The Ice Balloon

I don't want to give it away, but the fact that we aren't all enjoying hot air balloon rides to visit Santa kind of hints at how S.A. Andree's 1897 attempt to fly over the North Pole went. If you are into the sort of literature that deals with stupid people behaving badly in cold places (or, behaving heroically in cold places) then Alec Wilkinson's book, The Ice Balloon, is for you. I happen to be someone whose heart quickens to a subtitle like S.A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration, and I couldn't wait to read about this Norwegian who planned down to the most bizarre minutiae how to take two companions and be the first to fly over the North Pole. It being 1897, a hot air balloon made perfect sense. What could go wrong?

He was such a thinker--and by this I mean just a bit obsessive--that Andree even thought through how to cook food mid-flight in a balloon filled with extremely flammable gas. To heat water and cook, Andree had a stove...that could be lowered from the basket until it hung about twenty five feet beneath it. It was lit from the basket through a tube. A mirror placed by the stove allowed someone in the basket to see if the flame had lit. Blowing down a second tube put it out. An engineering marvel? No doubt. Practical? Hmm, not sure how good the food was, but they didn't die of starvation.

And yes, I don't give much away by saying they don't make it. The mystery of what happened to this visionary--dour and possessed--took 30 years to discover, but Wilkinson leads us to it gradually, and thrillingly, by way of a few other expeditions north. Some more horrific than others, and none terribly successful (in this book). My favorite is the experience of an American named George Tyson who signs up on an expedition only to find himself the leader of a mad scramble to safety. The ship he's on gets stuck in the ice and it's thought to be leaking. In a panic, the crew starts throwing stuff overboard and Tyson finds himself on the ice with a bunch of unknown others trying to reorganize when suddenly the ship breaks free and sails off in the dark without them. By the time there is light, the sad little ice floe crew can see the ship merrily chugging around the bend of land.

Suddenly Tyson becomes the de facto commander of a surly crew of German-speakers, women and children belonging to the expeditions Eskimo hunters, and the only one without a gun. Their tale of escape from the predicament is so unbelievable that many actually didn't believe them. It makes for great reading.

George Tyson was no scholar and his story is compelling because it is so amazing. Andree, on the other hand, is a scholar and kept meticulous journals--albeit not as emotionally detailed as one might like. The notes on his remarkable journey provide great insight into his daring dream. This was a man determined to succeed in the name of science and to prove his vision that sledging to the poles was never going to work. It is auspicious that the final words he was heard to speak were, "What was that?" as his balloon struck something leaving its mooring. And still, he sailed off, apparently happy, into the crystalline air of the northern regions.

No Way Down. Life and Death on K2

This was a quick read (snow days help) so I barely had to time to extract promises from my sons that they would never climb in the Himalayas before I was done reading Graham Bowley's journalistic account of a 2008 ascent of K2. The 2008 ascent was marred by over-crowding (much more like what Everest suffers in general) and a long-stable serac that decides it's time to let go, completely indifferent to the fact that some 20 people are still above its tilting overhang.

Unlike the 1996 disaster on Everest, natural and unpredictable events help cause the tragedy of 11 deaths on K2. Yes, like the Everest event, people summitted too late. Yes, there was crowding and a lack of coordination, but the weather turned on Everest and most climbers knew that it would. In the K2 case, the glacier moved, tumbling skyscraper-sized chunks of ice down on both climbers and, more urgently, on the equipment--the lines, the snow markers--that would have helped them get down in the dark.

Unlike John Krakauer who so excellently reported the Everest tragedy, Graham Bowley is not a climber. He's a journalist who has little-to-no interest in mountaineering. In some ways the book suffers from his lack of first-hand experience (not with the tragedy itself, but with what it's like being atop the tallest places on earth). While Krakauer could make you feel exactly what is going on with your body as you become oxygen-deprived in the so-called Death Zone, and how that affects your life-and-death judgement, Bowley can only report. At times his subjects seem indifferent to what is unfolding around them and where Krakauer made me understand this as a normal reaction to high altitude, Bowley made me think slightly less of his characters.

On the other hand, Bowley was perhaps the perfect writer to bring together all the accounts of what happened over that weekend in August 2008. He did extensive interviews and right up front warns that "the accounts were contradicting one another and it was clear that memory had been affected by the pulverizing experience of high altitude, the violence of the climbers' ordeals and, in a few instances, possibly by self-serving claims of glory, blame, and guilt." Still, the journalist takes over and the accounts are laid out matter-of-factly (that's not to say they are dull. They aren't. They're each and all gripping accounts of life and death above 26,000 ft). It's only in the epilogue that Bowley admits to some controversy among accounts--who was to blame for mistakes made, who helped whom, who was affected most by altitude sickness... By then, it doesn't matter. When you've read about finding three Koreans dangling upside down, overnight, and about having to make the agonizing decision to stop and help or to save yourself; when you've read about a body falling in front of you with no scream or shout and having to sort through your muddled mind to remember whose suit was that color; when you, the reader, know that the character you admire most will either die or lose all his toes, it's hard to place blame or care about egos. These are all amazing men and women and, unlike the Everest tragedy, the mistakes seem minor. Unfortunately, any poor decision, however minor, can be fatal in the Death Zone.

The House of Silk

Officially sanctioned by the Conan Doyle Estate, comes a new Sherlock Holmes novel by Anthony Horowitz (Alex Rider mysteries, Foyle's War, Collison). In The House of Silk, Horowitz captures both the spirit and the times of the original books. This one is old-fashioned without being old. The mystery is perhaps a bit more, um--let's say modern--than anything the old Sherlock might have been involved with, but the characters are believably re-created here, including an almost useless Watson as sidekick. He's so marginalized that at one point, they consult another doctor for an opinion. I could only imagine Doctor Watson, leaning over the body, saying What am I, chopped liver? But of course, he wouldn't say that. In fact, he demurs another time when asked about the possible slow poisoning of a woman, by saying, I should warn you, I'm only a general practitioner and my experience is limited...Oh, Watson. Is this why Sherlock keeps you around?

Horowitz even manages to touch on the odd and rumored relationship between the two men, without, mind you, making anything explicit. There's nothing sexual between the two, but there's something more than friendship. Though Watson is happily married, he's also more than happy when his wife goes to Scotland to catch typhoid fever (being only a generalist, he misses this detail) so he can hang out with his old buddy. They don't talk about Mrs. Watson, and when a criminal mastermind asks Watson to swear on something that he won't reveal what he's learned, Watson offers his marriage.

Mysterious man: Not good enough.

Watson: On my friendship with Holmes

Mysterious man: Now we understand each other.

All in good fun. I know Watson is our way into the brilliant mind of the great detective. Horowitz treats his brilliance admirably. There's a trick to writing about a brilliant person without seeming gimmicky or cocky and I think Horowitz succeeds. Also, this being a mystery, it deserves careful reading because everything, down to the odd placement of a fountain, seems like it might be a clue. Red herrings abound, as they should, and the solution is satisfying enough to reflect the time period. People are killed, people escape spectacularly from prison, nothing is romanticized about the harsh life of a street urchin, and Sherlock never resorts to his cocaine habit. You just have to put up with Watson being a little dim.