Customer Reviews

No Way Down: Life and Death on K2

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is about the events of August 1-4, 2008 on K2. The author interviewed most or all of the other people on the mountain and produced this narrative by assembling and reconciling their accounts.

The story is told almost entirely through their eyes. The result is a interesting and absorbing book but not one that draws conclusions. For example, no one actually saw the icefall that caused the tragedy and so it is never really described; the reader is allowed to piece together what happened based on some basic information about ice formations and on what the witnesses did see or hear. And no blame is cast but those of us whose climbing experience consists of reading books about it are left to spot what seem to be common problems -- delays going up, weak individual climbers, questionably-set ropes.

The epilogue reveals that the author did ask his interviewees about blame, so perhaps they did not adequately agree or perhaps an editorial decision was made that that information did not fit this sort of point-of-view storytelling. The epilogue also frankly acknowledges that others have put the evidence together differently; their versions put some individuals in a better light but do not basically change what happened.

The book's scope is limited to what happened to certain people at a particular time near the top of the mountain. It is not for those more interested in a comprehensive review of what went before, or of what went wrong, or of K2 mountaineering in general.

I have always been fascinated by stories of mountain climbing. And I have always been afraid of falling from great heights. So for me a life that included technical climbing was never in the cards.

Notwithstanding, I enjoy a connection with the outdoors and love all seasons. I love the stark beauty of extreme weather and high places. This story teaches us a little about those people who are willing to chance their life to reach the worlds most extreme environments and extreme elevations. For me it is one of the only ways I will ever experience places like K2.

The story takes us through the final stages of ascent to the summit and return trip down. A number of individuals are described and their individual personalities are revealed, though at times it's a little difficult to keep them all straight.

But the account of the final climb to the summit was so compelling to me that I found it hard to put this book down. The author managed to make me feel cold, feel the fear of falling off the mountain. I could imagine the desolation, desperation and dispair that the people must have felt, and even the elation of achieving the goal of reaching the summit.

One thing this story made clear for me was that reaching the summit of a peak like K2 really is just one part of the whole picture. Getting back down in one piece is quite another. In this story we are taken into the expedition and learn in detail the many ways the return trip can go wrong in the blink of an eye.

As a result of reading this story I will never again see my own outdoor exploits as anything even remotely approaching the "extreme". An assault on K2 ranks right up there with trying to reach the moon.

I liked the author's self-revealing introduction where he admits his almost total lack of prior experience with the world of mountain climbing, and at the end of the book the great detail he shares about how the book was written, based on interviews, historical and expedition accounts published by others. All this really helped put the account into perspective and enriches the basis of the story.

I would have liked to have seen some illustrations showing the layout of the landmarks in the story, and the routes taken by the climbing teams. Not familiar with K2 it was a little hard to put the proportion of the climb into perspective.

The part of the story before the teams reached the fourth camp is also a bit thin, leaving out perhaps a lot of mundane information, but I suspect that climbing up to the last camp was itself no easy feat and must have had some interesting elements to be told, for certainly many who reached the last camp did not attempt the summit.

Overall I found this a very satisfying read, even to the point of making me feel a little like wishing I was young enough to learn to climb, overcome my fears, and only then consider an expedition of a lifetime (literally) like this.

Everyone who found "No Way Down" interesting should also read "One Mountain Thousand Summits " by Freddie Wilkinson for further insight into the events at K2 in August 2008 . While Graham Bowley's "No Way Down" contains a very helpful chronology and is an admirable attempt at presenting a balanced view of the participants ,his obvious ignorance of climbing simply hampered his ability to tell the whole story . Freddie Wilkinson is an experienced climber and because of that is much more able to understand and communicate the signifcance of the events and how Himalayan climbing has evolved to the point that a disaster like K2 in August 2008 could happen in the first place . That is why Jon Krakauer in "Into Thin Air" was able to interest the non-climbing public in a way non-climbing authors couldn't . I'm glad I read Mr. Bowley's book first but found that it left too many unanswered questions about too many things .

This is a reasonably well-written, information-filled book. However, I have read other mountaineering related books that are better, such as "Into Thin Air".

There is really nothing wrong with the book, but I just didn't find it as good as other similar books. Also, while I hate to see anyone die, I find it hard to feel sympathy for some of these people who really shouldn't be on a mountain to begin with or who do things that aren't real smart while they are there.

If I had to pick just one mountain-disaster book, it would not be this one. However, if you want to learn what happened during this particular 2008 K2 disaster, this book is very good at describing the people and events that transpired. In fact, it is very, very good at giving the reader a picture of who did what and what happened when.

However, in the end, I think this is just an average book that I thought was informative but not really all that interesting.

Graham Bowley was given an epic task. He had a fascinating story to tell but one which has essentially been told by Into Thin Air. I do believe the story has tremendous potential but Bowley is so sparse in his telling of it that he leaves no room for us to fully understand which team consisted of which members and who was important and why. Furthermore, it was very difficult to determine which person was dying at which point and I often found that as a result of the confusing narrative, I had to switch back and forth between pages to try and keep pace.

Sadly this is a weak story which is a shame because the incident in question is quite gripping and I find myself getting more and more distressed with how weak and disorganized the writing is on this book. All in all, I would recommend passing on this book and reading Into Thin Air to see how a truly epic book is written.

