No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory."

Ed Viesturs' No Shortcuts to the Top begins dramatically with the account of the author's conquest - along with Scott Fischer - of K2, the second highest mountain on Earth, yet generally considered the most difficult one. In Mr. Viesturs's words that conquest remains "the biggest mistake of [his] climbing career," and throughout the book he continually reiterates the motto of his lifelong mountaineering adventure, so aptly expressed in his famous phrase shown in the epigraph above. I have reviewed here on Goodreads another book by Mr. Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain , dedicated in its entirety to the dramatic and tragic history of conquests of K2, the mountain which also claimed the life of the Polish climber and my friend, Dobroslawa Wolf, who perished on its slopes in 1986.

This book, also co-written with David Roberts, covers Mr. Viesturs' entire mountaineering career but also serves as a sort of an autobiography. Obviously, the focus is on climbing: the reader will learn about the author's fascination with Maurice Herzog's Annapurna - the book that, as he writes, "completely changed the direction of my life" - his years as a mountaineering guide in Washington State and in Alaska and his early mountaineering successes in Himalayas and Karakorum. But we also learn about the author's work with animals - he has a doctor of veterinary medicine degree - as well as about his personal life and his wife and children.

Mr. Viesturs is one of the very few climbers who summitted all fourteen "Eight-thousanders", mountains higher than 8000 meters, and one of the only five who achieved all these summits without the aid of supplementary oxygen. Yet he is adamant in insisting that he has never treated his climbing as a competition against other people:

"I don't think of myself as a competitive climber. Or if I am, I'm competitive only with myself."

Mr. Viesturs is modest about his phenomenal achievements: he stresses the role of intense preparation (for instance, running several miles every single day), team work, help of accomplished climbing partners, some luck with weather, and - perhaps most tellingly - the genetic basis of high-altitude abilities. From the pages of the book he comes across being a humble, affable, good-natured person. Unlike some other extraordinary high achievers he does not snipe at other climbers and makes sure not to criticize the dramatic decisions they often have to take, decisions that may mean life or death. I also like that the book is not too gossipy and almost completely devoid of titillating details, perhaps with one unfortunate exception in the case of a certain famous French climber - where the author provides "too much information."

A well-written book - probably due to Mr. Roberts' literary talent. Not exactly in the class of the same author's K2, mentioned above, or - say - Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air but certainly a good read and I recommend it without reservations.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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