Product Description

May 1996 began like most other climbing seasons on Mount Everest. The arrival of spring brought the usual pre-monsoon period, with teams of hopeful mountaineers ready to reach for the roof of the world. Among the dozens of climbers were Jon Krakauer and Anatoli Boukreev (who would both later write their own accounts of what followed) and Matt Dickinson. But on May 10, with ten different expeditions strung out along the mountain, the usual turned deadly. Suddenly, the temperature dropped from merely frigid to 40 degrees below zero. A killer storm with howling winds swept in and climbers were soon blinded in white-out conditions. Before it was over, the blizzard would claim a dozen lives, the worst loss of life in the modern history of climbing on Everest.

Dickinson, an adventure filmmaker, was part of an expedition challenging the treacherous North Face of Everest, on the Tibetan side. Of the nearly 700 people who have scaled Everest since the first ascent in 1953, barely 230 have managed to ascend via the colder and technically more difficult route up the North Face. In addition to climbing through the storm, which would test him beyond his imagining, Dickinson also filmed the ascent. He and his team watched in awe as violent clouds gathered over the mountain and swept them all up in a frightening white force. Dickinson was a relative novice who had never climbed at this crushing altitude, and the storm preyed on his mind, throwing into question his entire mission. Despite this uncertainty and the treacherous conditions, Dickinson and his partner Alan Hinkes continued their climb, compelled to reach the summit.

Dickinson's first-person narrative--the only account of the killer storm written by a climber who was on the North Face--places the reader amid the swirl of the catastrophe, while providing rare insight into the very essence of mountaineering. The Other Side of Everest is a portrait of personal triumph set against the most disastrous storm to ever befall the world mountaineering community. Anyone who has ever pushed beyond familiar limits of physical and psychological endurance will cherish this book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1203773 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-20
• Released on: 1999-04-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 233 pages

Amazon.com Review
On May 10, 1996, a paralyzing storm killed 12 climbers on Mt. Everest, disfigured many others, and put the peak back on its lofty throne. While the disaster on the South Face has received nearly all of the publicity, most notably in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Anatoli Boukreev's The Climb, The Other Side of Everest details a novice's remarkable ascent through that same storm on the colder and more difficult North Face. With alarming details, author and cameraman Matt Dickinson describes the horror of the extreme altitude and crippling storm: the hunger, pain, fear, and exhaustion. At one point, the party comes face to face with failure: "As we stepped over the legs of the corpse to continue along the Ridge, we crossed an invisible line in the snow--and an invisible line of commitment in our own minds." For most of the journey, it must be said, Dickinson is uncomfortable with himself and his surroundings. But his honesty is refreshing. Through his travails, he develops a reverence for a mountain that demands respect, and as a result, the occasional moments of epiphany so central to the genre still retain a ring of truthfulness. Adventure buffs will welcome this addition to the Everest library. --Ben Tiffany

From School Library Journal
YA-Dickinson, who was hired by a high-adventure company to produce a movie about an ascent of Everest by a major British film star, is not a professional high-altitude climber. However, he is a fine writer with a style somewhere between the tight and intense passages of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (Villard) and the ponderous, technical treatment in Anatoli Boukreev's much longer The Climb (St. Martin's, both 1997). He writes of actually making it to the summit up the North Face with a simplicity and wonder lacking in Everest accounts written by those who spend their lives climbing the world's highest peaks. As a filmmaker, he gives the book visual power. This title will hold readers in its icy grip from beginning to end.
Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A powerful account of the filmmaker/author's successful ascent to the summit of the North Face during a storm that devastated the world mountaineering community, written with the wonder of an amateur climber. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

An excellent companion to 'Into Thin Air'
I was a bit hesitant to read The Other Side of Everest; it was beginning to seem to me that there wasn't a person anywhere near the mountain during 1996 that *hadn't* written a book. I figured this one would be a rehashing of the story we all know so well, from Into Thin Air and other books. How wrong I was. The Other Side of Everest offers a different perspective of the 1996 tragedies, but it's well told - *and* the book offers a great deal more.