After reading "Into Thin Air" I've read a lot of climbing stories and while this wasn't the worst of the lot, it isn't the best either. I would imagine that this is due to the fact that the author has never climbed nor was he a part of the events as they unfolded. There's many inaccuracies in the story including one where he says that one of the hikers knew that he saw another hiker in an avalanche because he saw his yellow snowsuit in the midst of all of the ice. Later on, it's stated that he wasn't wearing yellow. Things like that detract from the story as well as going back and forth between the story of the climb in 2008 and stories of past climbs. Once you get into the story, you don't want to read about other failed attempts. In my opinion, those would have been best at the beginning to set up the story, not interwoven throughout.

I have read just about every book in the "mountain disaster" genre.

Here are my problems with this book:

* The quality of the writing is poor.

* The author launches right in to the climb itself with almost no preliminaries about the personalities involved in the tragedy, their character strengths, weaknesses, quirks, motivations, histories, ties, rivalries. So, I did not feel invested in the characters, or "pulled in" the way I have been by other books.

* The author admits he had no prior interest in mountaineering, and it really shows. His lack of *expertise* does not bother me so much as his almost total nonchalance! He writes as if he wanted to just dive into this story and get it overwith and off his back as soon as possible.

I bumped this book from one stars up to two, based on the fact that the reporting seems to be unbiased. Good journalistic integrity.

But don't spend your money on this one, when there are so many fantastic alternatives for your reading pleasure! Here are just a few of the best:

Savage Summit (also about k2)
Touching the Void
Eiger Dreams
Annapurna - A Woman's Place
No Shortcuts to the Top
The Climb

I bought this book because I love these extreme adventure mountain climbing stories. Obviously, "Into Thin Air" is the best of the genre. "No Way Down" is not nearly as well written, or as suspenseful. That would be fine if that were the only problem with this book. Unfortunately, it could have done with a good proofreader. The flat writing is made more distracting by the grammatical and typographical errors. All in all, it was a disappointment.

Bowley tells us in the Prologue that K-2 is shorter than Everest but more deadly...its death rate was much higher than that of Everest climbers. With that introduction we begin to learn what went wrong in 2008 that led to the deaths of 11 climbers within one day's summit attempt on K-2. Having read Jon Krakauer's book "Into Thin Air" about the 1996 tragedy on Everest in which 8 climbers died, I wanted to read Bowley's book. In contrast to Krakauer, Bowley was not a climber and he was not on the mountain as was Krakauer when the 1996 tragedy took place. The result is that Bowley is more dispassionate in his choice of narrative language. He is less judgemental that Krakauer and writes in a straightforward narrative style.

In some ways, however, the stories are similar. In both incidents the summit attempts were slowed by the large number of climbers, the majority of the climbers summitted late in the day-later than intended, the majority returned after dark. On Everest, the climbers ran into a storm on the way down. On K-2, the combination of a serac's calving and wiping away fixed ropes made the descent after dark more dangerous due to K-2's ice and ridges. Through interviews with survivors, Bowley relates conversations which he tells us was quoted to him directly by the speakers involved. He did not rely on conjecture.

Bowley tells us each climber's story including that of the dead climbers. In the Epilogue, we learn that the surviving climbers attribute the losses to "bad luck." For example, the serac that collapsed and not only destroyed fixed ropes but also swept several of the climbers under its avalanche had been stable for a lengthy period despite its ominious look. However,the collapse occurred after dark while the climbers were returning. Had they summitted or turned back timely, they would have missed the collapse. And in fact some of the climbers did stop their ascent due to concern about the slowness and lateness of the ascent.

It is an easy to read story and engrossing from beginning to end. It reads like a novel in that all the loss of life is not known until the end.

Having read "K2 - The Savage Mountain" and "The Last Step" about previous K2 expeditions, as well as several other books that included accounts of expeditions to K2, it was interesting to read about yet another climb. This book is the newest of the bunch, and one is struck by how much mountaineering has changed over the years, even in the modern era. Yet the mountain remains as attractive - and deadly - as ever.

I am not a mountain climber - I've hiked up to the top of 14,000' mountains - but ascending the Karakoram is almost like going into outer space by comparison, in effort, altitude, cost and danger, so I got plenty of vicarious excitement from just reading about going twice as high.

Tragically (but perhaps unsurprisingly) a number of the people you meet in the this book on their way to the top of K2 don't make it back down. In 2008 several groups of climbers made an attempt on K2, the world's 2nd highest mountain, but an ascent that is by all accounts much more difficult than that of Everest, due to its steepness (which also makes the mountain so dramatic in appearance). Early in the book we are introduced to the bad guy: a big serac that menacingly hangs over a critical part of the mountain, and one can already guess at the outcome. Many of the climbers summited, but on the way down, one of the first descending climbers was unlucky enough to be passing under the serac when part of the serac decided to descend as well, wiping out both the climber and ... the way down. Most of the remaining climbers were still above the broken line of descent at that point, and found themselves in a situation not unlike being on the roof of a house when someone removed the ladder, except that the house was about 1000 times higher than a normal one.

A very interesting and gripping account that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to read about mountain climbing or any other similar types of adventures.

My only quibble, albeit a small one, is the author's deliberate decision to tell us at times what a particular person was thinking, which would normally be OK if known to be true, but in the case of those people who didn't make it back and thus obviously were not interviewed directly, it was a bit confusing at first.

Great account, though, and recommended.