"No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks"

"No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks"
by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts

Review:

When Ed Viesturs stood atop Annapurna on a frigid May afternoon in 2005,
he became the first American ever to summit all 14 of the world's
8,000-meter peaks, achieving what many mountaineers refer to as the Holy
Grail of climbing. More impressive, Viesturs did so without
supplemental oxygen, burnishing himself as one of the elite
international climbers of all time.

In his book No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest
Peaks (Broadway Books, 2006), Viesturs shares with readers his account
of this monumental, oxygen-deprived accomplishment, what he terms
Endeavor 8000.

No Shortcuts, co-written by iconic climbing writer David Roberts, will
undoubtedly earn a niche in the canon of classic climbing literature.
But it will occupy a unique niche. Classic climbing tomes tend to be
highly technical treatises filled with exhaustive climb details and
generous description of crags and crevasses. With No Shortcuts,
Viesturs strays from this formula, instead spilling an unusually
generous amount of ink taking readers to places few would expect - into
his home; into his personal relationships with his wife, kids, and
friends; and into his intrepid mind. This will likely be to the chagrin
of ardent climbers who crave summit details (though there still is
plenty of that), but to the delight of armchair mountaineers who will
appreciate a more nuanced perspective of the sport. No Shortcuts is
more a book about passion, compassion, obsession, relationships, and
struggles - all underpinned by one extraordinary physical challenge.

No Shortcuts traces the wide-sweeping arc of Viesturs life. Readers
briefly learn of his childhood years in western Illinois, "one of the
flattest places in the Midwest." Viesturs explains how he caught the
climbing bug from reading Maurice Herzog's venerable book Annapurna,
about Herzog's slog-to-the-top first ascent of that peak. Readers will
cheer Viesturs as he cuts his wilderness teeth on the more forgiving
slopes of Mt. St. Helens, and dives headfirst into serious climbing as a
young guide on Mt. Rainier. They will be in awe of Viesturs as he
graduates to the more far-flung and dangerous palisades of the
Himalayas. And they will applaud him as he stands on the prow of
Everest.

Most glaring in the book is Viesturs passion for his sport. The most
compelling passages deal with sacrifices made to pursue his
high-altitude dreams. He spent years living in what he called the
dungeon, a windowless basement, scratching out a living as a carpenter
where he could go on a moment's notice. He aborted a lucrative career
as a veterinarian because the vocation did not afford him enough time
off. And he laments on lost loves and marital strife that resulted from
his climbing career. Readers will particularly enjoy cozying up to his
forgiving and eminently understanding wife, Paula.

Viesturs emotional bond with climbing is ironclad, almost palpable.
Take this passage, for example, about his bagging of Gasherbrum II, in
Pakistan: "I stood on the summit on the morning of July 4. I could
visualize all the fireworks and partying that I knew must be going on
back home, all across the United States, but I didn't want to be
anywhere on earth except here, I thought. God, this is great, to be so
fit, to feel so good, to climb another 8,000er in only four days."

Adrenaline junkies reading this book for a literary Red Bull kick will
probably be disappointed to learn that Viesturs approaches his craft
with a Buddhist calm. He is noted in the climbing community as being a
hyper-cautious climber. His irrepressible mantra "Reaching the summit
is optional, getting down is mandatory" is conspicuous throughout the
book. But taking extreme precautions and showing an abundance of common
sense is why Viesturs was able to close the deal on Endeavor 8000, while
the bodies of many of his friends have been relegated to crevasses and
storm-lashed mountaintops across the globe.

"Perhaps the single aspect of Endeavor 8000 that I'm proudest of is that
I did it as safely and as prudently as I did," Viesturs writes. "On
thirty expeditions to 8,000-meter peaks, I never once got frostbite. I
was never seriously injured. On 8,000ers, I've gotten closer to
exhaustion than at any other time in my life, but I've never suffered
(thank God) from either pulmonary or cerebral edema, or even from a bad
case of acute mountain sickness. I've never had to be rescued. I've
helped plenty of other climbers down 8,000ers, but I've never had to be
helped down myself. Most importantly, I've never lost a partner in the
mountains."

When Lou Whitaker spoke the poignant phrase, "Just because you love
mountains doesn't mean the mountains love you," Viesturs was listening.

No Shortcuts also sparkles with Viesturs' philosophical renderings.
"I've learned in climbing that you don't 'conquer' anything," he edifies
to he readers. "Mountains are not conquered and should be treated with
respect and humility. If we take what the mountain gives, have patience
and desire, and are prepared, then the mountains will permit us to reach
their highest peaks. I believe a lot of things are like that in life."


Perhaps the most compelling excerpt from the book is Viesturs'
involvement in the 1996 Into-Thin-Air saga on Mt. Everest. Viesturs was
moving between base camps helping film an IMAX documentary that season.
As the tragedy unfurled, he helped with rescue attempts and facilitated
communications between parties. Experiencing the sequence of events
from the perspective of the ever-cautious Viesturs is as riveting as Jon
Krakauer's account.

Ostensibly, what Viesturs shows readers with No Shortcuts is that
mountain climbing is not necessarily a sport of brawny warriors with
chest-beating bravado and gargantuan egos. The true essence of climbing
is more subtle. Readers learn that what it really takes to scale an
8,000-foot peak is passion, commitment, pragmatism, and trusting
friends.

As Krakauer once said of Viesturs, "He's demonstrated that it's possible
to climb the world's highest peaks without taking reckless chances, and
without sacrificing one's honor and integrity."

~ Reviewed by Michael Strzelecki