Non-Fiction
No Way Down
Mood
Tense, Suspenseful
Protagonist
An international ensemble of K2 climbers, tracked by Bowley as a reporting journalist.
Parental Rating
PG-13
Pace
Fast and forensic, cutting between climbers as the descent unravels through the night.
On August 1, 2008, dozens of climbers from expeditions around the world converged on the summit of K2. What began as a triumphant day collapsed when a serac sheared away the ropes fixed through the Bottleneck, leaving climbers stranded in the death zone through the night. Graham Bowley, a New York Times reporter who was not present, spent months tracking down survivors and the families of the dead across Europe, Asia, and North America to reconstruct the disaster hour by hour. No Way Down follows the international group up the mountain and into the chaos of the descent, holding the conflicting accounts side by side rather than forcing a single version of events.