Books

It only stands to reason that Mount Everest, the highest place on earth, would also be one of the most dangerous.

FILE 2005/The Associated Press

With cliffs and crevasses so treacherous that a missed step might be the last, temperatures that freeze skin on contact, and air thin enough that even at rest climbers are slowly dying, its upper reaches are aptly named the "Death Zone."

But who would imagine that the greatest danger on Everest might well be the climber in the next tent, or the person you've hired to get you to the peak.

Michael Kodas' remarkable book, High Crimes, exposes the deceits, robberies and thefts, the drugs fueling some high-altitude expeditions, even the casual willingness of people paid to get climbers to the top to abandon stricken clients to almost certain death.

Mr. Kodas, a journalist with The Hartford Courant, took part in a Connecticut-based expedition in 2004 that began with friendship and camaraderie and quickly descended into scams, thefts and deadly threats.

The story stands as a major theme in High Crimes, along with that of a second expedition that encapsulates the worst of the Everest experience.

Funded by a 69-year-old Bolivian doctor based in the U.S., the second expedition was led by a guide whom Mr. Kodas says used stolen photos of another climber to bolster his credentials as an Everest expert.

With wealthy clients spending as much as $65,000 to reach Everest's 29,028-foot peak, guides, Sherpas and a mix of unsavory characters angle for a share of what has become the seamy but very profitable side of this once-noble test of human endurance.

The story of Dr. Nils Antezqana is particularly tragic, in part because Mr. Kodas paints him as an absolutely honorable and decent guy who makes just one tragic mistake: hiring Gustavo Lisi to get him to the top of the mountain.

The unraveling Connecticut expedition should have been equally compelling, since Mr. Kodas tells that story firsthand. But he rarely provides the same sense of intimacy and outrage when writing about himself and the people close to him.

And in trying to tell the comprehensive story of what the commercialized Everest has become – from expedition leaders who supply their climbers with faulty equipment to Sherpas who shake down clients in midclimb – Mr. Kodas' ambitions outreach his organizational skills.

With a couple of intertwined story lines, multiple characters and occasional tangents to illustrate related points, the reader finds himself backpedaling on occasion, trying to keep it all straight.

Despite that, Mr. Kodas' descriptions of the struggles confronting even the best-prepared climbers leave the reader breathless.

Some of that comes from his descriptions of the arduous climb, where each step requires frantic gasps for oxygen. But much comes from the sheer terror of the place, the innumerable dangers and the callousness of climbers who pass the dead and dying with their eyes fixed on the prize: their place at Everest's peak.

The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed

Michael Kodas

(Hyperion, $24.95)

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