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Biography & Autobiography. Sports & Recreations. Nonfiction. HTML:With a new preface by the author � As featured in the upcoming motion picture Everest, starring Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, and Jake Gyllenhaal �I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling�quite literally a dead man walking�into camp and the shaky start of my return to life.� In 1996 Beck Weathers and a climbing team pushed toward the summit of Mount Everest. Then a storm exploded on the mountain, ripping the team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl for their lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying, and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred. Weathers appeared, blinded, gloveless, and caked with ice�walking down the mountain. In this powerful memoir, now featuring a new Preface, Weathers describes not only his escape from hypothermia and the murderous storm that killed eight climbers, but the journey of his life. This is the story of a man�s route to a dangerous sport and a fateful expedition, as well as the road of recovery he has traveled since; of survival in the face of certain death, the reclaiming of a family and a life; and of the most extraordinary adventure of all: finding the courage to say yes when life offers us a second chance. Praise for Left for Dead �Riveting . . . [a] remarkable survival story . . . Left for Dead takes a long, critical look at climbing: Weathers is particularly candid about how the demanding sport altered and strained his relationships.��USA Today �Ultimately, this engrossing tale depicts the difficulty of a man�s struggle to reform his life.��Publishers Weekly.… (more)
User reviews
"Left for Dead" is an interesting read about a flawed human being. Beck Weathers has a good, at times self-deprecating, sense of humor, and is very honest about his flaws. His wife, Peach, is aptly named, but I had to wonder why she stayed married to a man who was absent much of the time and difficult to live with when he was around. There wasn't as much about mountain climbing as I would have liked, but in the end Weathers seemed ill prepared for Everest. Mountain climbing was just an outlet for Weathers' ongoing depression and it's a miracle he wasn't hurt in some of his earlier attempts. While the book goes into much details about Beck's childhood and troubled marriage it glosses over other elements - most noticeably the cost of Beck's climbing expeditions and how Beck was able to take so much time off from work. Finally, I'd like to see an updated postscript on future editions to see how Beck and his family are doing today.
This was an enjoyable read.
Beck tells his story with a self-deprecating sense of humor that makes the story easier to read than it would be without it. He doesn't glorify any of it and includes things that I would imagine would be very difficult to share with the world.
This might finally end my consuming need for more information that Into Thin Air evoked.
In his opening chapter, he describes
I've read several other books on the Everest tragedy (including Krakauer's, Boukreeve's and Breashear's.) I had been avoiding Weathers' book for no particular reason... perhaps it was instinct that I wouldn't like it. Although he had the most dramatic story of all, Weathers' book was the worst of the lot. (Only a small portion of the book is about the expedition itself.) Perhaps my intense dislike for this book is that I expected to be a climber's book and it is more a story about depression. I found it hard to swallow the redemption story and mostly just felt sorry for Weathers' family.
Beck was is bad
Neil Beidleman later reflected it “was like being lost in a bottle of milk.”
As the climbers inched along trying to find camp it became clear the injured and physically exhausted climbers couldn’t continue. While a few went ahead to get help, Beck and four others stayed behind to await rescue. Yasuko & Beck were in such bad shape it was determined to leave them as they would die regardless of being brought back to camp.
By whatever internal motivation made Beck Weathers get up, injured and snow blind, he did manage to get back to camp on his own. By then his wife Peach had been informed he died. And then hours later, frost bitten and violently ill he shows up. Seriously, talk about against all odds.
Three quarters of the remaining part of the book tells about his early life with his brothers, how he and his wife met, the growing discordances between them as Beck was always away from home if he wasn’t working. The deep depression Beck describes as a Black Dog is very sobering. Being on a climb made that go away, he could feel the fog lift.
Interjected into the chapters you get his wife’s point of view as well as his brother and colleagues.
Beck was a pathologist with a thriving practice so money didn’t seem to be an issue. It was $65,000 for the Everest expedition - mountain climbing is not a cheap sport!
Once you get into the parts where he was rescued, an amazing feat there considering the conditions, you read about his recovery. His face and hands were frozen and he lost his hands and nose to frostbite. Lots and lots of surgeries.
Peach is quoted stating she understood why the team couldn’t risk lives to go after Yasuko or Beck as death was imminent. What she couldn’t understand was why Beck was left alone in a tent to die alone. Where was the human compassion? The other climbers were there anyway, in their tents, and what a gentle gesture it would have been to hear his last words, to let him know he wasn’t alone. I agree with her.
Overall an interesting story.
This is is my fifth book for the 2020 Nonfiction challenge hosted by Shelley at Book'd Out. Check it out HERE.
Category : Disaster.