ABSTRACT
Many books about subsequent disasters on Everest, including Michael Kodas’ High Crimes or Nick Heil’s Dark Summit, repeat Krakauer’s analysis of the decline of Everest from an important climbing challenge to a deadly theater for amateur ambitions and capitalist greed. To begin, Mount Everest itself plays a special role in climbing history because of its size and the size of the ambitions of its climbers. Most of the events of the 1996 disaster are not debatable, although it may be that as a survivor, Lou Kasischke writes, “the truth may never be told” about what exactly happened. Climbing High, unlike most Everest books by women, does have feminist overtones as a document. Gammelgaard discusses other climbers whom she admires, including British climber Alison Hargreaves (30–31, 155), and recounts her sorrow at seeing the body of a female climber Hannelore Schmatz on her way up the mountain.
