The Mountain

My Time on Everest

By: Ed Viesturs, David Roberts - contributor

Narrated by: Tom Beyer

Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring.

The highest mountain on earth, Everest remains the ultimate goal for serious high-altitude climbers. Viesturs has gone on eleven expeditions to Everest, spending more than two years of his life on the mountain and reaching the summit seven times. No climber today is better poised to survey Everest's various ascents—both personal and historic. Viesturs sheds light on the fate of Mallory and Irvine, whose 1924 disappearance just 800 feet from the summit remains one of mountaineering's greatest mysteries, as well as the multiply tragic last days of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer in 1996, the stuff of which Into Thin Air was made.

Informed by the experience of one who has truly been there, The Mountain affords a rare glimpse into that place on earth where Heraclitus's maxim—"Character is destiny"—is proved time and again.

©2013 Ed Viesturs and David Roberts (P)2023 Tantor

Classic Viesturs

A nice overview of Everest's biggest climbs interspersed with Ed's personal relationship with the mountain. A lot of his best Everest stories were already shared in other books so those get glossed over and it becomes sort of a b-sides and rarities collection of memoirs. The accents didn't bother me too much until I got to Messner LOL.

Good Book with Minor Flaws

Great story but a bit disjointed. Not sequential in time or topic.
Excellent narrator with annoyingly awful attempt at accents.
Definitely recommend for a long road trip.

Stop with the accents!!

Great story, great information, but the narrator insists on doing accents for quotes from accounts from climbers from other countries, and he's horrible at it. Unnecessary, distracting, and it really takes away from an otherwise great book.

Good book narrator needs some O2.

Great book. Even with 100s of everest books, it manages to feel like a fresh take. The store line did seem a bit all over the place, jumping back and forth between older stories and ones of his own, but you dont really notice it to much while listening cause it all fits together nicely. One thing that annoyed me a bit was that every time the narrator starts talking, you can hear him take deep, tired sounding breaths. He sounds like yall actually recorded this thing on everest. He did it every time and you dont notice it till you do. Then you notice it all the time. It was bearable though and was just a minor flaw in an otherwise great listen.

Pretty interesting but bad narrator

The book is fine but the narration is poor. Is no one directing/producing at Audible? Someone else mentioned the issues with hearing the narrator taking breaths between sentences, as well as the bad accents (so bad!), but I felt that worst of all he has the most bizarre pronunciation of the word “oxygen” - which, this being a book about climbing 8000 meter mountains, he has to say a LOT. He almost aggressively pronounces it as “OGGGS-zi-gin” - terribly distracting, weird, and frankly unpleasant. Why did no one else working on this audio try to correct this?