BOOKSHELF

Rising

by Sharon Wood (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019)

Like many, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (1997) was my introduction to Everest and its inexplicable temptation. Sharon Wood takes us back a decade, to the spring of 1986. This is 10 years before the disastrous climb resulting in eight deaths that Krakauer witnessed and chronicled.

Wood’s experience of Everest has its own dark shadows too. Despite being the first Canadian woman (and first woman in the Western Hemisphere) to summit Everest, the emotional mountain ranges she has continued to climb since have been her greatest feat. She had other blinding spindrift to contend with: a dissolving marriage, the static of stigma and a landscape of depression more daunting than Everest’s 8,848-metre shoulder.

is tightly tethered not only to the climb itself but also to the climb within. Wood was wild inside and out, and her rocky teen years make her success even more championed. She had already tried acid by age 14 and found early thrills in shoplifting. She lied to obtain a boat licence to secure a job as a tour boat guide at Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta,