High Exposure:
An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places

David Breashears

New York: Touchstone, 1999; ISBN: 0-684-86545-9; Pp. 320, index, photos

Review © 2004 Branislav L. Slantchev

I continue to devour climbing books at an alarming rate. One may think I actually have an interest in the sport itself, but I am afraid that's not quite true. What I really want to find out is why people willingly place themselves in exceedingly dangerous situations when there is no reason to, and, incidentally, why it is considered heroic to fail to die in circumstances mostly of your own creation. I mean, there aren't many famous books on climbing without incident: it appears climbers are forever getting themselves into messes where losing fingers to frostbite is considered being lucky.

Mr Breashears is as famous as they come, if not for his ascents, then for their popularization in print and on film. He is the man who took a modified IMAX camera to the top of the world in 1996, the year of the Everest tragedies so masterfully, if tendentiously, depicted in Mr Krakauer's excellent read, Into Thin Air. It seems that every person within a 20km radius of Base Camp that year has published his or her own version of the story. Fortunately, Mr Breashears does not leap on that particular gravy train until the last two chapters of his book.

Instead, we are treated to an auto-biography. As far as remarkable lives go, this one is more puzzling than inspiring. The book reveals a highly motivated, mostly self-sufficient, slightly socially impaired person who would be great to have as a friend, a climbing partner, and a leader of one's expedition. As behooves any modern American, Mr Breashears seeks the reason for his slightly unorthodox behaviors in his childhood, complete with an abusive army father who abandons the family. In retrospect, one can probably fit an explanation based on such a childhood to just about any life one can think of, so I tend to dismiss these exercises as futile.

Dismissal here is all the more warranted because Mr Breashears reveals himself as one who would doggedly pursue his goals, creating and re-inventing himself in the process, with hardly any reference to influences others may have had on him. If anything can be said to have molded him, it is his own responses to the self-imposed challenges Nature has created. Through his miserable time on oil rigs in Wyoming, to making films about Everest (twice!), Mr Breashears answers to nobody. Which sometimes can be a bad thing as it makes it very difficult to maintain personal relationships that require the same amount of ambition and dedication as, say, Perilous Journey.

What is Perilous Journey? It is a climbing route that Mr Breashears pioneered as a nineteen-year-old. According to Mr Krakauer, who wrote the foreword for this book, this episode reveals everything one needs to know about Mr Breashears. Why? Because he wanted to leave his own mark by pioneering a route, which has to be sufficiently difficult and dangerous to deserve the respect of other climbers, who are apparently one fiercely competitive bunch. The remarkable thing about this is not that Mr Breashears did it, but how he did it: instead of rappeling down the wall and rehearse the moves, he opted for an ascent without this sort of "cheating" which would remove all the danger from the experience, and would therefore probably rob him of the conquest claim.

One thing that Mr Breashears offers that makes this book stand out from the crowd of climbing disaster publications, if that it offers something of an answer to the conundrum that motivates my reading of these things. Why do people go to Everest, sometimes repeatedly? Ironically, the blurb on the back cover states precisely what the author's claim is not:

For Breashears, climbing has never been a question of risk taking: Rather, it is the pursuit of excellence, and a quest of self-knowledge.

And yet on p. 304, Mr Breashears describes his impression of the summit photo of Bruce Herrod (who died in 1996 and whose camera was retrieved from his lifeless body a year later):

The risk inherent in climbing such mountains carries its own reward, deep and abiding, because it provides as profound sense of self-knowledge as anything else on earth.

In other words, no risk, no gain. The Zen monks and run of the mill Buddhists have apparently had it wrong all along. Apparently, without risking life and limb, one cannot truly obtain enlightenment. But then again, Buddhists look to lose knowledge of their own selves, while climbers, the ego-centered creatures that they are, seek to learn more and more about themselves. They must not be very good learners: how many times does a man have to climb a mountain before achieving self-knowledge? And once such knowledge is achieved, what does a climber do? Self-knowledge is an elusive goal for it presupposes a target waiting to be discovered, explored, and owned. But the self is a tricky thing: it is inconstant, mutable, and perishable. If there's anything the book shows, it is that the self is constantly created by the very acts that are supposed to discover it. In such a futile quest, is it then any wonder that people keep returning to the mountains? Perhaps every time they leave them, they find a new person waiting to be self-known in turn?

The book then follows Mr Breashears' expeditions to various places in Nepal, Tibet, and Pakistan. It is a remarkable read, even if it is not nearly as smooth and captivating as Mr Krakauer's. We learn about the beauty of Ama Dablam, the Chinese occupation of Tibet before and after opening the place to tourists (and heavy immigration of Han Chinese), about interacting with Sherpas (which the author seems to excel in), and even the occasional funny episode like the night taxi ride from hell in Pakistan. The author also explains why and how he switched from "mere" climbing to filming the experience. Despite all the humility (some of which seems affected), one gets the distinct sense that Mr Breashears had decided that getting on top by itself is not, well, all that informative afer all. But a camera in hand can make it all the more difficult, and all the more rewarding. It was interesting to read about his role in filming Cliffhanger, especially when he was made to fake-climb in melting show only to find that the camera had malfunctioned and his stand-in for Stallone would not appear in the final film.

Of course, one has to mention Mr Breashears' take on the 1996 disaster. The brief chapters here toe the line with Mr Krakauer's account, especially regarding Mr Boukreev's summit day actions, which the author roundly condemns. On the other hand, Mr Breashears spends quite a bit of time praising Beck Weathers, the guy who would not die, admiring his courage, his inner strength, and his graciousness. He also offers a very touching rumination on the death of the Taiwanese climber (usually mentioned in passing, and then only to set up the radically insensitive reaction of that team's leader to the news). But the one thought I found particularly honest is this (p. 259):

You can climb that mountain a thousand times, and it will never know your name.

In all that questing for self-knowledge, the "indifference Everest holds toward human life" must be very unsettling indeed. After all, so many people now only have the mountain as their eternal companion.

December 4, 2004