Michael Kodas' HIGH CRIMES in Washington Post

Sports Roundup
Offbeat sports sagas, including one that is perfect for Hollywood.
Reviewed by Allen Barra
Sunday, March 23, 2008; Washington Post

HIGH CRIMES The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed By Michael Kodas | Hyperion. 357 pp. $24.95

Some of the characters in Michael Kodas's High Crimes seem to want not only the moon and the stars, but the summit of Mt. Everest and all it can be exploited for. In 2004, on assignment for the Hartford Courant, Kodas joined an expedition to scale Everest led by two veteran climbers. Whatever the paper paid him, it wasn't enough. As if the constant threat of death weren't sufficiently terrifying, he discovered more deceit, thievery and double-crossing among his climbers than you find in a Martin Scorsese gangster film.

High Crimes is both an adventure story and an expos¿ of a sport riddled with danger and corruption that have mostly gone unnoticed because so few can afford to play. Rich folks from all over the world pay $65,000 or more to unqualified, disreputable types who promise to take them to the top of Everest. (The fate of eight who died in 1996 was the subject of Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air.) Kodas's book is exhilarating, though at times a tad confusing. He doesn't make clear why his party's expedition unraveled, as if the rarefied air clouded his senses; he's better at the big picture, bringing into focus a world where "virtually every guide on Everest has turned away clients who didn't have the skill, experience, or the cash to climb the mountain, only to have them show up there anyway with whatever agency offered up Everest at a price they could afford." Why do they do it? For the same reason that English mountaineer George Mallory ventured onto Everest in the first place -- because it's there.

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