High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places

An IMAX cinematographer and mountaineer describes his participation in an expedition to Everest during the deadly 1996 season, detailing the creation of his IMAX film Everest and the dramatic impact on his life of his experiences in the face of disaster. 100,000 first printing. Tour.

YA-A world-class rock climber and a professional cinematographer, Breashears is renowned for having organized and led the Imax filming expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest in May 1996. In this autobiography, he describes himself as the third son of a controlling and abusive army major who broke up his family when David was 10-years-old. He was ambivalent about schoolwork and spent all his free time rock climbing in the Rocky Mountain foothills. After completing high school, he honed his skills and tackled difficult rock faces. A British writer and rock climber hired him as a gofer on a documentary filming expedition in Yosemite. With this serendipitous introduction to filmmaking, Breashears was fascinated by the combined art and science of photography. He had already climbed Everest twice when he was hired to put together a team to film the climb of the world's highest mountain with the world's largest camera. His vivid and poignant observations on the fatal expedition in which 12 climbers died complement Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (Villard, 1997). Teens will appreciate Breashears's honesty in his personal reflections, and will be thrilled with the exciting stories of rock climbing and danger at the roof of the world.
Penny Stevens, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Possibly the most interesting aspect of this book is how improbable it seems that Breashears (Mountain Without Mercy) ever lived to write it. An accomplished alpinist, Breashears not only recounts his numerous, dicey ascents of the planets peaks but also explores his motivation for doing so. Though he is an experienced cinematographer whose past employers range from PBS to Hollywood, Breashears is most widely known as the director of the IMAX film Everest. While filming the movie, Breashears and his crew were fortunate to avoid the unforgiving storm at the mountains summit that led to the death of eight people and was chronicled in Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air. Breashears uses that tragic season on Everest as a frame for a personal memoir. The focus is on how he stepped out of the shadow of his violent military father and discovered his passions for climbing and filmmaking. Some of his psychology is simplistic, but there is no doubt that Breashears is as serious about understanding his actions as he is about succeeding in them. And there is no shortage of action, whether he is scaling a 1000-foot vertical rock or narrowly escaping being swept off a cliff by a runaway tonnage of snow. Though at times the book is self-aggrandizing, a little ego can be tolerated in this largely engrossing work, and is, perhaps, only to be expected from someone who has four times scrabbled up the ice and rocks of Everest to reach the top of the world. 16 pages full-color photos not seen by PW. Major ad/promo; appearances on Larry King Live and Today; first serial to Mens Journal.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Times Bks. 1999. c.240p. permanent paper. photogs. maps. ISBN 0-8129-3159-9. $23.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Second to the obsession to top Mount Everest is the fixation on reading about it, and Breashears has succumbed to both temptations. The mountain's literature inspired him in boyhood; in adulthood, he is celebrated for his filmmaking, particularly his spectacular Everest IMAX movie released in 1998. Breashears' account of its production against the grim background of the 1996 climbing catastrophe brackets this memoir of other feats of his climbing and working life. Breashears wryly relates his roughnecking period on Wyoming oil wells, which apart from its tough amusement, shows him following the Algerian credo that the trip to the top starts at the bottom. He carried that precept to mountain filmmaking, talking his way into the job of cameraman's assistant for a team filming on Yosemite's El Capitan. His developing camera's eye was grounded in rock-climbing skills honed in the hang-loose scene in 1970s Colorado, whose dedication to an ineffable, ethical purity in mountain climbing he managed to practice between film projects. A poignant instance is his and a friend's ascent up a mile-high face of Kwangde, "my finest alpine experience in the Himalayas." Then came the IMAX project, the deaths and rescue dramatized in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (1997), Breashears' team's resumption of their summit attempt, and the subsequent ascent past frozen-solid corpses. Whatever mystery seduces climbers to risk all on Everest continues to vicariously inveigle readers--and there will be the publisher's full-service publicity campaign to remind them of their obsession. Gilbert Taylor