Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow : The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure

This book looks at the effect of following this most dangerous of passions on the partners left behind and some who sometimes accompany their loved ones. Even more interestingly, Maria Coffey looks at the point of views of those who have no choice in their relationships with those whose addiction seems as self-serving and as inevitable as any other addiction - parents and children.

I really liked Coffey's earlier book, and I recommend this one as much. I believe she has matured as a writer as well. She has the knack of addressing very large picture issues yet not losing sight of the personal and `small moments'.

Some of the personal testimonies about coming to terms with loss and dealing with grief are true not only for losses under such circumstances, but there are some universal truths particularly for anyone who has had to deal with death and the "loss of a future", rather than a mere celebration of a life fulfilled (as many older person funerals have become in my culture in recent years).

An understated but important subtext for me is what this has to say about gender relations. It is no accident that most of those off risking their lives, and the fur=tures of those around them are male. Ms Coffey does touch on this, and especially the unusual circumstance of women with children who still pursue the apex of whatever mass of rock and ice they have their heart set on. However, she never table thumps an agenda . . . you are lft to ponder your own conclusions.

A remarkable achievement.That Ms Coffey has the confidence of so many associated with the pursuit is a testament to her insight and empathy.

I rate this alongside Ed Douglas's book "Chomolungma Sings The Blues" as my favourite books discussing ethical and spititual concerns about mountaineering.


powerful thoughts on unanswerable questions   March 13, 2004
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Losing a friend or loved one is never an easy process, but it becomes even more tangled when they leave for a mountain adventure and never return. I first experienced this in the early 70's when 3 close friends were killed while attempting Mt. Elias in Canada. Maria Coffey examines how climbers and their families and friends cope with the devastating losses that shadow this sport.
She begins with a search for why people climb in the first place, and in particular why they continue after close calls; without becoming banal, she quotes Jim Wickwire, "One of the addictive aspects of climbing is that it allows you to be in the present moment in ways that are impossible in ordinary life". Similar thoughts come from Csikszentmihalyi's concept of 'flow' - which finds that the "enjoyment of risk comes not from the danger itself but from managing it, from the sense of exercising control in difficult situations." And then, there's the ultimate mountaineering existential futility of Camus' Sisyphus facing an "unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing... Each atom of that stone , each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart".
The bulk of this powerful book interviews the survivors and comrades of lost climbers. At times, its difficult to read, but the feelings expressed range from acceptance to anger and denial. In most cases, there is a community of shared experience and values. Whether you're an active climber or arm chair mountaineer this book gives a much needed balance to the hyberbolic tales of expedition climbing. And for those of us who have lost people to the mountains it offers, not comfort, but a stoic acceptance.


A much-needed exploration of the price paid by some   February 21, 2004
 19 out of 27 found this review helpful

My friend Arlene Blum (Anapurna: A Woman's Place) climbed in the Himalayas and elsewhere and lived to tell the tale. She now leads treks into the world's remote and wild regions, but she once rendered me speechless with her offhand reply to my horror at one hair-raising tale she told of crossing an ice bridge about a million miles up a some scary mountain.
"Why on earth would you do that?" I had asked, when I recovered my voice. And another unspoken question hung right behind the first: Having done it once and survived, why on God's green earth would you do it again? And again, and again.
"Oh, it's not really dangerous," and she poured me another cup of tea.
Not dangerous. Yeah, right.
Arlene had already lost a lover and several friends to accidents in high places, and others have died cold and lonely deaths since then. Not dangerous? I mean, what??
But there will still be those who MUST climb mountains. Some of them will die, and their survivors often are quoted as saying, "He died doing what he loved best," or the feminine equivalent. Maria Coffey's book, Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow," chronicles the naked underbelly of the experience of this particular kind of loss. It looks behind the public quotes into the hearts and bleeding souls of the survivors, and I believe it's a story whose exposure is long overdue. The personal costs of extreme adventure are too often dismissed for the thrill of reading about the adventures themselves. Coffey handles with grace and delicacy the stories of wives, husbands, lovers, friends, and children left behind my someone who just had to climb yet one more mountain - for reasons the rest of us armchair travelers can't even begin to imagine.