The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

Read The Climb, Anatoli Boukreev (portrayed by Ingvar Sigurðsson in the film Everest) and G. Weston DeWalt’s compelling account of those fateful events on Everest.

In May 1996 three expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Crowded conditions slowed their progress. Late in the day twenty-three men and women—including expedition leaders Scott Fischer and Rob Hall—were caught in a ferocious blizzard. Disoriented and out of oxygen, climbers struggled to find their way down the mountain as darkness approached. Alone and climbing blind, Anatoli Boukreev brought climbers back from the edge of certain death.

“Powerful … a breath of brisk, sometimes bitter clarity … Boukreev did the one thing that denies the void. He took action. He chose danger, and he saved lives.”—The New York Times Book Review