Rating: 
Summary: I Will Survive (to the end of the book)!
Review: For me, this isn't the best climbing account out there. I found Ruth Ann Kocour's "Facing the Extreme" (climbing Denali) much harder to put down. I got rather bored with Ms. Gammelgard's philosophical wanderings. She did seem rather preoccupied with herself at times, but she also displayed compassion for other team mates. I found it interesting that she blamed not being able to climb without oxygen on Scott Fisher, especially since she was always making the point that each person must look out for him or herself. She knew she wanted to climb without oxygen, and she also knew that she needed to properly acclimitize in order to do so. So what stopped her from making sure that she did what was necessary to acclimitize? I am going to read Anatouli Boukreev's "The Climb" to get his perspective. Perhaps he shall shed some light on this. So far, from what I have read, I liked Jon Krakaur's "Into Thin Air" better. At any rate he is a better writer as far as I am concerned.
Rating:
Summary: I Will Survive (to the end of the book)!
Review:
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn! Wake me up at the end.
Review: I was excited to come across Lene Gammelgaard's book as I love to read about women who share my taste for adventure. Imagine how disappointed I was to find that Ms. Gammelgaard could not write about anything outside of herself. Yes, I know it is a personal account of climbing Everest, but her trip was not a solo ascent. From her account though, you would think no one else was around. Okay, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but I was pretty tired of Ms. Gammelgaard far before the end of this book. Additionally, her writing style is quite disjointed and distracting. I find it difficult to believe the claim that she has "been a journalist," unless you understand that to include anyone who has, perhaps, simply kept a journal.
If you want to get a feel for being a woman and climbing, better to try Stacy Allison or Ruth Anne Kocour. You will get much more rich detail from either of those, along with more of a sense of the community of climbing.
Rating: 
Summary: decide for yourself
Review: I was very pleasantly surprised - we already read "Into Thin Air" and "the Climb" why do we need another account of the drama of the storm itself? This book is about a personal journey Lene undertook and how she prepared for it. I never took from Lene that she thought Scott Fischer needed her on his team. (Other than the publicity of the first Danish woman to climb Mt. Everest and it is clear that there was a lot of thought behind additional clients on the permit and how they, individually, would contribute to publicity for Mountain Madness.) I think she portrayed her relationship with Scott as an understanding and respect of one another's shared passion and growing friendship. It is clear that Scott saw Lene as a capable climber technically, professional, and an asset to the overall social culture on the mountain. If you are an avid climber you know this is important regarding everyone's safety and experience on the mountain. I also enjoyed reading about her taking the time to get to know Anatoli and her representation of him as such a caring and intense man. Climbing High provides insight regarding her personal thoughts in preparing for a mental and physical challenge of this scale. I found her to be a lovely woman who never made harsh judgements, respected the climbers who shared her passion as well as the culture of the Sherpas and the spirit of the mountain. Her account expressing her positive attitude and discipline to achieve a goal that appears out of reach and comes with great risk made me feel as though I was preparing to climb Everest. This discipline can be incorporated into your everyday life - Clearly understanding goals, an understanding of the steps it takes to achieve them, and the passion to never give up. I loved this book and find it a great addition to the plethora of books on Everest.
Rating: 
Summary: Opposing View
Review: I seem to be the odd person out in that I liked this book. This is not a book that will cause controversy by laying blame on those who survived, or even more unacceptably on those who perished. This is a memoir by a woman who was qualified to be on the mountain. She raised sponsor money to make the attempt possible. She was not someone with more personal wealth than judgment that simply wrote a check for a thrill seeking adventure. Scott Fischer was an extraordinary mountaineer according to any book that I have read. He invited Lene Gammelgaard on the expedition, and also was interested in marketing his company in Europe via this woman's summit attempt. This woman was not a paid journalist; she was not the person who wanted to turn her climb into a media circus with a major American Network. If the expedition had not become a tragedy I doubt most non-climbers would even know her name. This was hardly the case with several others who were on the mountain at the same time. Lene summitted Everest, she survived the storm, she assisted others when they needed help, and she left the mountain with her body intact. One of the reasons for the last note is that she lacked the ego, or stated differently, had the good sense to talk to those who had climbed Everest, to inquire about what was most appropriate to bring, what their on the mountain experience had taught them. Far from being a sign of weakness it is an endorsement of her good judgment. Asking Anatoli Boukreev about the protection he uses for his hands on summit day is the kind of thinking that I would look for in a fellow climber. I would not want to be following those who were lugging satellite phones, computers and other nonsense to make daily appearances on national television. This is a book about her experience from well before she ever stepped on a plane to the Himalaya. It is a very personal book, and her style of writing together with her philosophies of life may not read like a thriller, however the facts of what happened in May of 1996 need no embellishment. To me these are factors that brought her to the top and back down safely. This woman is no thrill seeker, she is not deluded about what an attempt on Everest means, and she shared her experience, she did not write a book embellishing the horror of an event that requires nothing more than a statement of facts. She also refrained from taking apart the conduct of other climbers. She was not shy about expressing her opinion, however she was generally on the mark with her thoughts. And finally, far from taking the Sherpa guides for granted, she repeatedly spoke of them as critical to her success and her survival. For me, this was one of the better books I have read about that tragic May 1996 expedition.
Rating:
Summary: Don't bother!
