Buried in the Sky
Non-Fiction
Buried in the Sky
Mood
Tense, Bleak
Protagonist
Chhiring Dorje and Pasang Lama, two Sherpa climbers whose skill and loyalty anchor the survival narrative.
Parental Rating
PG-13
Pace
Measured through the backstory, then hour-by-hour and gripping once the serac falls.
In August 2008, a crowd of climbers pushed for the summit of K2, the world's second-highest and most lethal peak. Late in the day a serac collapsed and swept away the ropes fixed through the Bottleneck, stranding climbers above the most dangerous section of the mountain. Eleven died. Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan tell the story through the Sherpa and high-altitude porters usually left out of Western accounts, centering Chhiring Dorje and Pasang Lama, whose bond and mountaineering skill shaped the survival of others. The authors spent three years reporting the book, traveling to the men's home villages, and reconstructing the disaster from the ground up.