Michael Kodas

In the first days of August, when 11 climbers perished on K2 and another half dozen found themselves stranded below the mountain’s summit, some mountaineers and media criticized them as “mountain tourists.”

“It’s long past time to stop calling these egomaniacs heroes and call them what they are,” wrote one poster at the New York Times website. “Selfish, egomaniacs, and stupid.” Reinhold Messner, the greatest climber of his generation, fumed about “K2 package deals” and the “pure stupidity” of the climbers involved.

While many lamented the Everest circus’s arrival on K2, others pointed out that the mountaineers involved were highly experienced high-altitude veterans.

During interviews of eight of the disaster’s survivors and a visit to Ireland to attend a memorial service for one of the victims, I learned of the blunders and heroism of the three-dozen climbers who headed for the summit of K2 on August 1st. I also learned that just a few of the trappings of Everest have made their way on to K2. But on K2, which is far steeper and more prone to storms and avalanches than Everest, it doesn’t take much to bring disaster.

You can read my story at Outside magazine’s website:

http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200809/k2-disaster-eleven-climbers-die-1.html
Cheers,

Michael

The California Literary Review gave High Crimes their highest rating in the May 15th issue. Reviewer John Holt wrote:

 By the time I was halfway through High Crimes I was disgusted with everyone involved with Everest, even the so-called good guys, who hadn’t done nearly enough to clean up the situation. By the end of the book I was angry. What’s going on at this mountain and many others represents everything that is wrong, that is despicable in not only mountaineering and adventure travel but human behavior overall. 

 Read the review in its entirety here. 

For those of you who got to watch overtime golf rather than my appearance on the Sunday edition of the CBS evening news (the extra holes in the golf tournament preempted the entire news broadcast in the East and Midwest), here’s a link to my interview with anchor Russ Mitchell.

http://tinyurl.com/552jvz  

Russ Mitchell, anchor of the Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News, interviewed Michael Kodas last week for a segment the news program is airing Sunday, April 27th - that’s tonight.

Russ and Michael discussed Michael’s book, High Crimes, as well as the ongoing Chinese climb of Mount Everest with the Olympic torch, and how that climb is bringing new dangers to Everest. The Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News airs at 6:00 or 6:30 PM EST, depending on the area (please check your local listings), right before 60 Minutes.We hope you can catch the program. Feel free to send us your comments if you do. 

Check out Michael’s interview with Faith Salie, host of the Public Radio International program Fair Game.

Jian Ghomeshi interviewed me for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program Q last Thursday. You can download a podcast of the program, which also includes an interview with Canadian artist Robert Bateman, who destroyed a piece of his own work in protest against the construction of an oil pipeline, and a homage to the photobooth, at the CBC lateshow website. Look for the March 27th, 2008 program.

For my recent visit to Salt Lake City Doug Fabrizio interviewed me on his program, RadioWest, a public radio program broadcast by KUER out of The University of Utah. You can hear me an mp3 of the interview here. I also visited the studios of KCPW to appear on Midday Metro. You can check out my appearance on that program here.

High Crimes made the Washington Post’s recent roundup of sports books. Reviewer Allen Barra wrote:

“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 exposé of a sport riddled with danger and corruption…”  

Check out the entire Washington Post roundup of sports books, which suggests many other terrific reads. 

When I was in third grade my younger and shorter brother beat me at one-on-one in basketball. Repeatedly. I didn’t have much more success with football or baseball, so I headed deep into the woods to find a sport I could play without being embarrassed by my little brother. Now ESPN, as it continues to expand its realm from extensive coverage of ball sports into the X-Games and beyond, has found me in the woods and given my book about crime in mountaineering some nice coverage. Sam Elfling did a great interview for ESPN.com’s outdoor section, and ESPN and Borders listed High Crimes at number 7 on their Sports Bestseller List for March 5. You can check out the list here.

Bruce Barcott, contributing editor of Outside magazine and author of the splendid book, “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw,” reviewed “High Crimes” for The New York Times Sunday Book Review. He concluded:

 “High Crimes” poses the question: How long before the bad drive out the good? “To climb Everest” has become such a powerful cultural metaphor that some climbers arrive seeking little more than career makeovers. They go up as schoolteachers; they come down as motivational speakers. If you ask a real climber where the best mountaineering is taking place nowadays, they’re likely to agree with Sir Edmund Hillary: anywhere but Everest.

You can read the whole review, as well as the first chapter of the book, in a piece entitled The Higher They Climb.