Mountain Madness: Scott Fischer, Mount Everest, and a Life Lived on High [Hardcover]

Scott Fischer's name as a mountaineer was as well known within the international mountaineering community as it was little known by the general public until his tragic death on Mount Everest during the deadly climbing season of May 1996. That deadly season at the top of the world captured the public's imagination not only because of the significant loss of life, but also because for the first time, the mostly private business of challenging the world's highest summit was available for the first time to all who were interested on the internet, over satellite phones and through Jon Krakauer's presence as an "imbedded" journalist for Outside magazine.

With Scott's death, Birkby lost a close friend and an influence in his own life going back to 1982 when the two men, who had only recently met, climbed Mt. Olympus together in Olympic National Park. Although Birkby's evolution as a highly skilled and well known outdoorsman had taken him on a self described "horizontal approach to America's wild places" his new friendship with Scott inspired new types of vertical adventures with Scott and his commercial climbing company Mountain Madness that included expeditions to the summits of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Elbrus and even eventually, to the famous Everest base camp.

Birkby's healing from the loss of his good friend began on the SCA high school crew he led in Grand Teton National Park the summer following the tragedy. But even as the pain eased, Bob and other member's of Scott's community grew frustrated with the incomplete portrait of who Scott was as a man, a father and a mountaineer that emerged publicly in major accounts of the accident. And so he eventually began a search for the truth of who Scott was, mostly gained through the eyes and hearts of those who knew Scott best, that Birkby chronicled in a manuscript that he was never sure would be published.

It is to our great good fortune that not only did Mountain Madness eventually find its way to publication last February, but also that one of the book's most influential and articulate story tellers about Scott's life was Bob Birkby himself. This first person narrative tells great stories of adventures but also seeks - quite successfully - to ask and answer questions about why people seek out adventure in the outdoors and how we succeed or fail in balancing this need with other priorities in our lives.

Scott was both a charismatic and controversial character, a fact that Birkby both acknowledges and illuminates. From his tracing of Scott's boyhood in New Jersey, watching a documentary on television about the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) that led to his odyssey to Wyoming's highest places, to his early frustrations of trying to make a living by following his passion with his company Mountain Madness, the reader learns much about what drove Scott Fischer to the heights he sought.

And while Birkby had no intention to add yet another book to the considerable cannon of Everest disaster literature, the quality of his research and the trust his interviewees obviously placed in his integrity and commitment to tell Scott's story does in fact shed some new light on that fateful May expedition. But perhaps more importantly the author has succeeded in telling the story of a man, his community and what came to be a far more fleeting moment in the history of high elevation mountaineering than any of the real people living in that moment could have recognized at the time.

As readers come to different conclusions regarding the who the real Scott Fischer was and how well Scott met the challenges of his own life and goals, Mountain Madness succeeds fully in articulating the call that wild places has on so many of us. And by the end of the book too, we realize that with his crisp descriptive prose, his own vast experience and deep sensitivity to human triumph and fragility, Bob Birkby was our perfect guide to this remarkable story.

World-class mountain climber and guide gets a posthumous tribute from a mournful, devoted friend and fellow mountaineer.

Birkby opens atop the 18,000-foot Himalayan peak Kala Patar. It's 1996, and Scott Fischer (1955 - 96) is showing him the skyline of Mount Everest, where Fischer will shortly lose his life. That climb was a far cry from the pair's initial adventure back in 1982, when Fischer convinced a then-inexperienced Birkby to scale Mount Olympus.

The author details Fischer's childhood, when a love of camping and a penchant for thrill-seeking blossomed into challenging hikes as a teenager with the National Outdoor Leadership School. He would later join NOLS as an instructor, counting among his students Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm, 1997, etc.).

Birkby tenderly recalls Fischer's clumsiness in his early 20s, when he miraculously survived more than 12 deadly plummets and was nicknamed "the Fallingest Man in Climbing." After gaining increased experience and acumen, he left NOLS and formed Mountain Madness, a company offering guided climbs whose motto was "Make it happen."

Deftly detailing Fischer's life in conversational prose, Birkby shares stories about encountering bears and traversing frozen terrain in the Alaskan wilderness, adventures ascending Kilimanjaro and the death-defying challenges of the Annapurna Circuit trail. As his son neared his first birthday, Fischer became more determined than ever to scale Everest. Climbing down from its 29,000-foot peak in May 1996, the group he was guiding got caught in a blizzard. Everyone managed to descend to safety except Fischer, who perished from exposure. The tragedy received widespread media attention and a lasting memorial in Jon Krakauer's eyewitness account, Into Thin Air (1997).

A fitting homage to one of the great outdoor extremists.
(Kirkus Reviews)

Everyone who met Scott remembered him. His energy and enthusiasm always left an impression. Robert captures the person, but also captures the communities of people with whom Scott spent his life. This is a remarkable book on a remarkable person.