NEVEREST II New Insights: Inside Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants Expedition (Mountain Mania Book 2)

Book Synopsis: By the end of the 1996 season - the deadliest in the history of Mount Everest - 13 climbers in all had perished. If it wasn't the weather, and if it wasn't just the presence of journalists, what else fatally compromised Rob Hall's team, the Adventure Consultants? Were they really on a winning wicket when things "suddenly" went south on summit day, or was something else insidiously eating at the team's ability to perform all along? If so, what was it? What was the actual psychology that drove a record number of strong, brave men – and a Japanese woman – to certain death? On May 10 two big teams were locked in a deadly rivalry but exactly what was the psychology of this rivalry on the level of the ordinary client climber? This is the meat and potatoes of NEVEREST II. How did three doctors, a publisher and a lawyer gel with two blue collar workers and a Japanese woman? What was the impact of the merge on summit day, and of one [American] team ultimately "winning" the charge up the world's highest mountain? Did the "losing" team also quickly lose morale, including the urgency to take care of their teammates? Did losing a leader leave a lethal leadership vacuum in its wake, especially for a team that was used to following orders? Two decades after the disaster, mystery, misperceptions and misrepresentations persist. New, bolder narratives have recently emerged pointing the finger at Krakauer and even Rob Hall. Do these new accusations hold water? Do they expose new and even more troubling questions? What new information is revealed about the client climbers? In NEVEREST II freelance photojournalist and amateur climber Nick van der Leek probes deep inside the Everest '96 canon. The disturbing insights he gleans from research into the psychological fabric of client climbers and their behavior patterns reveals a new controversial context of indiscretions lurking just below the surface of the disaster. In the end the essence of the question NEVEREST II answers is this: what were the Adventure Consultants climbers doing while their teammates were dying only a few meters away? If Lou Kasischke cared so much about the truth [as much as we do] why did he wait 16 years to tell his story? If climbing is answering a call to adventure and embarking on a well worn route to heroism, NEVEREST II demonstrates how climbing Everest is also a highway exposing the charlatan and the coward.