Mountain climbing has no appeal for me whatsoever, so an entire book about it quickly got repetitious and dull. Horrible weather and life-threatening climbs get old after reading about them three times on each page. I'm not familiar enough with the terminology of climbing, and not interested enough to learn, to follow exactly what was happening during the climbing portions of the book. When Terray was writing about what he saw and did between climbs, it was more interesting. When he tried to wax poetic about his life, I skipped through quickly. I was struck by the degree to which he ignored his wife. I think she was mentioned four times in the book, once to state how neglected she felt.

The whole concept of risking life over and over to stand on yet another mountain makes no sense to me. Several of Terray's climbing partners were either killed or maimed during his climbs, but he kept on until he himself died in a fall. For what, exactly?