Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer

Anatoli Boukreev was one of the world’s greatest high altitude mountaineers. He reportedly summited over two hundred 5,000+meter peaks, and 30 times reached the tops of 7,000+meter peaks in the Soviet Union. In 1991, without oxygen, a fixed rope, or even an ice ax, he began what was intended to be “an easy acclimatization climb” from Everest’s South Col, and reached the summit—“almost by accident”—six hours later. He made 21 ascents of 8,000+ meter peaks, had reached the tops of 11 of the 14 highest mountains in the world, and made speed ascents on three of them.Above the Clouds is about Boukreev’s life and philosophy, especially as these relate to climbing. After each of his expeditions, he expanded his daily journal entries into more extensive narratives. Eventually, he and his girlfriend Linda Wylie began to edit Boukreev’s various writings. In a very useful 32-page introduction, Wylie gives a brief account of Boukreev’s life, and thus establishes the context for his writings. The narratives in this volume cover the years from 1989 to 1997. Evidently, these are not all of his writings, but Wylie provides no statement of editorial principles, so we don’t know the criteria by which she selected some writings and excluded others. The book includes two sections of color photographs and a chronology of Boukreev’s life, but it lacks an index.In the former Soviet Union, there were special mentoring programs for climbing as well as other sports. Trainees had to master meteorology and geology, as well as climbing skills. Although the fourteen 8,000-meter mountains were outside its borders, the Soviet Union contained numerous peaks ranging from 5,000 to 7,400 meters. On these, Soviet mountaineers developed training techniques and climbing principles (classified as top secret) that were passed on to young climbers. Although Soviet training stressed teamwork, advancement through the program was highly competitive, based in part on races to the tops of high mountains. After completing his training, Boukreev maintained his condition through a program of exercise and frequent rapid climbs on high mountains.Boukreev viewed mountains as “cathedrals, . . . the houses of my religion. I approach them as any human goes to worship.” But he reports that, in the mountains, he often encountered the bodies of dead climbers. He fears that some persons think the cost of a trip to a summit can be calculated in dollars. He warns that climbers must reckon the cost in physical and mental training, lest they eventually have to pay it with their lives. Even with full preparation, there can be no guarantee of safety, especially at high elevations. And it is much more dangerous to be a guide than to be an individual climber. Largely for that reason, Boukreev did not like to work as a guide.It was his work as a guide with Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness expedition that brought Boukreev considerable notoriety after the publication of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s account of the 1996 Everest disaster. Krakauer was severely critical of Boukreev’s decision not to use oxygen on the summit drive (curiously, Krakauer had almost nothing to say about the similar decision made by Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa). To some, this criticism seemed to make Boukreev responsible for the 1996 tragedy. Above the Clouds is not focused on this disaster; but its single chapter on this subject will be of special interest to many readers. Noted American mountaineer Ed Viesturs recommends reading this book before making a final judgment about Boukreev. In it, Boukreev argues that if he and Lopsang had used oxygen, no oxygen would have been available for rescue efforts following the storm. Even if Boukreev had been using oxygen, he likely would have been lost in the whiteout on the South Col when his oxygen supply ran out (a situation when, in Viesturs’ words, “You simply shut down and stop moving.”). Perhaps, when the weather cleared, Boukreev would have had the strength to conduct some clients to the camp. But he would have been exhausted by one such effort, and any clients remaining on the South Col would have had doubtful prospects for rescue. As it was, Boukreev spent ten hours making five separate forays, in conditions no one else was willing to endure, attempting to save the lives of stranded climbers.Viesturs, who is somewhat critical of Boukreev, wrote that Boukreev was “the strongest climber on the mountain that year [1996],” and that, “even without supplemental oxygen, Anatoli was stronger than anyone climbing with oxygen on Everest that spring.” Watching groups of climbers still below the South Summit at 2:00, Viesturs noted, “for them the turnaround deadline was perhaps irrelevant, since running out of oxygen was their greatest threat, not returning after dark.” In other words, the need for extra oxygen was greater than need for an extra guide; at this time, the storm had not arrived, and there were five Sherpas and two guides (Fischer’s incapacity was not yet apparent) to assist the Mountain Madness clients. Lopsang, who had been on the mountain without oxygen longer than Boukreev, was not forced down by the cold, but was still available to aid the clients. If someone was to go for extra oxygen, Boukreev was the logical choice. If he had remained on the summit longer, Boukreev might well have chosen to help Fischer (who was in worse condition than anyone else in the expedition), and thus might have been unable to assist the descent of other members of the expedition. If anything, all members of the Mountain Madness expedition should have begun their descent when Boukreev started down; but both Boukreev and Neal Beidleman (the other guide) lacked authority to give the appropriate orders, as well as radios with which to consult Fischer. If any clients had been dissatisfied with Boukreev’s conduct, they would likely have voiced strong complaints immediately following the disaster; but, instead, after the event, Viesturs reported that one or two of the Mountain Madness clients “blurted out, ‘I made the summit! I’m so happy!’” Krakauer mentions that Boukreev had defenders among members of the expedition, but he doesn’t tell us what they had to say. One of them, Lene