Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters Review

I just read Tabor's book, "Forever On The Mountain", and then read Wilcox's 1981 book, "White Winds", and 1973 Snyder's book, "In The Hall Of The Mountain King". Wilcox and Snyder are two of the five survivors of the twelve-man expedition up the Muldrow Glacier route on Denali in 1967. Both of their books were written years after the event and express different biases. Snyder's book suffers from a clear bias against Wilcox, and Wilcox's book suffers from a different sort of bias, essentially pinning the entire tragedy on the storm that caught the seven who died, and ignoring the culpability of the National Park Service and the intra-group tensions created when the NPS forced two mismatched teams (Wilcox's nine-man team and Snyder's three-man team) to climb together. No one from the second group of men summiting the mountain survived and they left behind no journals or other writings, so anyone writing about what happened has to try to base his or her conclusions on the objective data that did survive. For that, Tabor's book does an excellent job of marshaling and analyzing the existing evidence, consulting experts, and interviewing surviving participants in this drama. His writing is crisp and clear, and tells a gripping story. His descriptions of what happens in high-altitude alpine expeditions, from pee bottles to spending the night with your backs to the wall of your tent trying to keep it from collapsing in 100-mph winds, are spot on for anyone who has been there. Tabor takes the available evidence and then, like a courtroom attorney, draws reasonable inferences to try to reconstruct what likely happened to the seven who died high on the mountain. At the end, he concludes that there was a lot of blame to pass around, with some falling on both Wilcox and Snyder, and perhaps the most falling on the NPS and the Denali Park Superintendent at the time, but concludes, as do both Wilcox and Snyder, that there was likely nothing that could have been done after the first few days once the storm struck high on the mountain were squandered by the NPS's bureaucratic dithering on what to do. NPS ranger Wayne Merry tries his best, but is thwarted by persons in the chain of command above him who had been burned by an all-out winter expedition rescue just a few months earlier and who were simply out of their element at a time when climbing expeditions of the sort mounted by Wilcox/Snyder were nascent on Denali. Incidentally, I subsequently read Gerianne Thorsness' critical look at Tabor's book, but it suffers from great subjectivity (she is the daughter of the Denali Superintendent at the time), a misreading of Tabor's conclusions, and selected examination of portions of Tabor's book taken out of context. It would have been very interesting to read an objective, critical review of Tabor's book based on evidence that he did not have or consider, or chose to ignore, but G. Thorsness' paper isn't it. Overall, Tabor's book is a compelling attempt to answer the questions, that remain even after Tabor's book, about just what happened to cause this tragedy.

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters Feature

• ISBN13: 9780393331967
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters Overview

Winner of the 2007 Banff Mountain Festival Book Awards Grand Prize (The Phyllis & Don Munday Award): "A riveting account of a long-ago mountaineering disaster."—Time In 1967, seven young men, members of a twelve-man expedition led by twenty-four-year-old Joe Wilcox, were stranded on Alaska's Mount McKinley in a vicious arctic storm. All seven perished on what remains the most tragic expedition in American climbing history. Revisiting the event in the tradition of Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire, James M. Tabor uncovers elements of controversy, finger-pointing, and cover-up that combine to make this disaster unlike any other.

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Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a Pro Cyclist

Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a Pro Cyclist Review

This book is written by an idealistic Irish national champion who thought to make a career of himself as a professional cyclist. What he found out is that system as it exists uses up its riders like disposable cameras. He had ambitions of glory or at least success, only to find that his talent is common in the pro ranks. What he describes is what it takes to exist as a professional cyclist - the wear and tear on the body and the pounding on the psyche. Hired as a domestique, his job is to support the big guns, the stars. Yet he is compensated on his own personal racing results, which are earned only when he is released from his supporting duties. For lesser riders like him, doping is the logical and even professional way of being able to perform. His transgressions are minor - caffeine suppositories, and trial use of speed, which he discards as just too *visible*. Eventually he drops out of cycling as he transitions into another line of work, sports reporting. His message is that it is the system that is broken - open knowledge of which events are not dope-controlled, the compensation system that expects riders to sacrifice their own results to those of the team, yet get paid on the basis of their criterium results. Most of all it is the code of silence that keeps all the riders mum and reinforces the idea that there is no alternative.
He speaks from the point of view of the average rider. While he is tight with the Irish greats of his day (Tour de France winner Stephen Roche and TdF points winner Sean Kelly), he can't and doesn't speak of them beyond his personal experiences from sharing hotel rooms, training rides and personal relationships. If you are looking for a tell-all book about the greats of the Tour de France, you will not find it here. This is his story, no one else's. It's not a comprehensive book about sports doping or even doping in the professional peleton. What made his story notorious in its time was the fact that he dared to speak of it at all. His transgressions were minor but his story ostracized him from his cycling generation for years.

He updated the booking in 2005, when he ventured back into that world, albeit as a journalist rather than a rider. Things had changed yet stayed the same. His point of view is tainted now, in that he sees doping everywhere, just in a more sophisticated form than in his day.

This book is interesting not so much for the details but for the pressures on the riders to perform and to do anything/everything that the others must do. You and I have long commutes and sedentary lives that are required by our jobs; they have different job constraints that are just as binding, only theirs will kill them sooner. What a life! Thanks, Paul, for letting us see this life from your point of view.

Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a Pro Cyclist Feature

• ISBN13: 9780224080170
• Condition: New
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Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a Pro Cyclist Overview

Paul Kimmage's boyhood dreams were of cycling glory—wearing the yellow jersey, cycling the Tour de France, and becoming a national hero. He knew it wouldn't come easy, but he was prepared to put in the work—he spent his teenage years cycling an average of 400 miles per week. The dedication began to pay off. As an amateur, he represented his country and finished sixth in the World Championships. In 1986 he turned professional, and reality hit. He soon discovered it was not about glory and courage, nor about training or dedication. It was about grueling defeats, complete and utter exhaustion, and drugs—not drugs that would ensure victory, but drugs that would allow you to finish the race. Paul Kimmage left the sport to write this powerful and frank account that breaks the code of silence surrounding the issue of drugs in sport. An eye-opening exposé and a heartbreaking lament, this is a book that anyone interested in any sport should read. This updated edition includes the story of Kimmage's 2006 return to the Tour as well as a moving section on the life and death of an old teammate.

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