Eiger Dreams
Krakauer takes the reader to wonderful, awful peaks like Denali, the Eiger, Devil's Thumb, K-2 and Everest.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
10mentions
8people
2010–2024years
60% recommend30% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Good list! Some of my favorites:
- The Shining Mountain by Pete Boardman (one of my favorite of all books, two pretty normal guys doing something absolutely epic)
- Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).
- Touching The Void by Joe Simpson (I avoided reading this for such a long time, because it's something of a cliche, but it's actually great).
- Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in).
- Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.
The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of exploration that makes the best of these books so fun to read.
- When I read Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak many years ago I was blown away by the story which was both a huge victory in that era of mountaineering but also a personal tragedy for Herzog. This book together with Touching the Void and Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer are very captivating books even if you are not so much into mountaineering.
However, I have later read True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna by David Roberts which provides a different perspective on the Annapurna expedition.
And to reply to the grandparent post: Joe Simpson has written a number of books and while they are not specifically about safety culture they often touch on the ethics and dilemmas of high altitude climbing just as Touching the Void did by telling a story where the rope was cut.
- Other great mountaineering books: Annapurna (already mentioned) -Herzog All of Ed Viesturs books are great The Summit - Pemba Gyaljie Dark Summit - Nick Heil Conquistadors of the Useless - Terray Eiger Dreams - Krakauer Denali's Howl - Hall
- I’m just finishing Eiger Dreams, what a great book! I wish Krakauer would write more recent mountaineering books.
- Eiger Dreams has a chapter on Gill. Worth a read if you're interested.
- Krakauer's books "Eiger Dreams" and "Into The Wild" (the latter also a good movie) are worth a read as well. And I've listened several times to his audiobook versions of all three.
More than anyone else I've read, he captures the compulsion and the self-doubt of people compelled to pursue such ventures. My highest "climb" is Mt. Shasta, which is nothing in comparison to anything he's done. But I so understand that urge to go and get into the wilderness. It's a compulsion for some, and he documents it, and the vulnerabilities it implies, so very well.
