I finished reading a great new book Tigers of the snow. What makes this book particularly interesting is it tells the history of himalayan climbing from the perspective of the sherpa’s who endured the hardships for food instead of the mountaineers who went for personal glory. I’ve read tons of moutaineering books but this one gets closest to telling the story of those incredible sherpas and what they had to endure to make someone elses dreams of glory come true.
Probably the most amazing story in the book was about the German assault of Nanga Parbat. Nanga Parbat is a brutal but beautiful moutain, its is the 9th highest mountain and many consider it the most dangerous of all, even more so than K2 (Everest is a cakewalk by comparison). The Germans tried climbing this beast quite a few times before they suceeded summiting in 1953. The story is about how on one fateful expedition the two German climbers were caught in a snowstorm with their group of Sherpas. The germans had skies, the sherpas did not. Anyway, the Germans skied down the mountain and left the sherpas to die. Needless to say many did die, although one survived and tells the story in great style. It is amazing how the balance of life and death is so easily tilted at high altitudes. Highly recommended reading particularly if adventure stuff interests you…
