Eiger Dreams
Ventures Among Men and Mountains
by Jon Krakauer · first published 1990
75% recommend13% neutral13% critical
Why HN recommends it
Vivid, compact essays on mountaineering and climbing history. Krakauer captures climbers' compulsion and self-doubt, suiting readers who enjoy outdoor writing without a climbing background.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Krakauer takes the reader to wonderful, awful peaks like Denali, the Eiger, Devil's Thumb, K-2 and Everest.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…8000-meter Peak many years ago I was blown away by the story which was both a huge victory in that era of mountaineering but also a personal tragedy for Herzog. This book together with Touching the Void and Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer are very captivating books even if you are not so much into mountaineering. However, I have later read True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna by David…
on “Into Thin Error: Mountaineer Ed Viesturs on Making Mistakes (2010)” ↗Other great mountaineering books: Annapurna (already mentioned) -Herzog All of Ed Viesturs books are great The Summit - Pemba Gyaljie Dark Summit - Nick Heil Conquistadors of the Useless - Terray Eiger Dreams - Krakauer Denali's Howl - Hall
on “Into Thin Error: Mountaineer Ed Viesturs on Making Mistakes (2010)” ↗Krakauer's books "Eiger Dreams" and "Into The Wild" (the latter also a good movie) are worth a read as well. And I've listened several times to his audiobook versions of all three. More than anyone else I've read, he captures the…
on “Sherpas, Death, and Anger on Everest ” ↗I’m just finishing Eiger Dreams, what a great book! I wish Krakauer would write more recent mountaineering books.
on “Into Thin Error: Mountaineer Ed Viesturs on Making Mistakes (2010)” ↗…it's actually great). - Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in). - Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too. The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of…
on “How Mount Everest killed George Mallory” ↗Eiger Dreams has a chapter on Gill. Worth a read if you're interested.
on “Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels” ↗I'll always think of him as depicted in Krakauer's _Eiger Dreams_. A guy with a forge in the back of his car making gear for climbers on site.
on “ The 1972 Chouinard Catalog that changed a business – and climbing – forever” ↗…sell." Well, if there's one thing I'm sure about, it's that selling books wasn't why Krakauer was compelled to tell that story. Reading Krakauer's accounts of his own life, in both Into The Wild and in Eiger Dreams, it's pretty clear he felt the same urge to challenge himself with the wilderness that McCandless did, and that the books are Krakauer's attempts to understand that drive. Those books are mainly journeys…
on “How Chris McCandless Died” ↗> - Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too. I adored Into Thin Air, but cannot get through Eiger Dreams. Frustrating because the stories are indeed…
on “How Mount Everest killed George Mallory” ↗http://www.amazon.com/Eiger-Dreams-Ventures-Among-Mountains/...
on “Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies” ↗