Dickinson, in my opinion, did a better job than Krakauer at writing for the non-climbing audience, perhaps because he isn't really a climber at all. He doesn't use much jargon, and when he does - "the Death Zone," for example, which was the UK title of this book - he defines his terms. He also answers a lot of the questions non-mountaineers and armchair adventurers have about climbing; for once and for all, he explains why climbers dread calls of nature above 8,000 meters, as just one example.

Dickinson writes very differently than most climbers, especially the ones who have written about Everest 1996. His narrative retains the tension and, in some places, tragedy that are common to the best expedition accounts, but he also uses humor in places where it's appropriate. I found myself laughing out loud in several places. The Other Side of Everest is also different in that it doesn't have the haunted, agonizing tone that Into Thin Air did, perhaps because Dickinson was farther from the tragedies, relatively speaking, or perhaps just because he waited longer than Krakauer did to write about it. Also, The Other Side is an account of a successful, "easy" Everest climb, not a disaster, which changes the perspective and the tone a lot from the other books about the 1996 season.

In additional to the Everest-disaster-season story, The Other Side has another story to tell: how a non-climber got to the top of the world. Dickinson's case of summit fever drives him to the top of a mountain he didn't really expect to climb - after all, he's clumsy even at sea level - and so his book is a good look at the way normal people with little mountaineering experience (i.e., commercial expedition members) handle high-altitude climbs - and, to the extent that it can be explained at all, why.

This book was written by a film director, so perhaps it isn't a surprise that the pictures are so good, but it's lovely anyway. I'm also pleased that the publishers sprung for two different insets of color photos, at least in the hardcover edition; some of them are truly breathtaking.

In short, The Other Side of Everest is well worth reading for all lovers of adventure travel and climbing writing; even those who feel they've read Everest to death should enjoy this one. The book is a welcome addition to climbing literature, and would give pleasure on almost anyone's bookshelf.

Everest '96 again but with a refreshing new slant
Much has been written about Mount Everest 1996 and indeed the debate that was initiated not just by the events on the mountain but by the accounts of it primarily in Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Boukreev's The Climb continues. The Other Side of Everest (The Death Zone in England and Australia - don't but the same book twice!) adds to our knowledge of May '96 while at the same time does not attempt to mimic other accounts or indeed to enter the understandably emotive arena of claim and counter claim that personifies the 1996 Everest season.

Matt Dickinson, a film maker, writer and novice climber attempted Everest by its North Face. Essentially a cameraman there to film the English actor Brian Blessed's third attempt on the mountain, Dickinson writes with a refreshing honesty regarding his motivations, his fears and his almost lack of climbing skill. The result is an excellent account of the climb that enables the reader - particularly those of us whose highest peak is a flight of stairs - to get an understanding of the reality not just of climbing in general but of climbing Everest in May of 1996.

Most people will read this book after Boukreev and Krakauer have stimulated their interest in Everest. If this is the case you might also want to take a look at Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, a stunning IMAX pictorial account of the '96 climb. Furthermore, if like me you're now hooked on the whole subject of mountaineering then do a search for the books of Joe Simpson and Andrew Greig, you won't be disappointed.

Another one for the Everest library
Like many who started with Krakauer's Into Thin Air, I've now read a number of Everest stories, including more than one eye-witness account of the 1996 storm. Dickinson's story includes another description of the 1996 storm, but from the North rather than the South side of the mountain. Because of the different approach, Dickinson is not able to add detail or first-hand opinions on the disaster that played out on the South Col. However, Dickinson's account is well worth adding to the library for several reasons: it is well-written and humorous, it provides interesting information on the North route (the one attempted by Mallory and Irvine), and, more than any of the other Everest books I have read, it describes the conditions on Everest in such a way that a non-climber, like me, can almost imagine what it must be like to be so high, with so little air, in such cold. As he is quick to admit, Dickinson is not a high-altitude climber. He came to Everest to direct a documentary film about climbing the mountain, but initially did not intend to attempt the summit himself. Because he was a novice at high-altitude, Dickinson is able to describe the surprising sensations of oxygenless and extreme cold more convincingly than others, such as Boukreev, who almost assumes familiarity with such matters. At least for this armchair climber, these details are at least as fascinating and exciting as the dramatic story playing out on the South Col. And of course, because Dickinson did summit Everest and did return to tell the story, there is plenty of human drama and climbing excitement. I highly recommend this account.