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A review by vanessakm
Savage Summit: The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2, the World's Most Feared Mountain by Jennifer Jordan
3.0
I went thru a period of mountain-climbing literature after reading [b:Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster|1898|Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster|Jon Krakauer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1158966247s/1898.jpg|1816662] which probably inspired a slew of other non-climbing readers. K2 is actually a more technically challenging mountain than Everest and far fewer people have climbed it. Those who do face a 1 in 7 chance that they will die on the descent. I enjoyed reading about these five women and what drove them to love climbing and eventually die for that love. There was some interesting perspective on the troubles they experienced as women travelling in Pakistan as well as the sexism they face within the climbing community, something no other book I've read on the topic has addressed. My favorite story of the bunch was of the legendary Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman to successfully climb and descent K2.
I did do a mental eye roll at the author's seeming suggestion that K2 is cursed for female climbers as all of the women died on this climb or future ones. It's a giant rock. It doesn't get angry or sleepy or hungry. It does kill a lot of climbers, male and female.
I did do a mental eye roll at the author's seeming suggestion that K2 is cursed for female climbers as all of the women died on this climb or future ones. It's a giant rock. It doesn't get angry or sleepy or hungry. It does kill a lot of climbers, male and female.