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    Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
    Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
    Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
    Audiobook7 hours

    Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest

    Written by Beck Weathers and Stephen G. Michaud

    Narrated by Roger Wayne

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1996 Beck Weathers and a climbing team pushed toward the summit of Mount Everest. Then a storm exploded on the mountain, ripping the team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl for their lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying, and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred. Weathers appeared, blinded, gloveless, and caked with ice-walking down the mountain. In this powerful memoir, now featuring a new preface, Weathers describes not only his escape from hypothermia and the murderous storm that killed eight climbers, but the journey of his life. This is the story of a man's route to a dangerous sport and a fateful expedition, as well as the road of recovery he has traveled since; of survival in the face of certain death, the reclaiming of a family and a life; and of the most extraordinary adventure of all: finding the courage to say yes when life offers us a second chance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 15, 2018
    ISBN9781977377074
    Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest

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    Reviews for Left for Dead

    3.5/5

    129 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      One of the most honest books about the sacrifices of climbing and insight into the kinds of people that do it. As a former mountaineer, I appreciated the non-macho slant of this book.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I had hoped for more stories about his climbing, I didn't realize so much of the book would be devoted to his relationship with his family. The whole thing had an air of "poor me I'm so privileged but I'm not happy" from both him and his family. Honestly it all just sounded like a bunch of rich people complaining about how tough they had it because this one aspect of their lives wasn't perfect. I found the parts contributed by his wife to be insufferable. She made it clear that she hated him having a hobby that he was passionate about, which I think was pretty awful of her. Overall the book was just ok, I wouldn't read it again.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I was enjoying the book quite a bit except for the fact that each chapter was cut short of the end and it made it very annoying to even try to read.
    • 4/5
      If you have read Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air and wanted to know more about Beck Weathers, the man who nearly froze to death, Check out his book Left for Dead. The descriptions of the harsh climate and brutal conditions are well detailed in the first portion of his book.Beck was is bad shape, helped down a portion of the mountain by Mike Groom. Once heading down the mountain and reaching the South Col, Weathers felt they were practically home free. In less than an hour they would be at camp, warming up with hot tea and sitting in their tents. But a blizzard came on them with zero warning.Neil Beidleman later reflected it “was like being lost in a bottle of milk.”As the climbers inched along trying to find camp it became clear the injured and physically exhausted climbers couldn’t continue. While a few went ahead to get help, Beck and four others stayed behind to await rescue. Yasuko & Beck were in such bad shape it was determined to leave them as they would die regardless of being brought back to camp.By whatever internal motivation made Beck Weathers get up, injured and snow blind, he did manage to get back to camp on his own. By then his wife Peach had been informed he died. And then hours later, frost bitten and violently ill he shows up. Seriously, talk about against all odds.Three quarters of the remaining part of the book tells about his early life with his brothers, how he and his wife met, the growing discordances between them as Beck was always away from home if he wasn’t working. The deep depression Beck describes as a Black Dog is very sobering. Being on a climb made that go away, he could feel the fog lift.Interjected into the chapters you get his wife’s point of view as well as his brother and colleagues.Beck was a pathologist with a thriving practice so money didn’t seem to be an issue. It was $65,000 for the Everest expedition - mountain climbing is not a cheap sport!Once you get into the parts where he was rescued, an amazing feat there considering the conditions, you read about his recovery. His face and hands were frozen and he lost his hands and nose to frostbite. Lots and lots of surgeries.Peach is quoted stating she understood why the team couldn’t risk lives to go after Yasuko or Beck as death was imminent. What she couldn’t understand was why Beck was left alone in a tent to die alone. Where was the human compassion? The other climbers were there anyway, in their tents, and what a gentle gesture it would have been to hear his last words, to let him know he wasn’t alone. I agree with her.Overall an interesting story.This is is my fifth book for the 2020 Nonfiction challenge hosted by Shelley at Book'd Out. Check it out HERE.Category : Disaster.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book very much. I saw Everest on the big screen and was disappointed at the film's effort at fleshing out the characters a little more. I wanted to know more about Beck Weathers and this book did just that. I would recommend to anyone not only interested in the film, but in survival, the outdoors, climbing, and the dynamics of family relationships and how an individuals desires can affect the entire group.
    • 1/5
      I can't get enough of climbing memoirs, but Beck Weathers' book "Left for Dead" is not really that kind of book. It is, in part at least, the story of his remarkable survival in the deadly 1996 season on Mount Everest, where he was left for dead but survived. In his opening chapter, he describes himself as an "amateur climber," in my opinion someone who had not business being on Everest, and his book reads that way. It annoyed me the first time he described his crampons (essentially cleats that you attach to your boots to provide traction on ice) as knives. The fact he continued to call them knives rather than crampons thereafter drove me nuts.I've read several other books on the Everest tragedy (including Krakauer's, Boukreeve's and Breashear's.) I had been avoiding Weathers' book for no particular reason... perhaps it was instinct that I wouldn't like it. Although he had the most dramatic story of all, Weathers' book was the worst of the lot. (Only a small portion of the book is about the expedition itself.) Perhaps my intense dislike for this book is that I expected to be a climber's book and it is more a story about depression. I found it hard to swallow the redemption story and mostly just felt sorry for Weathers' family.
    • 4/5
      I had been wanting to read this for awhile. Beck Weathers was left for dead twice during the 1996 Everest season. This is the account of his recovery, as well as what led him to the mountain to begin with. I started it this morning and just finished it. This is a brutally honest look inside a very lucky man. I couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      I think Beck's story is intriguing and almost fairy-tale-ish....but not in a bad way. It is because so much of his outlook on life changed based on that one incident, it wasn't a gradual change like life usually is. Because of my expectations, I wasn't sure I was going to be too terribly interested in the parts other than his experience on Everest after reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev, but I was interested. Beck tells his story with a self-deprecating sense of humor that makes the story easier to read than it would be without it. He doesn't glorify any of it and includes things that I would imagine would be very difficult to share with the world. This might finally end my consuming need for more information that Into Thin Air evoked.
    • 3/5
      ivided into four parts, "Left for Dead" is not only about Beck Weathers' near death on Mount Everest, but his life before and after the disastrous expedition. The first part of the book describes the events on Mount Everest; the second part is autobiographical; the third part is about his depression and why he took up mountain claiming; and the fourth part is about his life today. Also discussed are his marriage woes and how his marriage survived his various obsessions (such as motorcycle riding and sailing, as well as mountain climbing). The book isn't written solely from Weather's point of view; there are reflections from other people in his life, most notably his wife, Peach. "Left for Dead" is an interesting read about a flawed human being. Beck Weathers has a good, at times self-deprecating, sense of humor, and is very honest about his flaws. His wife, Peach, is aptly named, but I had to wonder why she stayed married to a man who was absent much of the time and difficult to live with when he was around. There wasn't as much about mountain climbing as I would have liked, but in the end Weathers seemed ill prepared for Everest. Mountain climbing was just an outlet for Weathers' ongoing depression and it's a miracle he wasn't hurt in some of his earlier attempts. While the book goes into much details about Beck's childhood and troubled marriage it glosses over other elements - most noticeably the cost of Beck's climbing expeditions and how Beck was able to take so much time off from work. Finally, I'd like to see an updated postscript on future editions to see how Beck and his family are doing today. This was an enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      An interesting and honest exploration of just what drove one man to climb mountains and his recovery following the events on Everest in May 1996 - if you want to learn more about the storm this is not the book for you. One of the things I really like about this book is Weather's refusal to get involved in or take sides in the controversary - 'In that moment, by saving those three people who otherwise surely would have died, Anatoli Boukreev became a hero'