Download After the Wind Tragedy on Everest One Survivor Story Lou Kasischke 9781940877037 Books

Product details Paperback 317 pages Publisher Good Hart Publishing; First PB Edition, First Printing edition (October 8, 2015) Language English ISBN-10 1940877032

After the Wind Tragedy on Everest One Survivor Story Lou Kasischke 9781940877037 Books Reviews

• Lou Kasischke was perhaps the last person to turn around on Mount Everest during the infamous storm on May 10th, 1996. Of the various accounts of the disaster (8, I believe), his I is a breath of fresh air. Of the five I've read previously, most focus on freak accidents of weather as well as ill-advised person decisions. While Kasischke tends to these to the best of his knowledge, the enormous difference between his perspective and others is his willingness to criticize decisions made by expedition leadership, namely Rob Hall. Kasischke explains Hall's perfect safety record of decision-making on Everest was one of the reasons he (Lou) joined the expedition in the first place, and the business-driven decision to include an on-duty journalist may have swayed his argument at more than one critical moment. Kasischke is equally critical of the equipment choices of the expedition, saying he chose not to use the particular oxygen system provided. He points out that some of the more experienced Himalayan climbers turned around the day of the disaster, and speculates what rescuers from other expeditions must have thought when watching Hall and Fischer's climbers through telescope and listening to radio traffic.
  
  Perhaps hindsight is 20/20. Kasischke just published his account in 2015, 19 years after the incident. Aside from being able to mull it over day after day, that is absolutely enough time to convince one's judgment in one direction or the other, which is probably an advantage when publishing, essentially, a response to others' accounts, or at least an alternate conclusion. While I enjoyed the other perspectives, especially Gammelgaard's and the first half of Weathers', I have never been approached convinced that any one account had nailed the exact moment(s) when things went wrong. Kasischke's arguments are well-formulated and convincing, although admittedly it's difficult to say 20 years later whether or not they are the most accurate.
  
  Personally, I believe this account is the most informative to the inquisitive climber who is also a dedicated student of leadership and group decision-making. I would not recommend this book as the only account of Everest 1996, as I feel that it works best in comparison and I would speculate that it was intended to be this way. I did not recommend this book to my mother for her book club when she asked for something about Everest 1996 incident; I told her they should go with Krakauer for a general good read.
• This writer recorded his thoughts but waited 20 yrs after he wrote them to publish. I enjoyed this book more than any other book I read about that tragic season. It is written as if he was talking to you - or like you or I might tell it. Very personal and gives little details I've never heard any other writer give! I read all these books about mountaineering, about tragedies on these mountains.
  In warning - It is written Only from his and his team's experiences/perspective with Facts, he writes about Rob Hall's team.
  Doesn't speculate or intrude on the privacy of Scott Fischers team or attempt to fill in his knowledge with other people's versions, just what his team experienced.
  I've read all the books about that tragedy - This book put everything together in a way none of the other did.
  Thank you to Mr. Kasiscke for this book. It was inspiration for me.
• Commercial guided expeditions for risky endeavors are more common than ever. So it is interesting and useful to have a rational account presented of the decision making of this survivor, and so far as he can relay it, by Rob Hall, as to why this expedition went so wrong. If you ever join an expedition with similar life threatening risks, it might be useful to you.
  
  Some of what might have been motivating Hall is information I had not read before. What motivated the author was love, responsibility, and a desire to return alive and whole to family -- when he could clearly see this expedition was taking the level of risk to an unimaginable level.
  
  But why was it raised to that level? I've never understood why Hall continued to guide his group so late, when he knew if they went to summit they were going to run out of oxygen before they returned to the oxygen cache. Apart from the issues of daylight, weather, relative strength, etc, the logistics of oxygen, for those using it, were incompatible with success with that timetable. Hall had to know it, particularly for Hansen - who'd had a problem crashing in the previous year. Hearing Mr. Kasischke relate his problems with his oxygen system, added to complaints from others, made me wonder if that gear was flawed. A bad oxygen system would contribute to the poor decision making.
  
  Kasischke relates his own psychology of why he climbs, why he chose the Hall group, his disappointment when Hall made decisions counter to the reasoning he chose him in the first place, and when and why he broke with Hall's leadership when he determined it was fatally flawed. I think all these are useful for anyone who might need to make similar decisions in the future. Even if survival is not part of the end result - we all have to choose who to follow, why, when to follow, and when to leave.
  
  In terms of content, this narrative is heavy on philosophy and less heavy on daily details of the expedition, personalities and color. That doesn't mean it isn't there, because it is. But that's only half the tale, the rest is philosophy. And Mr. Kasischke is discreet. Having been rudely surprised himself when Krakauer's ratings of his teammates appeared in an Outside Online web interview - something the members of the team didn't expect to have discussed or reported on -- Kasischke is careful to respect his teammate's privacy. As a reader, I respect that too, but I confess I had less of an immediate feel of the places and people at times, due to that. Still, the last chapter, where he goes into some of what he suspects was Hall's reasoning for the summit attempt was fascinating and something I had never read elsewhere.
  
  This book also gave a great sense of the truly frigid experiences of high camp after the summit attempt, how pinned down everyone was by the storm and how difficult survival was even for those who made it back to camp. I can completely understand why, having survived this, the author chose to hang up his crapons after this expedition. I am glad, though, that he didn't hang up his pen, and that we have this account.
  
  All in all, if you are interested in Himalaya expeditions, Everest, or just this particular expedition, this is a book that you have to purchase.