Review: This book is a total waste of time to read. I couldn't wait to read it when I saw it on Amazon.com. But lucky for me I happen to see it at the library and hurried home to read it. Gammelgaard is so into herself it makes me sick. To think that she thinks Scott Fischer needed to have her on his team in order for the expedition to make it is unreal. She will never be in the same league as true mountaineers like Fischer or Rob Hall. Save your money on this one. I have read almost everything about Mount Everest, and the 1996 tragedy, and this is by far the worst. It will never compare with "Into Thin Air" or "The Climb". Also she has a style of writing that I have never seen before. She jumps from one thing to another, but I can guarantee you it will always be about herself, and how strong and great she is.
Rating: 
Summary: A Considerable Disappointment
Review: An account of the 1996 disaster from a member of the Mountain Madness team could have added considerably to our understanding of what went wrong that dreadful day. This book does not. The focus, unfortunately, is entirely on Ms. Gaamalgard herself the rest of her team are tangential presences at best and she makes no attempt to give rounded portraits or an account of who did what and when. Of course she is not a journalist, unlike Krakauer, so perhaps her concentration on her own experience is understandable. That said experience comes off as vapid and singularly uninvolving may be the fault of Ms. Gaamalgard's writing style or her translator - or both. It never occured to me to think of this book as 'a woman's point of view', possibly because I don't think in gender catagories, and I would hate to think Ms. Gaamalgard's new age psychobabble was somehow representative of my sex. A POV I would very much have liked to hear was that of Pete Schoening, veteran Himalayan climber, survivor of at least two notable mountaineering disasters and God knows how many close calls, but alas he is barely mentioned.
Rating:
Summary: drivel
Review: Lene Gammelgaard's life on Everest revolves around trying to feel good about herself, congratulating herself, and managing teammates' perceptions of herself. There; that is only signal in this book, the rest of the book is noise: a repetitive "You go girl" collection of superficial spirituality and psycho babble.
Rating:
Summary: Self-serving and short on insight into the tradedy.
Review: The paradoxical nature of reality is that everyone perceives it differently yet everyone thinks that their version is the "correct" one. If you've read any of the reports on the tragedy on Mt. Everest in May 1996, it's evident that no one person knows the whole story yet each person on the mountain that day has their own version of what happened. I was hopeful that this book would add an insightful new perspective, but I was immensely disappointed. Lene Gammelgaard's account is nothing but an exercise in self-aggrandizement. She repeatedly suggests that the tragedy was the result of too many amateurs buying their way onto the mountain and putting everyone else in jeopardy. Undoubtedly true, but Gammelgaard is being hypocritical at best. Her silly "spirit of the mountain" claptrap, foolhardy demand that she be allowed to summit without oxygen and lack of familiarity with some of the most basic equipment mark her as one of the same crowd. While "Into Thin Air" may have reflected its authors' biases, at least he was willing to acknowledge that there might be some and to look at his own mistakes that fateful day. Gammelgaard makes no such concessions. I'm glad I read the book just because it gives me a fresh perspective on one of the players, but it's certainly not a favorable one.
Rating:
Summary: EVEREST AS A TROPHY MOUNTAIN...
Review: This is yet another perspective of the 1996 Everest tragedy by a survivor of the fiasco. Written in journal style, the author at times frames her thoughts in a staccato, stream of consciousness, rambling fashion, coupled with new age psycho babble. At other times, she intones in a pseudo profound way about Everest. The author comes off as a silly, vapid individual. It is interesting to note that while the author refers to Scott Fischer's expedition (of which she was a member) as an environmental one with a mission to clean up the debris on Everest left by expeditioners, nowhere does she state what it was that those on Scott Fischer's expedition were going to do to ameliorate the mess on the mountain. While she climbs up and down Everest, acclimatizing herself, she does not appear to be doing anything that remotely resembles conservation or clean up. Nor does she indicate any affirmative interest in doing anything constructive to that end. She intones about the consequences of hubris up on the mountain. Yet, she, who had never before climbed Everest, was insisting that she would climb it without oxygen. She was even getting into arguments about it with Scott Fischer, who had the sense to tell her she would be climbing with oxygen. As it turned out, he was right. She could barely make it with oxygen. She should thank her lucky stars that he was so insistent that she climb with oxygen, otherwise she, too, would probably have died on Everest. She also incessantly refers to herself as a mountain climber, but she didn't even know what gear she should take, relying on the recommendations of others, and then criticizing their recommendations when they ran counter to her expectations. It is clear, no matter how she wants to dress up her reasons for climbing Everest, that it was just a trophy mountain for her. She hoped that climbing Everest would gild the path for her to some psuedo celebrity status in her country of Denmark. Her take on Anatoli Boukreev is much more sympathetic than was Jon Krakauer's in his book Into Thin Air. She saw Anatoli as an asset and misunderstood because of his taciturn demeanor. Anatoli comes off very well in this account. In fact, her take on him is much more sympathetic than her take on Scott Fischer, in whom she was apparently disappointed as an expedition leader. I must say if she acted the way she described in her book, then Scott Fischer, who was a true mountaineer, must of been heartily sick of her bravado about climbing Everest without oxygen. Her inflated sense of self is truly staggering at times. When she talks about hubris, she would do well to look no further than her own mirror. Notwithstanding all of this, her account has some merit. As an Everest junkie, I found parts of her journal to be of interest, which is why I rated it three stars, rather than two.
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