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Orient and Postcolonialism – Week 14

Reading Response for week 14 Bryant Lymburn This weeks reading focused upon the chapter provided on orientalism and an article discussing the postcolonialism in the climbing culture. Both ideas provide issues and points of interest based on the context in which they are both used. In the first article on orientalism there is very overly…

Post Colonialism

Although Climbing Mount Everest: Post Colonialism in the culture of ascent, may be considered informative to some, at this point in the class there was little that Slemon wrote that this class has not already discussed at length. The subject of the ownership of Mount Everest is not so cut and dry. At the expense of…

(Not) another Jon Krakauer

While I may be alone in this sentiment, tones of this book’s introduction reminded me of Into Thin Air, namely the dramatic buildup to the “but that’s not really how it happened” blow. This may not be coincidence, as David Roberts was for some time a close mentor and teacher of Jon Krakauer at Hampshire College.…

True Summit

True Summit transformed Herzog’s bland, overdramatic, national fairy tale into a true adventure story, racked not only by weather and mountains, but also by anger bordering on hate. Every bad notion I had of Herzog was confirmed by Roberts and his compilation of memoirs by the “knights of the sky”, especially Lachenal’s. A crucial moment…

True Summit – week 13

Reading Response week 13 – True Summit Bryant Lymburn In the work by David Roberts, True Summit, he recounts the expedition and ultimate successful tragedy of the French’s attempt on Annapurna. Roberts analyzes the expedition and each member in the climbing party. He documents each individuals accomplishments and there attitude to the expedition though their…

True Summit

In a way this book does something we have done in discussion all semester. Seeing that this book is written in 2000, it seems almost that the 1990’s and early 2000’s have brought an age of questioning the pasts mountaineering excursions, much like the fact that we are all taking a ‘history of mountaineering course,’…

Week 13 True Summit

I thought this weeks reading was highly interesting because it provided us with a look back on an event that had already occurred and that we had moved past. For the majority of the semester, it would seem, that we moved forward chronologically visiting new adventures and new climbs and new problems facing climbing where…

Interesting tidbit

So I always get emails from the website ‘theclymb.com’ which is pretty much a discounted outdoor gear website, that rotates brands depending on what companies have excess of and whatnot, and this week their email included a brand called ‘Sherpa’ which I had never heard of, so I looked up the website (link below) and…

True Summit

True Summit has proved to be a confusing book thus far. It is difficult to decide what is fiction and what is fact. If nothing else, the book shows that these people are not monolithic in character. It proves that people are contradictory and complex in nature. Some of Herzog’s suspected lies do not make…