The Climb

In May 1996 three expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route. Each group contained world-class climbers and relative novices, some of whom had paid tens of thousands of pounds for the climb. As they neared the summit, twenty-three men and women, including expedition leaders Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, were caught in a ferocious blizzard. Disorientated, out of oxygen and depleted of supplies, they struggled to find their way to safety. Experienced high-altitude guide Anatoli Boukreev led his exhausted and terrified group of six back to shelter before going back out alone into the blizzard to help others stranded on the mountain. Rescuing a number of climbers from certain death, he emerged a hero. The Climb is his honest and gripping account of true endurance and contains interviews with some of the surviving climbers, medical personnel and Sherpas. This edition also includes the transcript of the Mountain Madness debriefing as well as G. Weston DeWalt's history and analysis of the Boukreev-Krakauer debate.