From the Internet:
On Mount Everest, May 1996 was the cruelest monthAthe month eight climbers died on the mountain, the month that has been recounted already in books by Jon Krakauer, David Breshears, Anatoli Boukreev, Matt Dickinson and others. Half a year earlier, in October 1995, Swedish climber KroppAthe second person in the world to reach the summit of K2 without the aid of oxygenAset out from Stockholm on an 8000-mile bicycle trip to Katmandu, with 250 pounds of gear and the intention of scaling Everest without oxygen. Kropp’s account, written with journalist Lagercrantz, is straightforward, yet ultimately trifling. Too much space is wasted on self-absorbed anecdotes (e.g., Kropp, during what he calls his “wild period,” mounting the stage at a rock concert and shouting “The government is imperialistic!”). The world according to Kropp is filled with too many silly exclamations (“This is totally awesome!”) and too little insight. But when Kropp refrains from glib self-absorption, his story is as gripping as the adventures of Indiana Jones. Along the way, Kropp encounters ravenous wild dogs, numerous free lunches, blizzards, stone-throwing youngsters, a hilarious misadventure in a brothel in Hungary, weddings in Romania, gunfire in Turkey. It’s an excellent adventure, but very mediocre adventure writing.