Hell Or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River

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Summary: First Descent of the Mt. Everest of Rivers
Review: For years, Tibet's Upper Tsangpo gorge had loomed as the ultimate challenge in whitewater. Carving the deepest gorge in the world (over 15,000 feet deep) and dropping in places 250 feet/mile this monsterous river had repelled every attempt to navigate it's turbulent and treacherous waters. In 1998, a group led by Wickliffe Walker attempted a first descent at 60,000 cfs+, only to have U.S. Kayak Slalom Team member Doug Gordon drown almost midway through the gorge. Their perilous journey is chronicled in the excellent book The Last River.
After extensive planning using satalite imagery, a team of the world's top kayakers led by extreme filmmaker Scott Lindgren (and sponsored by GM/Outside magazine) attempted a fresh first descent in February 2002 at a more reasonable 15,000 cfs. While Lindgren and his 5 buddies were battling the rapids, Peter Heller (on assignment from Outside magazine) hiked the side canyon on a bad hip with an army of 64 porters providing logistical support. Heller chronicles the boaters' near death experiences from the relatively safe vantage point of the trail overlooking the river. Although unable to provide a personal account of the kayaking experience, his writing is brilliant, describing a Shangri-La like beauty that gives the reader a feeling of being surrounded by one of the most remote and enchanting places on Earth.
Heller also vividly portrays the six personalities of this elite kayaking group; in particular focusing on the intense displeasure that Lindgren has for Heller's book proposal. He also describes an intense standoff between the porters and the expedition members, where the porters demand, on threat of death, almost twice their originally contracted pay. (This hardball bargaining style seems to be a recurring theme on many Himalayan expeditions.)
He also gives a brief history of the Tibetan people following the invasion and near-destruction of this Buddhist nation by the Chinese in the 1950s. After enduring a gigantic flood along the Tsangpo in 2000, many of these indigenous people are being relocated so that China can turn this rugged region into a national park.
Overall this makes for excellent adventure reading. It's good to know there are still modern day heroes conquering unconquered rivers and coming home to tell about it.




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Summary: hell or high water
Review: a terrific book that gives a real feel for the inside workings of a difficult and dangerous expedition. the white water descriptions are right on and make you feel as if you were there. a great book for the arm chair traveler.

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Summary: Writing was contrived...........
Review: Being an experienced kayaker, this was an interesting account of the incredible journey of the decent of an extremely dangerous river. The details about the river running were good, not excellent but good. The "creative writing" that Heller uses left a lot to be desired. There were many dropped sentences, sentences that didn't really make sense, and gramatical errors that seemed to come from an editor that edited with his eyes closed. I found myself bored, and the only thing that really kept me awake was the background story of the porters and the sherpas. I love adventure stories, especailly non-fiction and have read many authors, among them Jon Krakauer. When I read that the Heller himself made a comparison to Krakauer and how this book might be his "big hit", I was inspired to read further. Alas, I was VERY diasapponited. Heller's writing doesn't even come close to the kind of writing that Krakauer delivers. Heller's writing was contrived, boring, and the word "narcissistic" came to mind when I thought what kind of person Heller might be.
I will be interested in hearing how much money Heller actually makes from this book, and if the 10% the kayakers really get turns out to be more than a few hundress dollars a piece.
Sorry, but this book was a complete disappointment.

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Summary: This book is the worst!!!
Review: I have read the Outside Cover story "Mission Accomplished" June 2002 about this expedition. Great article! I have scene Scott Lindgren's, Into the Tsangpo Gorge DVD. Unreal! And I have now read a book by a writer that gives a one sided point of view about personal drama that takes completely away from the accomplishment. Heller is desperate. Where is the action? Heller goes on these ridiculous rants that have nothing to do with this expedition. What is even more out of hand is the fact the he feels so desperate to get his story that he was willing to lie and say just about anything to make this book into something that it is bviously not. Not worth reading the paper it is printed on. All I can hope for is that one of the team members writes a book that will give us a real look into what it took and what is was like to be apart of this incredible expedition. Heller should be ashamed of himself. Buy the Into the Tsangpo DVD or read the cover story in Outside Magazine before spending your money on this book.

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Summary: A thrilling ride
Review: Peter Heller is an adventure writer in the old style: thoroughly conversant when it comes to the main event, but careful also to place that central project in full context. For me, this was the great joy of reading "Hell or High Water." The kayaking trip down the Tsangpo is so vividly, ingeniously described that at several points my toes curled at the risk, and it's a great, solid tale that sits properly at the center of this book. But the story of seven brave kayakers is offset by Heller's unique curiosity and humanity: along the route we get bits of Tibetan mythology and history, narratives of earlier conquest, a tutorial on river movement, a little Buddhism and natural-history arcana, plus a whole boatload of engaging stories. Heller is a generous writer who takes excellent command of his book's ambitious scope, and the result for readers is a chance to join a knowledgeable, companionable guide on a truly remarkable expedition.

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Summary: High drama at the edge of adventure
Review: Peter Heller will have you gripping your seat as he transports the reader into the Tsangpo Gorge. The story is told with beautifully crafted sentences which compensate for the lack of photos by filling your mind with exquisite word pictures. Of course the adventure itself is the main excitement, but the personalities of the kayakers present another layer of drama as the adventure roars down the river. These men are on a sort of exploration, true, but it is a mistake to imagine that they are heroes, since this kind of adrenaline- and testosterone-filled journey is by nature a very self-involved endeavor. For readers who love to mentally throw themselves over the edge without actually risking death, HELL OR HIGH WATER is a classic wild ride.

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Summary: One of the great books about exploration
Review: This is one of the great exploration books. Heller's book chronicles a modern-day 19th Century-style grand expedition through the Tsangpo Gorge. After years of preparation, seven kayakers, fundamentally alone despite a ground support team, modern communications gear and corporate sponsors, risk their lives to explore a river as wild as any, and more remote.
It's an audacious story told with awe for the accomplishment of these seven men and respect for the strength of the leader, a hero of modern kayaking. Heller, an accomplished kayaker himself (he followed the expedition on the ground on assignment for an outdoor sports magazine), communicates for those of us who only wish we could be there what it was like in the Gorge and the frightening and magical sensation of sitting in a tiny kayak in the middle of a raging cataract. The kayaking scenes are as concretely realized as the rockclimbing sequence in Deliverance. The book is worth reading for that alone.
There is more here, however. Heller has a poet's sensibility for structure and telling detail, and he uses that to place this expedition's story in a larger frame. The book opens and closes, appropriately, with the wind sweeping through the Gorge: "The only sound was wind rippling and snapping the prayer flags that ran down the riverbank and freezing the paddlers' hands as they zipped into drysuits. . . . The wind would whip the white flags and take their inked prayers, little by little, into the Gorge until they were washed clean." In between, the adventure story unfolds and the book raises issues about why-even for men as able and brave as these-petty jealousies about the ownership of something no one can own creep into our most heroic moments. These issues aren't plainly told in most books detailing former expeditions; I wonder if that's a result of how we've changed (this is, after all, the age of movie rights and the blog from base camp) or the fact that few reports from the field as thoughtful as this one have been written.