Gammelgaard, has published her thoughts. Boukreev, she wrote, “never pampered people, but he would risk his life once you were in real trouble.” “Anatoli was also a tender man with a philosopher’s soul. For those of us who took the time to get to know him, we were rewarded by his fine qualities, which were abundant.”Some of world’s leading climbers have been critical of Boukreev’s actions in 1996. I do not mean to take a side in this debate, but only to argue that it is a debate. Readers should defer their conclusions until they have considered all the evidence.From Into Thin Air, one gets the impression that Boukreev felt no regrets about his conduct on this expedition. In fact, he felt tremendous guilt. He was haunted by his failure to give Japanese climber Yasuko Namba the attention that might have saved her life: “Had the notion of commercialism so shackled my brain that I could not look beyond the responsibility to those who had paid Scott and therefore me for assistance? That question will remain with me forever.” Even worse was the image of Fischer, whom Boukreev admired, fighting for his life up on the mountain, awaiting Boukreev’s assistance, which came too late. Boukreev suffered repeated nightmares about his rescue efforts. And the unfavorable hostility generated by Krakauer’s book “became an intolerable weight,” which Boukreev sought to escape by returning to the Himalayas. In the following year and a half, he summited seven 8,000+meter peaks, and died attempting a difficult climb on an eighth.Leading the 1997 Indonesian expedition, in consultation with President Subarto’s son-in-law, General Prabowo Subianto, Boukreev systematically sought to eliminate mistakes made in 1996. He wanted to give the climbers a year’s training, but was allowed to provide only three months of preliminary climbing on two minor Himalayan peaks. Based on their responses to this limited training, the original group of 34 potential climbers was narrowed to 16. Eventually, ten were selected for South Col route, of these, just 6 began the climb at base camp, and only 3 continued to climb from the South Col. Boukreev felt that the 1996 expedition lacked adequate weather information; he arranged to receive daily weather reports. He recruited two experienced guides, who were to stay close to the climbers; and, unlike 1996, each guide had a radio. To avoid a traffic jam on the mountain, Boukreev’s Indonesian team began its summit climb before any other expedition that year, even though this meant that they—including Boukreev himself—had to break trail. The 1996 expedition had provided three oxygen bottles for each climber; in 1997, each of the Indonesian climbers had five bottles. Rather late in the day, when one of the climbers had reached the summit, Boukreev turned all the climbers around, although a second one was very close to the top. Anticipating this late turnaround, Boukreev had had Sherpas set up a camp midway between the summit and the South Col, so the climbers did not need to return all the way to the South Col that night. Boukreev believed that the mountain has the last word—neither money, nor oxygen, nor guides could ensure safety. He resented guides and governments that encouraged unqualified persons to climb. Responding to the climbing competition between Indonesia and Malaysia, he recounted for a group of Indonesian generals a bit of dark humor about a Soviet general who, after the U.S. had placed an astronaut on the moon, proposed to upstage the Americans by putting a Soviet cosmonaut on the sun. When a cosmonaut objected that anyone who attempted this feat would be incinerated, the general replied, “Don’t worry comrade, you will fly in the night.” Coming from the normally taciturn Boukreev, it is not clear whether this comment on the ignorance and arrogance of unrestrained competition applied to the Malaysians or the Indonesians, or both. Boukreev does tell us that General Prabowa was not amused.According to a younger Russian climber, some Russian climbers did not much like Boukreev, partly because of his western viewpoint. But Boukreev’s views were not that simple. He admired traditional Russian culture, but believed that the Soviet system had taken the country “to the place where no one remembers how to work hard and there is no motivation to strive for a better life.” After visiting the United States, he was impressed by its affluence, by the abundance of food, and the higher quality of available climbing gear. But, in America, “you sense the struggle in every encounter. Even the most basic requirements of life have a price.” “There is some cruelty in a system that makes no allowances for human weakness, but at the same time, the people are forced to be stronger.” On the other hand, Boukreev did not like the post-Soviet Russian economic system: “Before tyrants controlled what we thought with their fists; now, with their fists full of money, the same tyrants control people economically—the freedom which has come to the average person is the freedom to struggle desperately for survival.” And, with the collapse of the Soviet system, came the end of state support for professional climbers like Boukreev: “Suddenly I have no function in the land where I was born and nurtured to be what I am.” As a result, he “lost all sense of belonging to anything bigger than my inner world.” Boukreev believed that “everything happens according to a plan,” and that fate had made him a climber. Some months before he died in a Himalayan avalanche, he dreamed about this event, and told Wylie, “I am not afraid.”What we don’t get from this book is a deeper understanding of Boukreev's private life. He was a man of various contradictions. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he maintained dual citizenship (in both Kazakhstan and Russia). A product of an atheist state, he adhered to the Russian Orthodox Church. He loved music, and his musical tastes ran from Russian folk music to the Grateful Dead (on the Web someone has posted a picture of him strumming a guitar in a Himalayan base camp). According to Linda Wylie, he lived a life of “monastic simplicity,” and, “in most ways . . . had more in common with Tibet’s ascetic poet Milarepa than with superathletes like Michael Jordan.”Through these pages, we can glimpse the character of this extraordinary man.

