just finished The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G Weston DeWalt. Boukreev being a participant in that tragic climbing season on Everest 10 years ago. I read Jon Krakauer's account last winter. shades of The Ring and the Book, the stories differ considerably. there's no question that when it came to rescue, Boukreev was the only one of the 2 expeditions to make an effort, and he brought 3 people in. this was after hitting the summit himself. the conditions, especially lack of oxygen, saps everyone, physically and mentally. so it's a push to lay blame. shits happens. Boukreev said that on a previous high altitude climb, he actually gained weight, even while his companions were losing as much as 20 pounds. the food he was eatng was much better than what he could get at home in Russia. it appears that commercial considerations played a negative part in events. language too was a roadblock. lingua franca, I take it, was English, in which many people, including Boukreev, were not strong. I'll bet there's some cultural confusiuon too, like what the Sherpas understood as their role. before the assault on the summit, there was a sighting of a star or something that the Sherpas read as a bad omen. astronomically speaking, nothing likwe that should've been in the sky. oh boy! I think it was Whymper attempting the Matterhorn who claimed to've seen glowing crosses in the sky. I believe in both a polar assault and I think one on the Matterhorn, when things were very rough, the expeditions would count off to make sure everyone was still there. in each case, they consistently counted one extra person. I haven't read that much mountaineering stuff, and have no interest in doing any of it, but it fascinates me. we had a neighbour when I was growing up, Woodrow Wilson Zayre, grandson of the president. he and 3 others made an illegal attempt on Everest. they snuck in, may not have used oxygen, got into trouble before reaching the summit and made a radical descent. Zayre called the technique anti-belaying, and explained that it was another word for plain old falling. but all survived. I recall the book by Zayre, Four Against the Mountain was pretty good. anyhoo.