Into the Wild: Survival Stories

Dead Lucky
Lincoln Hall

In May 2006 on Mt. Everest, veteran climber Hall was left for dead because, to his fellow climbers, he appeared to have died. But the following morning, members of another expedition found him, sitting on a rock and very much alive. Hall's story made headlines around the world--not too many dead men walk down off the tallest mountain in the world--and now Hall, the author of seven previous climbing-themed books, tells us the full story. It is a remarkable account. Hall's ordeal is the stuff of nightmares: collapsing from altitude sickness, slipping into unconsciousness, waking up all alone at the top of the world, left behind as though he were a corpse. As a storyteller, Hall has a tough job: to convey to the reader what was going on inside his head as he slipped in and out of hallucination until the line between fantasy and reality was so blurred as to be nonexistent. He does this with a grace and sense of drama that befit a novel: we feel we're there with him, seeing and hearing things that can't possibly be real. There have been a great many Everest-themed books lately, but this one stands alone, the first-person account of a climber's journey into, and back out of, death itself.
Booklist Review; May 2008.

Hell or High Water
Peter Heller

Dedicated kayakers have long had their hearts set on the Tsangpo River, which cuts a gorge through Tibet many times deeper and steeper than the Grand Canyon; successfully navigating it is akin to snowboarding down Everest. The last major expedition of the 1990s ended when one of the kayakers drowned in the raging currents, but in 2002 a group led by adventure filmmaker Scott Lindgren, one of the extreme sport's most prominent heroes, gave it another shot. Heller was assigned to cover the expedition for Outside and, despite having completely worn out the cartilage in one hip, he decided to go for it. The story takes him to one of the most beautiful spots on the planet, still almost entirely untouched, but also subjects him to the ugliest aspects of human nature. Heller is unflinchingly honest about the hostility he faced from Lindgren and his companions, who openly attack the journalist for 'getting rich' from their story, as well as the resentment that begins to well inside him at their condescension. Meanwhile, the locals hired to carry the equipment realize they have the upper hand and start extorting more money for their services. The drama on shore, however, is easily matched--sometimes surpassed--by the action on the river, which includes a few chilling brushes with death. Heller nimbly blends the history of the region into his gripping modern trek, as the crew lives up to the legacy of the great explorers before them. An offhand remark made to the paddlers early in the journey--that their story could be the kayaking equivalent of Into Thin Air--has come true in the best possible way.

Publishers Weekly Review; August 2004.

Where Hell Freezes Over
David Kearns

In 1946, the U.S. Navy sent warships to Antarctica to conduct the Antarctic Development Project, codenamed Operation Highjump, a major survey of the continent. The 12 ships involved included several seaplane tenders carrying aircraft for aerial surveys. On December 30, 1946, one of the planes from the tender USS Pine Island crashed into a mountain on Thurston Island off the Antarctic shoreline. Of the crew of nine, three died in the crash. The six survivors, including the Pine Island's captain, Henry H. Caldwell, waited 14 days until rescue by the navy. Freelance reporter Kearns, son of the plane's copilot, Lt. Bill Kearns, presents this story based on interviews with the expedition's participants, periodical articles, and government documents. He shows that the U.S. Navy was unprepared to operate large numbers of ships in the harsh Antarctic seas. Operation Highjump suffered numerous serious problems, including the death of another sailor in a separate accident. However, the most important part of Kearns's tale is his discussion of Captain Caldwell's efforts to keep his men going while waiting rescue. Kearns takes the story up to the present to track the accident's impact on the survivors and their families. This excellent tale of tragedy and heroism is recommended for public libraries.
Library Journal Review; October 2005.

Facing the Extreme
Ruth Anne Kocour

Kocour, a medical illustrator and veteran mountaineer, was part of a team that set out to climb Mt. McKinley, North America's highest peak, in 1992. This book, written with the assistance of outdoor author Hodgson, is the account of that harrowing experience. On the ninth day of the climb, the worst storm in recorded Alaskan history trapped the party at an elevation of 14,000 feet for 11 days, subjecting the climbers to raging winds of over 110 mph, temperatures plummeting to 47 degrees below zero, and snowdrifts that threatened to entomb them. Kocour passionately recounts how all ten members of her team survived the storm that took the lives of 11 other climbers on the mountain, and how, in fact, they ultimately reached the summit. Readers interested in climbing details will be disappointed, but those looking for a human adventure story of extreme physical and mental challenges will not be.
Library Journal Review; February 1998.

Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer

A handful of people have stood atop Everest, and Krakauer is one of them. Sent to Nepal in May_ 1996 after his success with Into the Wild (1995), he was to report on the commercialization of ascents of the mountain but was instead compelled to tell an icy story of survival and death. As an inquiry into the outer limits of human strength and into the inner turmoil of survivor's guilt, Krakauer's narrative leaves a reader virtually breathless, sweating as he sweats, gasping as he gasps, crying as he cries over dying friends. The disaster made worldwide headlines last year, and its immediate cause was natural--a freak blizzard caught dozens of people near the summit. But the enabling condition was the mere presence at Everest of amateurs, some with minimal mountaineering skill. Guides, Sherpas, and $65,000 was all one needed to make the attempt. At the summit, the pressures of the guide-client relationship were immense, even overwhelming the imperative to flee the storm that overwhelmed the victims. Krakauer's eyewitness to the unfolding tragedy makes a transfixing drama of hubris, responsibility, and sacrificial heroism, which will mark the memory of all who read it.
Booklist Review; April 1997.

Shattered Air
Bob Madgic

Madgic claims that 'in the annals of hiking tragedies caused by lightning,' an ill-fated climb up Yosemite's famed Half Dome mountain by five experienced hikers in 1985 was 'one of the most calamitous... of all time.' Two of the hikers were killed and three sustained life-altering injuries after they decided to ignore signs of an oncoming thunderstorm and continued climbing a mountain whose peak had been struck by lightning during every month of that year. Madgic, a writer on the outdoors and a Half Dome climbing vet, delivers a well-written and thoroughly investigated account, but his real subject is less the hikers and more the 'raw, fearsome power' of lightning. While he provides in-depth profiles of each hiker and their shared enthusiasm for risk taking as a way of conquering 'personal fear,' he makes it clear from the start that none of them 'really knew the capacities, behaviors and dangers of thunderstorms.' Madgic provides a fascinating, if somewhat stomach-churning, account of how the walls of a cave the hikers took refuge in conducted the electrical charge that devastated them, and his contribution to the adventure category is at once a terrifying story and an urgent cautionary tale.
Publishers Weekly Review; April 2005.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Aron Ralston

The world knows the outlines of Ralston's extraordinary story: with precious little water or food, his right arm pinned for nearly five days by a boulder in a narrow canyon shaft in central-eastern Utah, Ralston amputated the arm with his pocketknife, then rappelled and hiked his way to his own rescue. What makes his account of his ordeal extraordinary, too, is the detail and precision Ralston, a former mechanical engineer, brings to the telling, from the almost minute-by-minute chronology of his ordeal to topographical descriptions of the ground he's covered in his life as an outdoor adventurer. It's also the extremes of failure and achievement we see forged in this life-or-death crisis: carelessness at not telling friends where he was going, despair as he wrote his epitaph on the canyon wall, even a certain unthinking in taking five days to figure out his deliverance. But those were all trumped by Ralston's amazing resourcefulness in prolonging his supplies and finding a way out, his boundless enthusiasm for life, and his dogged force of will at enduring far longer than anyone could have expected.
Booklist Review; August 2004.

Beyond the Deep
William Stone

Set in stygian gloom, this account of a 1994 caving expedition in southern Mexico produces what adventure readers crave: danger, dissension, death, and ultimate success. Led by author Stone, the spelunkers sought the furthest reaches of a cave system, the Sistema Huautla, which plunged a kilometer and a half down and stretched out for tens of kilometers. To go the deepest, the coveted 'booty' in the caving community, Stone developed a special 'rebreathing' apparatus for swimming through submerged passages called sumps. As the saga unfolds (dramatically assisted by admittedly reconstructed dialogue), the riskiness of the enterprise becomes apparent as the cavers survive various snafus, which rattle some group members who come to resent Stone's hard-charging style. A cheerful wisecracker named Ian Rolland is not daunted--but soon pays the final price for this adventure. After much acrimony about whether to continue, Stone and his then-girlfriend press on, their course marked by helpful diagrams of their progress. The technicalities of this death-defying recreation, and the raw honesty with which this episode is depicted, will win over extreme- sport fans.

Booklist Review; June 2002.