I was 15 when I first read "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills", the classic treatise that set me and many thousands of young people like me on the journey into the mountains. That was in the late 1960's. Some of the boys I backpacked and climbed rock with went on to become famous mountaineers. Others settled for more mundane lives as teachers or carpenters or doctors, as I did; and for us our love of the mountains played out in modest climbs and high country camping, with children and dogs and fishing rods instead of the ice axes and crampons we'd learned to use in our youth. I never lost my love of the high places, though, and a part of me has always wondered what might have happened if I had chosen mountaineering instead of medicine as my profession.I have followed the exploits of the great climbers and great climbs, rejoicing at the news of my friends' ascent of Everest with the first Canadian Everest climb in 1980, and the successes of others over time. But the disaster on Everest in 1996 galvanized me, and for the last 20 years I have read avidly the stories of the mountaineers of the Alps, the North American peaks, and of course the Himalaya and the Karakorum.Like many readers, I was upset by the excoriating reports about Anatoly Boukreev in Krakauer's "Outside" story in '96, and then his book, "Into Thin Air". I felt Krakauer's account was less damning than many of my friends did, but a cloud seemed to hang over him, nonetheless. I was truly saddened to hear of this death on Annapurna In 1997, as he had clearly been a great mountaineer. But after that, I lost track of him. Like many Americans, I think, Boukreev was an enigma, unknowable, in no small part due to his poor English and the dearth of translations of mountaineering books written by French, Italian, and Russian writers who knew Boukreev and praised him.That all changed a few years ago when I stumbled across the re-issue of "Into Thin Air", which included Krakaouer's rejoinders to Boukreev's "The Climb". My first thought after reading Krakauer's retort was, "Methinks he doth protest too much," but lacking any firm information otherwise, I set the controversy aside and didn't think about it much for a long time. Fast forward to 2016, and Ed Viestur's great book on his final 8000er, Annapurna. Viesturs quoted from Boukreev's diaries in his book, as well as quoting the opinions of other high mountain mountaineers who knew and respected Anatoli. I finally ordered "The Climb", and found it to be a difficult-to-read but enormously enlightening book (as was Lou Kasischke's personal account of the 1996 disaster, as well). But most important (for me, anyway), I ordered "Above the Clouds" both as a hard copy and as a Kindle download., because I wanted to read it immediately. I raced through it, enjoying every word, after I was finished I re-read it again, more slowly this time.I love this book. Boukreev opened his heart and soul in his diaries, and his love for the mountains and mountaineering shines through. Far from the cold, unfeeling guide that he was portrayed as in America in the aftermath of the 1996 disaster, we come to see him as the consummate professional climber, a man with the genetic gifts necessary to succeed at the pinnacle of his sport but also the training, will, and discipline to capitalize on those gifts. Moreover, Boukreev opens the reader's eyes to the enormous contribution that Soviet climbers made to the mountaineering community prior to the fall of the USSR, a history which continues to go unrecognized by most Western climbers. It is abundantly clear after reading this history that Boukreev's advice to Scott Fischer on Everest in 1996 regarding the acclimatization process and the unacceptable risks of attempting the summit on May9-11 was in fact not only 100% correct, it was advice based on a thorough education in high altitude mountaineering which far exceeded the knowledge base of Fischer and Hall, and was in complete accord with the other two best-qualified mountaineers on Everest that month, Viesturs and Breasheers.As I said, I have ordered a hard copy of this book. I want to keep it on my bookshelf alongside some of the other great mountaineering books, so I can reach for it again. Not for the detailed blow-by-blow of his climbs, but for the poetic expression of his love for the mountains, a love which I (and I suspect many of the readers who love this book) most emphatically share. On a cold and dreary day when I feel beaten down by the humdrum of daily life, I can read Anatoly's words again and be reminded of the freedom of the hills.

