Annapurna South Face: The Classic Account of Survival by Chris Bonington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Our ascent of Annapurna was a breakthrough into a new dimension of Himalayan climbing on the great walls of the highest mountains of the world - this represents the start of an era, not an end. Climbers will turn to other great faces, will perhaps try to reduce the size of the party, escape from the heavy siege tactics that we were forced to employ and make lightweight assaults against these huge mountain problems."

There is only one degree of separation between the author of the book, the famous British mountaineer and adventure writer, Chris Bonington, and myself. He had once made a difficult route in Alps partnering with Jan Wolf, a Polish climber and a friend of mine with whom I worked for four years in the same office in the late 1970s and early 1980s (more about it in this review ) I remember Jan Wolf making fun of Bonington smoking cigarettes while climbing at very high altitude. Anyway, it is not because of the personal connection that I like Annapurna South Face (1971) so much. To me it is the best book about a mountaineering expedition out of about 40 that I have read.

The 1970 Annapurna expedition opened a new chapter in the history of Himalayan mountaineering. Earlier expeditions had aimed at reaching the top using the route that promised the greatest chances of getting there. This is the first major expedition that purposefully selected one of the most difficult routes to the summit. Yet from the organizational point of view the assault resembled previous Himalayan endeavors: it was a monumental logistic undertaking. Let me quote just one number - the total of 240 porters were employed to carry the expedition loads.

Ironically, some of the major difficulties had been encountered before the entire team reached Nepal. Numerous delays caused by unexpected events almost made it impossible to reach the base of the mountain before the beginning of the monsoon season. The account of how Mr. Bonington had to deal with the delays and improvised temporary solutions reads as a suspense story.

The story of the climb itself is plenty suspenseful as well. The logistics of rotation of the climbers' teams to transport loads between the camps (base and six altitude camps) was a monumental task for Mr. Bonington. He writes about the most difficult decision he had to make: which pair of climbers to put in front at the time most opportune for the summit push. He sacrificed the principle of fairness to increased chance of success. And succeed he did. Dougal Haston, one of the two climbers who had made the summit, wrote the chapter recounting the actual summit push.

From 2018 perspective it might seem incredible that many members of the expedition smoked cigarettes at high altitude:

"Mick had a passion for Gauloises and had brought 7,000 with him, most of which he managed to smoke himself."

Truly impressive! Most of us, readers, would have extreme difficulty breathing at all at these altitudes while the extreme sportsmen on Bonington's team smoked several packs a day!

The author provides 108 pages of appendices with detailed statistics of the expedition: data about equipment, bottled oxygen, food, communications, photography, medical issues, and also a nice section on people of Nepal. An informative supplement to the extremely captivating book.

Four stars.

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