Customer Reviews

Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest

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Webster's Snow in the Kingdom is different than, and better than, the many Everest books that have come out in recent years. The stunning photography--literally hundreds of photos, many in color and many appropriately in black and white--come at a great price for Webster and are worthy of a more expensive coffee table book themselves. Add to that a fascinating, moving text that goes far beyond the usual "we climbed, we almost died, we made it out" adventure saga. Webster talks about excursions and experiences that made him the person who wanted to climb a new route up Everest. He humanizes Himalayan moutaineering in a way that not even Krakauer does. It's an exciting story, but it's much more than an adventure yarn. This is one of the best text-photo combination books on any subject I have seen.

As a non-climber, I've often wondered, "What does it feel like to be on Everest?" Many climber/authors seem to approach the question primarily by describing their emotions, not their senses. The result is often an unsatisfying allegorical sense of Everyman's struggle against the forces of nature. But I wanted to know what it felt like in terms of what your senses are feeding you. What do you see? What do you hear? What does it look like when you pause for breath and look around? What does the top look like, not just as you peer off to Tibet, but what is the ground like under your feet? Does it feel as if you're going to fall off the top? And what's it like to come back down? I think Ed Webster's book, Snow in the Kingdom, answers these questions better than anything else I've read. And the pictures complement the text wonderfully. I couldn't put it down. Read it in one sitting, and my cozy easy chair and favorite briar have never been as appreciated. Though at one point I could have persuaded myself that my toes were feeling a little chill. Thanks for the trip, Ed.

Oh no, not another Everest book! you're thinking, right? But as one of the last in the recent glut of Everest memoirs (written by and about survivors/clients whom would have remained anonymous except for their friends/guides who died in 1996) Snow in the Kingdom may well be the magnum opus of all Everest books.

Herein, you'll find no clients being towed by their guides, no tourist routes, no bottled oxygen, no climber traffic jams, and no Sherpas hauling the author's gear. This book is about the ultimate climb: the hardest route up the highest mountain. Finally, the author and his partners completed the climb for love rather than money.

In Snow in the Kingdom, Ed Webster is a photographer above all else. Like others before him (Lito Tejada-Flores, James Balog, Galen Rowell) Ed knew that publishing his photo-intensive book with a conventional publisher would not allow him to obtain either the clarity or quantity that he needed to properly tell his story So Ed spent a decade rounding up the money, hired the best editors/designers/scanners that money could buy in Colorado (subsequently going into debt), and laboriously began self publishing his own book. We should be thankful that he's been down the road of self publishing before, because this is no amateur's tome. The end result: 150 pages of color photos in five separate signatures! Not counting 582 pages of text¾and even then you can't turn the book more than four pages without being arrested by a new black and white photo! All printed sharply on a 70-pound stock that does the photographer's work justice. If this isn't enough, the author has obtained unpublished photographs of Noel Odell's from Mallory's Everest expeditions, along with a host of pictures taken by other well-known Everest climbers and photographers. If you were to buy such a beautifully laid-out book like this from a conventional photo-book publisher, say Abrams or Chronicle, you'd pay twice as much and get half the text (eg, Bradford Washburn's elegant Mount McKinley opus).

Because Snow in the Kingdom is not just breath-taking photographs of culture and history and real climbing. You will, and I would like to emphasize will, buy this book because Ed Webster gives us his heart and soul on a platter. His is a deeply personal story about loss. The loss of Lauren Husted, a woman he once loved, who died with her head in his lap after their climbing accident in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. Loss of his fingers and toes to Everest. And loss of his ability to climb--a talent that sustained Ed Webster for nearly thirty years. Or to put it in one of his fondest quotes (by Elizabeth Knowlton): "To those men who are born for mountains, the struggle can never end, until their lives end¾to them it holds the very quintessence of living¾the fiery core, after the lesser parts have burned away."

This is also a story about climbing the Kangshung Face of Mount Everest in 1989. The route is menaced by hanging glacier avalanches and technical climbing difficulties (famed alpinists Alex Lowe and David Breashears returned to the Kangshung several years later and found that they could not drag up their wealthy client, who later became famous in Into Thin Air for being dragged up the tourist route) and remains the territory of only world-class alpinists. On the way, the reader is given both an in-depth tour to Ed's emotions and the climbing history of Everest, including two of Ed's earlier attempts on the mountain. Through text and pictures, you meet many of the personalities of Everest and luminaries of climbing: Reinhold Messner, Sir John Hunt, Jim Bridwell, Audrey Saukeld, Peter Athens, rock star Billy Squier (one of Ed's clients), Sir Chris Bonnington, Joe Brown, Roger Marshall, Tenzing Norgay (and his son), Jay Smith, Sir Edmond Hillary, Fritz Wiessner; and Ed's Kangshung teammates: Paul Teare, Robert Anderson, and Stephen Venables.