This book is going to remain with me for a long time. What started out as passive listening to cave disasters has now opened up my world to altitudes beyond my understanding but Boukreev does an eloquent job of breaking down how life in the world’s tallest mountains is really like, and does so with a beautiful comprehension of language lost to his non-Russian speaking clients and coworkers. Having no sports experience or passion myself, his careful narrative of his methods and dreams gives me a new perspective on why someone enjoys pushing their bodies to the limit and the genuine joys of passing out past exhausted in a sleeping bag at 7900 meters. “No summit is gained without pain,” he said. That and many of his other impassioned paragraphs of prose are still relatable even at the lower elevation I’m currently typing at. If a reader has any interest diving into the psyche of such a special, almost supernaturally gifted man swept away from us too soon in Annapurna, then I cannot recommend this book enough. His perspective is one that shouldn’t be lost to time.

I recently watched Everest the hollywood movie and it sparked a total fascination in me regarding high altitude mountaineering. Its not something Id ever been interested in before but since I watched the movie Ive watched tons of other mountaineering documentaries and read a number of books about high mountains and those who climb them.I found this book really interesting because Anatoli was so talented, I think the majority of us "average human beings" are always drawn to try and understand those who elevate human achievement. Delving into the cultural backdrop of how he came to climbing and how he experienced and struggled to find a path forward after the collapse of communism was really interesting too.I was very intrigued by how well he writes. Parts of the book are borderline poetry. I wonder was that just the man himself or was he a product of a different generation, before we all started communicating in texts and emojis. Have we lost some of our eloquence and romanticism when we write? Im not sure. But it was certainly very enjoyable to read his words, they were very evocative and inspiring.Its so sad he lost his life too soon but having read the book and had a glimpse into the man I dont think he would have had any regrets.Only one thing stopped me giving this five stars. I was a tiny bit disappointed not to get a little bit more of a glimpse into his relationship with Linda Wylie. He certainly seems to have been a private man so I wouldnt have expected a sordid tell all but I would have been really interested to know what attracted her to him and him to her, how she felt about the risks he took and the life he lead. What is it like to love an exceptional man? A man who also describes himself as a difficult character but honestly in the book comes across very well, honest, humble, kind and genuine. I wonder if these were the qualities that attracted Linda to him. Was he actually difficult or was that just him being self deprecating? I would have been really interested in understanding more about that side of his life but it is entirely absent. I imagine this is not an oversight and was an intentional decision on Lindas part. I respect her desire to keep their private life private but Im disappointed all the same

A great book about a great man. Hero of an Everest expedition that went horribly wrong, he saved a lot of people, risking his life doing so. The Jon Krakauer book poured scorn on what Anatoli did that day, not sure why he felt the need to besmirch his name so. Perhaps his ego took over!The book is a tremendous read about a tremendous man.

Fantastic book about one of the best mountaineers in our time. The book describes not only his achievement but also his emotional ups and downs..he had been my favourite mountaineer and is definitely one of my favourite. Such a pity not to be able to read more about him.

Extremely well written. A must read for those interested in Anatoli Boukreev's climbing career.

Having read "Into Thin Air" and "The Climb" I wanted to get a better sense of Anatoli as a person. His spirit really comes across in this collection of his writings. His ethos and the resounding air of respect he had for mountains and his approach to friendship will stay in my mind for a long time to come.