The Other Side of Everest:
Climbing the North Face Through the Killer Storm

Matt Dickinson

New York: Random House, 1999; ISBN: 0-8129-3159-9; Pp. 233, photos

Review © 2004 Branislav L. Slantchev

Everest, 1996. By now everyone knows about the terrible death toll the mountain exacted during the spring climbing season that year. The media frenzy surrounding the events, the phenomenal success of Mr Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and the controversy about Mr Boukreev's responsibility (to my mind settled in his The Climb), everything conspired to make the tragedy the longest-milked self-inflicted human disaster in climbing history. Every single participant seems to have written a book about it. Some, like Mr Krakauer, are superb writers and a joy to read. Others, who shall remain nameless, are mostly self-involved prima donnas who sacrifice trees on yet another ego-gratification trip.

For all the flurry of publications about the events on the Nepalese side (climbing the South Col route, made famous by Hillary and Tenzing's first ascent), few have paid attention to the tragic developments on the Tibetan side, where several expeditions were attempting the North Col route, the one where Mallory and Irvine disappeared on in 1924. Mr Dickinson was to film the UK expedition where Brian Blessed, the famous British actor, was going to make his third attempt to reach the summit, re-enacting the Mallory trip along the way by reading excerpts from his diary.

Mr Dickinson was not supposed to go for the summit. He had never been higher than 20,000 feet, he had no training or experience as a climber, and he was there to film someone else's journey. But he did ascent anyway, among the handful of people to do so and live to tell the tale that year. In addition to offering a perspective of the disaster from the Tibetan side, this narrative manages something no other book about the event does: it offers a layman's perspective of what it means to climb that mountain.

Mr Dickinson does not pretend to know what he is doing. In fact, his honesty would probably upset experienced mountaineers who may feel that people like Mr Dickinson do not belong on Everest. But there is a certain charm to reading about the underdog bagging the most coveted prize of climbing where a number of old dogs have (sometimes repeatedly) failed. Although the "I hated my clumsiness/foolishness/whatever" comments liberally peppered throughout eventually become grating and annoying, one cannot help but detect a triumphant note barely concealed underneath it all. Every time the author curses his supposed ineptitude, I can almost read the footnote accompanying it: I made it and you didn't.

Why do I say this? Because if one reads carefully, Mr Dickinson is not the neophyte he makes himself out to be. I have not been to Antarctica to make a film, have you? I do not risk my life for a good shot for a living, do you? I have not been on nearly so many expeditions as he has, have you? No matter how clumsy one is, one is bound to have picked up some modicum of experience on all these trips, something that is sort of not quite stressed in the narrative, leaving one with the dangerous impression that any couch potato could make it to the top if only he could drag his ass out to Kathmandu and hire the appropriate people.

Another unpleasant aspect of this book is the amount of personal detail involving the author's marriage. The level of attention approaches the soap-operatic and I really could not care less whether Fiona would leave him or not after his next dart to yet another adventurous film-making trip. There is the ever-present attempt to psycho-analyze one's own motivations, and claim that climbing Everest is an attempt to achieve some grand self-awareness, discover things about one's life, and miraculously find solutions to one's daily problems. Fortunately, Mr Dickinson is brutally honest here: he achieved no such thing. I am always amazed that people seriously seem to expect to.

What of the style? It is clunkier and not as engaging as that of the better writers, but it is still readable. The book picks up pace once the events start unfolding, although for some odd reason Mr Dickinson spends time describing the events on the other side, events that he did not witness, and for which he must rely on the same accounts that we have now become quite aware of. I do not really know what is gained by including that story in detail (along with pictures!) when concentrating on the Tibetan side doom would have sufficed. I would have preferred to see more pictures of that side, too.

I would also have loved some more discussion of the absolutely unfathomable behavior of the Japanese climbers who cold-bloodedly abandon three Indian climbers to their deaths without even an attempt to render assistance. The author may be right that the Indians were beyond rescue, but that still does not explain the total failure to offer some comfort to them, or at least make a last-ditch effort to save one, the one closest to camp. For all the finger-pointing and accusations flying like mud pies about certain climbers' behaviors on the other side, the near total lack of soul-searching in these Japanese defies explanation.

A nice addition to one's small library of Everest disaster books (you have such a library, have you not?), this book finally discloses one thing climbers never discuss openly with non-initiates: what does it feel like to take a crap at 26,000 feet? Hey, I said it had personal detail!

December 4, 2004