Rating: 
Summary: See his live talk!
Review: My wife and I saw Kropp at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and we were so enthralled that we decided to see his lecture a second time! He is a very enjoyable, congenial, and has an attractive personality. I read the editorial reviews of his book, which were overall slightly disparaging of his elitism and the "ham-handed" story. I can't disagree more. If the reviewers heard him speak I bet they would change their tone.Kropp is a humble and likeable figure who deserves our admiration. I will follow his career as it progresses. Hats off to Kropp, a man who understands the importance of our natural environment. P.S. The book is great too. Too bad you can't have Kropp there to read it to you!
Rating:
Summary: Gripping adventures of a madman
Review: no disrespect, but somebody who rides his bike all the way there and back, plus climbs everest with no supplemental oxygen, has to be somewhat of a nutter. And his adventures make for fascinating reading.
The first 80 pages or so are about the trip there. the return bikeride is barely mentioned, but it seems he could have written about many more things that happened on the way. Not surprisingly, the book's focus is on that ill-fated may 1996 on the mountain. If you are new to the story of that particular spring, you might be better served with krakauer's book, but this one here certainly gives lucid supplemental stories. i especially liked the candidness, and he seems to be calling them as he saw them. highly recommended for the armchair adventurer.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new.
Review: This book is affected by a malady that seems to infect all mountaineering books in that it references countless other climbs and climbers (half of which have met a tragic end). I suppose this does set some context, but the endless name dropping gets tiresome. Kropp's retelling of his bicycle journey from Sweden to Everest is forgettable. 7,000 miles is compressed into 1 chapter where the author has some rocks thrown at him, has his bike fixed a couple times, and is occasionally scared. That's about all the information we get about the bike trip. I've read more thrilling accounts of a chicken crossing the road. When the author does get to Everest we're presented with the now familiar characters that we've all come to know and love. Hall is still the charmer, Fischer the thinker, and Pittman always the villain. Kropp is the 1st to make an attempt on the mountain in 1996, but is turned around at high altitude by a storm. While he is recuperating at base camp, the tragic events of May 10th unfold. This section seems lifted directly out of "Into Thin Air" (especially since the author had no direct role in the events). After nearly everyone else leaves, Kropp makes another attempt at the summit (after all, he didn't ride his bike 7,000 miles for nothing) and this time is successful. After a predictable near-death experience on the descent, Kropp is reunited with his girlfriend for a return bicycle trip to Sweden where I assume they live happily ever after. Throughout the book Kropp takes great pains to point out that his expedition is entirely self-supported and that he isn't 1 of the "65,000 tourists" just looking to get Everest for his trophy case. To this end we're treated with Kropp accounting for every bit of food (down to a cup of tea and candy bar) that he didn't carry to Everest. But at the end of the book we're shown a chart listing the tallest mountains in the world and the ones that Kropp has climbed are checked off. Trophy hunting indeed. Kropp also informs us of his next adventure. He plans to sail from Sweden to Antarctica and then trek to the South Pole. All self-supported of course. The only hitch in his plan is that he doesn't know how to sail. He plans to do this by 2004, and I think I'll be skipping that book. "Ultimate High" deserves 2 stars. I'm giving it 3 stars only because cycling some 14,000 miles is pretty dang impressive.
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