Books: mountain climbing and K2

To the Summit (and beyond)

After traveling to Colorado last year and realizing I couldn’t bring the mountains home with me, I did the next best thing and dug into books about mountains.

The first couple I found were pretty much travel guides to Colorado. Then I came across Joseph Poindexter’s “To the Summit,” an overview of 50 of the world’s most notable mountains with all kinds of beautiful photos, significant history notes, and interesting facts or stories about each one.

That set me off on a mental expedition to K2 through several other books (plus a couple fictional movies as well). Instead of finding out more about the Rocky Mountains, I ended up geographically on the other side of the world in the Himalayas – in fact, Denver and K2 are at nearly opposite points on the earth.

I didn’t read the books in order because I didn’t find discover them in order, but here’s a list in the chronological sequence I would recommend (and someday will repeat).

Each (except Messner’s) is as well written as a best-selling novel, but tells the dramatic stories of climbing and/or "failing" on the world’s second-highest and most brutal mountain. For mountain climbers, it's considered failure not to reach the summit, even only by a few hundred yards. I suppose, like losing the Super Bowl on a last-second field goal, it's recorded as a loss, but discounts all the success it took to get that close.

I also found that reading these books makes Minnesota winters much more tolerable – after picturing climbers stuck in a tent at 20,000 feet for several days to wait out a blizzard, it doesn’t seem so bad to walk from the office to a cold vehicle at 10-below.

• “The Last Man on the Mountain: the Death of an American Adventurer on K2” (Jennifer Jordan) – the 1939 American expedition led by Fritz Wiessner in which climber Dudley Wolfe died on the mountain; his remains were found by the author of this book 63 years later.

• “K2: The Savage Mountain” (Charles Houston and Bob Bates) – 1953 American expedition. Includes a harrowing incident in which while attempting to descend because of an ill and injured member of the party, six others slipped and fell but were saved by a heroic measure by one of the climbers.

• “In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods” (Galen Rowell) – the 1975 American expedition which didn’t come close to the summit. It’s still an insightful look into sport of climbing along with intriguing history of K2.

• “The Last Step: the American Ascent of K2” (Rick Ridgeway) – the 1978 American ascent, which was the first successful American expedition getting 4 climbers to the summit.

• “Addicted to Danger” (Jim Wickwire) – This book is about Wick’s career; he was one of the Americans who summitted in ‘79 and made it back, barely.

• “K2: Mountain of Mountains” (Reinhold Messner)  Messner climbed K2 without oxygen. Maybe it’s a language barrier, but this one is tough to read.