Customer Reviews

A Slender Thread: Escaping Disaster in the Himalaya (Adrenaline)

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

 

 

This is one of the most cliche-ridden, naval-gazing climbing stories I've read in a long, long time. I didn't even know an audience still existed for this kind of well-worn mountaineering pablum. The story is right out of a computer format: Stephen Venables goes on a climb, gets hurt, misses his wife and kids, and needs to be rescued so he can get back and see them. [...]I think I've read this story about a hundred times before, usually by more honest observers.

On one level 'A Slender Thread: Escaping Disaster in the Himalayas' is a standard mountain expedition book, with the focus on Steven Venables' own experience. But throughout there is a dark undercurrent of premonition and doubt. Venables has a bad feeling about the expedition from the start : "there was a sense of unease, even doom when I set off for India". There is also a sense of futility, that the golden age of mountain exploration is long past, as he implicitly compares past expeditions to the area (the Panch Chuli group near the border of India and Nepal) with the one he is on. Gone is the conviction of purpose and the "gentlemanly camaraderie" of earlier times. In fact Venables shows himself to be anything but gentlemanly on this trip. Often out of sorts, half-wishing he were back home with his wife and child, Venables indulges in tantrums and verbally attacks Chris Bonington, the team leader, when Bonington suggests retreat..

As for the accident, it is the breaking of the Slender Thread that all mountaineers depend on at many time during a climb. A well-tested anchor pulls out below the top of Panch Chuli V, sending Venables on a steep fall that breaks both his legs and which he is lucky just to survive. This combination of bad and good luck, and his utter dependence on his companions for making it down the mountain, is the real story of this expedition for Venables as he recognizes that in climbing he is gambling with more than just his own life.

This is my least favorite of the three book by Venables I've read, though I did enjoy it. There is little of the excitement and freshness of 'Painted Mountains' or the combination of great accomplishment and fascinating route finding in 'Everest: Alone at the Summit'. However, it raises troubling questions about mountain climbing and faces them directly, and these questions, along with the detailed description of a remote and rarely climbed range, make this a book worth reading.

This book is well written, but much of it is decidedly dull. The author writes with all the passion of a dead fish. There are, however, some interesting passages about the history of a remote section of the Himalayas known as the Pancha Chuli massif which are actually five peaks close to India's border with western Nepal.

It is to this region that the author went in 1992 as part of an expedition led by world reknowned British climber, Chris Bonnington. Quite frankly, the author makes himself out to be a less than ideal climbing partner. He apparently had choice words for everyone, including Chris Bonnington. He is lucky that they are apparently better men than he, or he would never have survived his accident, a three hundred foot fall 19,000 feet up the mountain. But for his fellow expeditioners, the author would still be up there, a silent, frozen reminder to other climbers of the peril that may sometimes await one while climbing.

His account of what happens both before and after his accident, and upon his return home, as well as what occurs on his next expedition, gives the reader a measure of the author as a person. There are certainly those who may find him wanting. Yet, notwithstanding his readily apparent, personal shortcomings, his dispassionate account of his travail high up on a remote Himalayan peak is still a worthwhile read, if you are a devotee of mountaineering literature. If you are not, deduct one star from my rating.

I am not sorry I read ths book. Venables is a fine writer--one of the best in his genre working today. Having read one too many accounts of the Everest region (and a number of books on the west, K2, region), I appreciate Venables's description of the less-written-about middle Himalaya. The writer's account of the Panch Chuli climb itself is also fine.

Unfortunately, after Venables's accident, there is little left to sustain the narrative. He simply sits around in his tent with his two partners, discussing food and British lit., waiting for the helicopter to come rescue him. In reality, I'm glad his rescue was easier than, say, Joe Simpson's was in Peru, but it makes for some rather boring reading.

To sum, the book is well worth reading, but expect a let down around two-thirds of the way through.

I was astounded by some of the unpleasant reviews posted here. This book is full of passion: it is a lyrical celebration of all the myriad pleasures of travelling through mountain country, and of the physical intensity of actually climbing mountains. It is also funny. But perhaps the humour was too subtle for Mr Lawyerau and his brutish friends to notice. As for Stephen Venables being found `wanting', if it is a fault to admit one's own fears, doubts, weaknesses and moments of selfishness, then, yes, he is `wanting' - but surely this is more of a strength?

Perhaps these reviewers prefer the chest-thumping and macho posturing more typical of mountaineering books. But even if they do, it is simply a lie to say that Stephen Venables is always being rescued. I have read his other books and I know that the terrifying accident on Panch Chuli V was the only one he has ever had in the high mountains (and even that unlucky mishap was the shared responsibility of his companions). As a female reader, I appreciated the subtle ambivalences and the psychological interplay between the different characters in the book. I also, like the reviewer at the Observer newspaper - and many other respected newspapers which praised the book, found it well-constructed, with the cracking pace of a good novel.

This book is well-written, but much of it is decidedly dull. The author writes with all the passion of a dead fish. There are, however, some interesting passages about the history of a remote section of the Himalayas known as the Pancha Chuli massif, which are actually five peaks close to India's border with western Nepal.

It is to this region that the author went in 1992 as part of an expedition led by world-renowned British climber, Chris Bonnington. Quite frankly, the author makes himself out to be a less than ideal climbing partner. He apparently had choice words for everyone, including Chris Bonnington. He is lucky that they are apparently better men than he, or he would never have survived his accident, a three hundred foot fall while 19,000 feet up the mountain. But for his fellow expeditioners, the author would still be up there, a silent, frozen reminder to other climbers of the peril that may sometimes await one while climbing.

His account of what happens both before and after his accident, and upon his return home, as well as what occurs on his next expedition, gives the reader a measure of the author as a person. There are certainly those who may find him wanting. Yet, notwithstanding his readily apparent, personal shortcomings, his dispassionate account of his travail high up on a remote Himalayan peak is still a worthwhile read, if you are a devotee of mountaineering literature. If you are not, deduct one star from my rating.

Overall, I found this book to be a good look into Himilayan climbing. My only complaint was that it was written in British English and is a little difficult to read. The climbing terms are a little techincal as well. Being a non-climber, I sometimes can't picture what the author is describing when using climbing lingo.

Beyond that, it seems like a good book, not quite like Karkauer's or Boukreev's books.