recriminations largely because of the unscrupulous Compagnini and Desio, and the authors of this book should have been able to publish a historical account updated from the "official" record. Further, Lacedelli in the past two years has corraborated Bonatti's claims, stating that Compagnini deliberately left Bonatti and Mahdi out in the open so they alone could use the oxygen exclusively for their summit attempt. Desio and Compagnini's "official" fabrications diminishes the otherwise outstanding accomplishment which this expedition achieved during the race to climb this awe-inspiring peak.

Historical inaccuracies and lack of fact-check aside, buy this book for the pictures...they are truly inspiring.