Savage Summit: The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2, the World's Most Feared Mountain by Jennifer Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"By midnight Mrowka had not arrived. [...] The Little Ant, who had been strongest of the miserable cluster at Camp IV, digging out others' tents, bringing tea while there was still gas, getting Diemberger his boots, had finally worn herself out. The Black Summer [...] had claimed its last victim."

"Mrowka" (an ant, in Polish) is an affectionate pseudonym of Dobrosława Miodowicz-Wolf, a Polish climber, who perished on K2 (the "Savage Mountain") in the summer of 1986. Dobrosława had also been a friend of my wife and myself and I used to work with her husband, Jan Wolf (who also died in the mountains several years later), in a research institute in Warsaw.

This review is written in memory of Dobrosława but her climbing story is not one of the main stories is Jennifer Jordan's Savage Summit (2005). Ms. Jordan writes:

"I aim simply to share with you the stories of five remarkable women who chose to live at the edge of death and all of whom ultimately died there."

The five women are: Wanda Rutkiewicz, Liliane Barrard, Julie Tullis, Chantal Mauduit, and Alison Hargreaves. Of these five Wanda Rutkiewicz is featured most prominently. She is called a "climbing legend" and "the best female climber the world has ever seen," a woman with "enormous and stubborn personality," and also very isolated and lonely because of her intense drive to climb. I happen to know another Polish woman climber, not as famous, who knew Wanda Rutkiewicz personally and even did one or two routes with her. Everything I heard from my friend about Ms. Rutkiewicz jibes with the general tone of the story told in the book. One detail is wrong, though: the author claims that Ms. Rutkiewicz graduated from the Warsaw Polytechnic (which is my alma mater). That 's not true - she graduated from the Wroclaw Polytechnic. Probably the editor's fault.

There are a lot of interesting sociological observations in the book, both on the macro-scale - for example, about the cultural resistance to accept women in roles non-traditional for them - and in micro-scale, like personal inter-relationships in climbing teams. Probably the most interesting thread is the one that focuses on differences in climbing teams dynamics depending on the gender of the members. I find the following passage quite amusing:

"While the first two times women were included on K2 expeditions were wrought with internecine battles, ego wars, and sexual tensions, the next one would be exempt from most of those conflicts because of one simple omission: men."

And a truly hilarious diagnosis of what the standard topics of conversations among male climbers are:

"what goes in, what goes out, and what goes in and out."

The fun made of men is perhaps balanced by somewhat excessive attention to sexual aspects of high-altitude climbing, when the author writes about Chantal Mauduit.

Three-and-a-half stars.

In memory of Dobrosława Wolf.


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