2006 was the second-deadliest year in the history of Everest ascents.
The worst season was ten years before, when a freak storm hit the mountain, inspiring John Krakauer's classic Into Thin Air. But in 2006 the weather was perfect - the disaster was not a storm but the industry that climbing Everest has become, with too many inexperienced climbers taking insufficient precautions with unscrupulous tour operators.
Nick Heil's gripping account of what happened that year takes us from the shameful fate of the British climber, David Sharp, who lay dying by the mountain track as several groups of climbers passed him by, to Lincoln Hall's miraculous survival through an unprotected night on the mountain side. It highlights the dilemmas of commercially guided climbing - especially when run out of poor countries, for rich foreigners - and examines what happens to human nature in the most extreme physical and mental conditions.
Heil takes us behind the scenes of the Everest tourism operations, revealing intriguing back-story of how what was once the symbol of human beings' noblest achievements has become a site for their grubbiest dealings.
