Review: Dead Lucky

Dead Lucky
Lincoln Hall

"The day I climbed Everest was the day I died. I lost my life, the tips of eight fingers, a toe and a half, thirty seven pounds, and two-thirds of the energy I needed to live in my normal fashion.... No one that season who had lain down on the Northeast Ridge exhausted, delirious, and unable to move had survived - not David Sharp, not Igor Plyushkin, not Vitor Negrete, not Jacques-Hughes Letrange." - Dead Lucky, 256-257

Lincoln Hall has a vision of climbing not unlike that of Ed Viesturs, and he says very early in Dead Lucky that he was determined to do whatever was safe but nothing more, so he could return safely to his family. Though Hall has not seven Everest Summits to his name as Viesturs does - in fact, he had never achieved the summit though he had previously climbed Everest - he never in his book comes across as less than a consummate mountaineer, or a consummate writer. His is the vivid, specific story of his death and almost miraculous recovery atop Mount Everest. Reading Hall's account of his hallucinations, the moments of lucidity, the transcripts of his radio contact and the thoughts of the friends and family who first thought him dead and then rejoiced that he lived hold voyeuristic appeal and spare little in transporting the reader into the frozen shoes of a man who loved his family too much to die. The language he uses to discuss the mountain, his interwoven musings on the Buddhism he's embraced in his adult life, and his snapshot descriptions of Base Camp and Advanced Base Camp give the reader a clearer picture than any other of the mountaineering books we've discussed this week.

In 2006, Hall was along on the 7 Summits expedition as a photographer for Christopher Harris, who at 15 was trying to become the youngest person ever to summit Everest; he was travelling with Christopher Harris, his father Richard, another camera-man, and an equal number of Sherpas. The technology he describes as being available at Base Camp simply boggles the mind, and may make the reader wonder about the kind of people who now need Internet access and telephones even on the roof of the world. Yet, it was this very technology that made it possible both for word to spread of his death, and of his awakening. When Christopher and Richard Harris proved unable to summit on their day, Hall was given the green light to attempt his own summit and he did so with the Sherpas who has been assigned to him; on the descent he became disoriented. Readers of Nick Heil's Dark Summit will recognize the narrative accompanying Hall's because Heil's book covers the same territory from a different perspective; the names read in Hall's book are supplemented with information from Heil's.

I would recommend this book not just for anyone who is interested in mountaineering or Everest, but also for people who are interested in a fast-paced and involving story. Hall's narrative pulls you in, and you rejoice with him at the summit, hold your breath as his Sherpas do all in their power to get him down the mountain, and feel regret for the summit team that gave up their summit attempt to give him oxygen and help him back to life.

5 out of 5.

Get it:
Dead Lucky

For readers still interested in Mountain Climbing, Explorer's Web is one good research tool.

And in a way that seemed interesting to me, this proves that that nothing on the Internet is truly lost:

http://climb.mountainzone.com/2006/david_sharp/index.html

http://www.everestnews.com/Summitclimb2005/lincolnhalleverest05302006.htm

http://www.australianhimalayanfoundation.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?id=151&nav_cat_id=146&nav_top_id=54