LIBRARY MATTERS COLUMN

Contributed weekly article
Published: April 18, 2008

Climbing season on Mount Everest is from April to June, with peak season in late May. This year, along with the usual attempted firsts and other superlatives-oldest, all-female, sans oxygen and Sherpas-one of the year’s teams will retrace the route of the late Sir Edmund Hillary, who in 1953, with climbing partner Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, became the first man to reach the summit.
Other teams aiming for the top will include one featuring legendary British climber Ranulph Fiennes, and a Chinese team bearing the Olympic torch.  For armchair adventurers, the Greene County Library has accounts of expeditions gone awry (Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, for example), along with numerous biographies and memoirs.
The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory by Peter and Leni Gillman (1924 expedition)
The Conquest of Everest, with a chapter on the final assault by Sir Edmund Hillary. (1953 expedition)
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer (1996 expedition)
Everest: Mountain Without Mercy by Broughton Coburn (pictorial work by the National Geographic Society)
Everest (DVD) - Filmed during the infamous 1996 storm that claimed eight lives. Everest documents the filmmakers’ harrowing rescue efforts to help the surviving members of the ill-fated group.
Check the online catalog http://jmrl.org/catalog under Mount Everest expeditions or visit the Greene County Library and ask the friendly staff to help you find information.