Book Review: The Next Everest by Jim Davidson

I listened to this as an audiobook. I don’t listen to audiobooks frequently because my mind tends to wander, but The Next Everest was engaging and easy to follow. In fact, I would recommend this format for this and perhaps other adventure stories. It was easy to feel like you had strapped on crampons and were climbing into the death zone clipped into the fixed ropes just behind him.

For a decades-long armchair mountain climber, that effect was only enhanced by his mentions of friend and fellow climber, Alan Arnette who blog and social media I have followed for many years and Russell Brice, mountaineer and expedition leader whose Everest series I enjoyed on The Discovery Channel.

The author was a lifelong climber who had not yet added Everest to his summit list. He was turned back in his 2015 attempt when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake left him stranded high on the mountain. The earthquake and the ensuing aftershocks killed nearly 9,000 people in Nepal, eighteen of them on Everest. Davidson and his team were eventually rescued by helicopter. He didn’t think he’d get another summit attempt but was able to return in 2017. 

I recommend the book for fans of adventure, mountaineering, or just good storytelling.

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of The Next Everest from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Description

This program includes excerpts read by the author.

One of Atlas & Boots’ Top 10 Adventure Travel Books of 2021

A dramatic account of the deadly earthquake on Everest—and a return to reach the summit.

On April 25, 2015, Jim Davidson was climbing Mount Everest when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake released avalanches all around him and his team, destroying their only escape route and trapping them at nearly 20,000 feet. It was the largest earthquake in Nepal in eighty-one years and killed about 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with eighteen people losing their lives on the mountain.

After spending two unsettling days stranded on Everest, Davidson’s team was rescued by helicopter. The experience left him shaken, and despite his thirty-three years of climbing and serving as an expedition leader, he wasn’t sure that he would ever go back. But in the face of risk and uncertainty, he returned in 2017 and finally achieved his dream of reaching the summit.

Suspenseful and engrossing, The Next Everest portrays the experience of living through the biggest disaster to ever hit the mountain. Davidson’s background in geology and environmental science makes him uniquely qualified to explain how this natural disaster unfolded and why the seismic threats lurking beneath Nepal are even greater today. But this story is not about “conquering” the world’s highest peak. Instead, it reveals how embracing change, challenge, and uncertainty prepares anyone to face their “next Everest” in life.