Of course, by the end, we learn the specific price for the 1989 Kangshung Face Team's boldness. Ed escorts his partners, more dead than alive, back down the face. No one is really unscathed, but Ed in particular will never be the same again. I'm not going to spill the denouement here, so the best I can do is encourage you to read the book and find out for yourself what happens, in the most handsomely crafted Everest book ever produced.

After plodding through dozens of climbing books, half of them unreadable, this book was a great joy. Not only is it a beautiful volume, with voluminous footnotes and a painstaking attention to detail, but I also believe that Webster is an extraordinarily adept writer. I spent the better portion of two evenings reading "Snow in the Kingdom," and wanted to read it over again once I was finished. There is something uniquely magical about Webster's photographs, his philosophy, and his optimistic nature. The chapters dealing with the climb up the Kangshung face of Everest brought to attention the almost mystical nature of the high altitude experience, sans oxygen. It is easy to believe that after a while, utterly dwarfed by creation and crippled by thin air, man begins to feel a sense of cosmic meaning and purpose on a mountain. In many ways, all of the men on the 1988 Everest Kangshung climb were winning the race against time, drudgery, and (dare I say it) mortality. Perhaps a step into the void is the only way, in this short life, any of us can feel as though victory, however briefly, is at hand. Yes, Webster paid a terrible price in his venture on the ice walls of Everest. This book, however, should be redemption enough for that suffering. It is one of the very best of its kind.

Snow in the Kingdom by Ed Webster is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. The writing is precise and perfect, the photography stunning beyond belief, and the quality of the book is excellent. To not read this book would be like missing out on some important part of life.

Webster's writing is not especially evocative, but it gathers power as the book goes on, rather like a Kangshung avalanche. This story of three Everest expeditions, the last one involving a new East Face route, is also a story about someone pushing himself to his physical and emotional limits and paying for it. The book left me feeling as if I had read a tragedy, not a triumph. The photos, as other reviewers have mentioned, are gorgeous, though unfortunately all were not reproduced in color.

Here's the perfect weekend: a great book, a great subject and the company of great men and women...
Put this on your short list of essential adventure classics: fine writing, wonderful photography (and more of than you'd ever thought possible on a climb of this sort), profound emotion and the ultimate challenge...
I loved this book!
Thank God he survived to tell the tale...

I met Ed Webster on a field trip with my daughter's grade 5 class to DeLorme Map in Yarmouth, ME, home of Eartha, the world's largest rotating globe. He held the class spellbound, especially when he told us of Everest. I bought a copy of SNOW IN THE KINGDOM, and read it into the wee hours, which is saying a lot since I'm not ordinarily a night owl. It was so exciting, I could hardly put it down! But much more than the excitement, I especially appreciated Ed's sensitivity and respect toward peoples of other cultures, keen insight into human nature, and careful explanation of what life is like in the Himalayan regions. Months later, I saw an Omni theater presentation entitled EVEREST at the Boston Museum of Science. I could appreciate it so much more by knowing the names of the people and places from Ed's book. Ed Webster has created a legacy in laboring over a decade on his fine book, for it will enrich the understanding of generations of people. Allow yourself the privilege of being one of them (and visit Ed in person at DeLorme Map in Maine if you get the chance)!

Great Book! I do not write reviews because they are generally over rated! I do not promote anyone one but knowing how hard true climbing is and the ART of climbing this book is great for all. I recommend people who doubt themselves look at what Ed did from loosing someone to concuring his own fears. Worth the read! I understand some of this, as I have concured many of my own fears while serving in the Navy.

"Snow" is an outstanding achievement----well written, beautifully illustrated, and meticulously edited. Ed made alive the routine of expeditions. This is a great read for the non-climber and essential for novice mountaineers and those stepping up to the expedition arena. I have not seen another book that so accurately describes the discipline and careful thought that goes into successful and safe climbing. Beyond the technical details, Ed reveals himself--- letting others know what motivates elite climbers to risk everything for climbing success. In an age when Americans seem to most value the things they own, it is refreshing to read of a life that most values experience. I am a better person for having learned Ed's struggles and successes.

George B. Allen
Author of "Ultrasafe-A Guide to Safer Rock Climbing"