Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest

by Jules Mountain

Jules Mountain is a survivor. The odds of surviving his type of cancer were one in five. The odds of dying on Everest are one in 60, but these are severely shortened when factoring in an avalanche triggered by the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Jules lived to tell both tales, which he does in a way that conveys the agony and euphoria that extreme adventurers face, even when things go according to plan. And yet this is not merely an account of what happened in the aftermath of the most deadly disaster ever on the world’s most iconic mountain. It is an exploration—internal as well as physical—of how logic, compassion and risk assessment are affected by altitude, vested interests and the stress of extreme circumstances.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Adventure, Memoir, Mountaineering

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[chucklesthescot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read about the earthquake that hit Nepal and Mount Everest in 2015, the devastation shown all over the news. The book got off to a rocky start with the author rightly trying to test himself in difficult conditions to prepare for interest. Whilst I applauded his preperation, I found it selfish that he dragged along his poorly eqipped friend to help test the equipment in a blizzard, putting poor Fred at risk of frostbite. Jules got on my nerves by refusing to follow any of the rules for the expeditions he joined. He refused to get up for an early start to the climb then raced to catch up so he could be seen to beat the others to prove how great he was. He races other climbers up and down the mountain to show he can beat them when it is all about adapting to the conditions. He hates guides and their rules so he ignores them and frequently shows that he'll do what suits him and sod being a team player. I don't know if he expects the reader to be impressed by his childish behaviour but I wasn't. He of course takes time to brag about all his talents in case we missed his greatness.

In the aftermath of the earthquake he lends a hand with medical help for the injured which I do commend him for, but at times it sounds more as if he resents the injured for being there and forcing him to look after them. He spends time being critical of how others are acting, not considering that they might be suffering from shock. He barely mentions his loved ones back home worrying about him and we barely get a mention of him trying to contact them. As soon as the injured are taken away, he's focused on getting up Everest. I don't grudge him that as these expeditions are costly and you might not get another chance to come back. I do get their obsession in a sense. There were interesting bits in this book, especially the situation after the earthquake, but again it was spoiled by the author behaving like an ass during training. I'm getting a bit tired of this trend in expedition books.

I also found the continual comments about drinking 'Her Maj's Finest' really annoying. Can't you just say you had a cup of bloody tea???

2.5 star

[Ellisse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others interested in reading a first-person perspective on climbing Everest. I thought that Jules painted a realistic picture of his experience attempting to climb Everest and his experiences during what must have been a traumatic natural disaster. With that said, I did find some of his colloquialisms incredibly irritating throughout the book. For example the repeated references to "her Maj's finest" and his writing structure at times made it hard for me to follow what was happening and I had to go back and re-read sections to make sure I had understood properly.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest by author Jules Mountain is an absorbing reading experience!
After a life changing event, Jules Mountain has an opportunity to join a team and go for the summit of Everest in 2015. He starts his preparations for the extreme conditions for this quest. His brother is such a good sport and helps him as he conditions himself for the rigors of cold and hazardous climbing. For many adventurers this is a once in a lifetime endeavor and much expense and preparation must be considered.
All is going well and according to plans until the unexpected happens! An earthquake in Nepal causes a devastating avalanche which plows ice and snow with debris through the base camps.
The author survives the crush of the sow and debris which bury him inside his tent. When he emerges in the aftermath of the avalanche, he seeks to find others who may be trapped in the tents. What he finds is shattering.
This is not only the story of an adventurer, but it is the story of how this author assessed the need to offer first aid, comfort, and direction in a place that was utterly left to the mercy of the elements for two days. Once I started reading his account of the conditions and the human suffering while waiting on rescue helicopters for the injured and dying, I could not stop reading. In a place where there are very few human comforts even at the best of times, Jules Mountain and a few others take on a responsibility in dire circumstances to give aid to the injured.
Did he get to continue on his quest to look across a snow-covered world after the injured were taken to safety? You need to read the book to find the answer. How close, oh how close to achieving your greatest dream... !?

[julianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh gosh where on earth do I start?

I hated this, it's hands down one of the worst books I've ever read. So, why didn't I dnf it? Well, I wanted to see if the author could possibly redeem his egregiously bad behaviour but *spoiler* he didn't.

From not following rules, because "I'm better than everyone else ever duh!" to resenting those who were tragically killed and injured in the earthquake as they stopped his summit attempt, the author comes across as one of the worst examples of a mountaineer, maybe a human being, I've ever had the misfortune to read about.

And why the obsession with "her Maj's finest"? Why could he just say he had a cup of tea, that phrase really grated on me by the end of the book.

Glad I read it? No
Will I reread? Hell no
Will I recommend? Not even to my worst enemy

[Gloria Reeves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

Finished this story in one day. Too good to put down. What an incredible amazing man. What an amazing story but a sad tragedy. A must read.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I just say this man is a treat? Here he is on the world's most dangerous landscape and he's making tea and biscuits for others while also kicking butt and climbing mountains. The pure British-isms in this book also made me smile, the British are probably the best group of people to have when shit hits the fan, the author's sense of "Carry on ma'am" had me admiring this book immensely. I always enjoy hearing from someone who isn't working for the industry about mountaineering purely because he didn't add useless mechanical facts, it was a book purely for the layman who enjoys listening to stories about people who climb mountains.

That being said WOW. The story was laid out in a great way, kind of like a movie in parts, where it begins with the avalanche starting and then goes to the beginning of his journey. We see all the travel that's required just to get to Everest, the acclimatization needed, and what happens when a disaster strikes in a place that is virtually one of the most remote places on Earth. The earthquake destroyed not only their base but the surrounding villages and yet they were able to put their fears aside to take care of each other long enough to make it off the mountain. The thing that really annoyed me was the guides, you have a responsibility to take care of your climbers. I can see not wanting to stay on Everest after an avalanche, but they should've been helping people off the mountain and getting them home, not sitting around smoking weed and talking about going to Thailand. I can understand not wanting to climb, but to just sit there while your climbers are running around the mountain literally telling you "We can climb, we've found it's climbable and we want to" only to call them liars and tell them no is pretty stupid.

Jules has this sense of positiveness mixed with ambition that I can appreciate, you cannot climb Everest without having a sense of survival mixed with humanity. I would hope to be the person who can power through a moment like this without freaking out and getting myself killed, but it's moments like these that really show who can handle a crisis and who just loses their minds. The idea of making it to Everest, of doing all the hard work only to be stopped because of human laziness and unwillingness seems frustrating. And for those who argue "Well the guides are just doing their jobs, they shouldn't have to risk their lives going up a mountain that just had an avalanche and no Sherpas just because some rich people want to climb a mountain" I would argue that Jules and the others had solved all the problems for them. Sherpas were willing to go, the pathways were clear, the mountaineers were willing to go up, and Jules did prove he could climb when he climbed to the top of Everest the following year. The only reason he didn't make it up a year earlier was due to the lazy guides and their leader (who wasn't there until after shit had gone down). So kudos to Jules and everyone who wanted to keep going, who stepped up and helped when the crisis was killing people and could've killed more, and to those who risk their lives so white people can climb a rock (I'm talking about the Sherpas not the guides). I would recommend this book if you love a good Everest story.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn’t read anything before about the earthquake. I also don’t recall ever hearing anything about the impact of the earthquake on Everest. So naturally I was really intrigued. This book provided that insight and for that reason I found it compelling. However I have to say I did not take to Jules one little bit. From the start to the end he was so self absorbed and arrogant. Fancy dragging your friend out and having them endure poor conditions so that you could practice. And then while on the mountain, the whole arrogance of setting out in his own time so he could enjoy a cup of “her Maj’s finest”, only to then play games of catch-up, showing them all, cause he could still win. Whilst Jules’ efforts in the first aid of trekkers at BC post avalanche were brave and selfless, I have to say that’s where Jules’ selflessness ends. Fancy feeling hard done by because you are not being allowed to climb Everest after such a catastrophe. I doubt Jules has any insight into the likelihood that others may be able to make better professional judgements than him.
Lastly, I skimmed through a lot of the repetitive drivel.

[Aggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What struck my initially as a selfish, self -indulgent story of a divorced father to two young girls eventually won over my heart. I imagined him a lot older than he was in the photos at the end of the book- I really liked seeing his collection.

Learning about Nepalese and mountain climbing culture is new to me and very interesting. I always imagined i would climb in the Himalayas someday. Instead, I'm a scuba instructor and cave diver. We all get our adrenaline rushes in different ways. Because of my experiences cane diving, I can relate to his story well- although I have never had fallen comrades.

Inspiring for me and I will be introducing this area if the world to my students because of this book. It's a small world after all :)

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible story. Jules Mountain is a man with a good angel out for him. The story of his battle with cancer then mountain climbing is amazing. I read and enjoyed Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer years ago and thought it interesting, so I was happy to find and read this one as it also dealt with Mt. Everest. I am not one to ever want to climb a mountain myself, but do enjoy reading about others adventures in climbing. Sad, but informative eyewitness account of the Everest Earthquake that claimed 19 lives. Well written.
I received a Kindle Arc in exchange for a fair review from Netgalley.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick read by a survivor of the 2015 Nepal earthquake that triggered an avalanche the destroyed the Everest Base Camp and cost 22 people on the mountain their lives. The author concentrates on the aftermath of the avalanche, which was horrific for the survivors. I finished it in just a few hours and learned a lot about what happened on the mountain, which I was curious about.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather self-promoting tale with repetitive, irritating, not-funny phrases such as ‘Her Maj’s finest’. Otherwise, an interesting and sobering account of the tragedy of earthquake and avalanche and the extremes that humans willingly endure ‘because it’s there’.

[Mr D Bainbridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome Read

Excellent read of how a person can overcome adversity, tragedy and find the courage to return and face their ghosts

[Tfalcone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah mountain climbing!

[Elizabeth Mabrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

How one man's fatal case of the "You can't tell me what to do, Dad!!!"s makes him insufferable at the top of the world. To be fair, he's probably insufferable other places, too, but he does a good job hiding it in the beginning. Dare I say you are rooting for Jules as he beats cancer and celebrates by deciding to climb Everest. However, when he gets there, he regresses to the state of sullen 13-year-old, balking at doing anything the people's he's paid tens of thousands of dollars to do tell him because that's not "how [he] rolls." He ran two businesses, you know, as if that makes him more qualified than the people who run expeditions for a living to make life or death decisions about the climb, and he acts out like a teenager right up until the avalanche. To his credit, he seems to set himself aside to try to help people (which takes up much less of the book than you'd think), but the minute he can shunt them aside he decides he's going up Everest, by God, and no expert is going to tell him otherwise. "We should get a say!!" No, brat, you shouldn't, because apparently he's not smart enough to realize that just because he was able to make it almost to Base Camp 1 it does not mean that it is safe all the way to the summit. Money does not make you the smartest guy on the mountain. He mentions that the guide not only thinks it's dangerous but that he stands to lose 100k and potentially be bankrupted if they go, but hell, he's Jules Mountain, so everyone should bow to his whims no matter the costs. In the end, he has to accept that the mountain has been deemed unsafe and go home, where he spares a thought to the devastation in Katmandu before checking into a Western hotel with plenty of amenities and judging the aid workers who have come to actually help others for being in the same hotel he's in. Insufferable.

Also, old boy really loves certain phrases, and he will repeat them over and over again. Others have noted his inability to say "tea" instead of "her Maj's finest", but he also insists you know it's -15 C at night at every possible turn, describes getting dressed step by step multiple times, etc. It's kind of annoying.

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a book that goes into a lot of detail, really into the nitty-gritty of what it’s like to climb Everest, then this book could be for you. There is definitely nothing left to the imagination in this book and the author really goes into detail on how difficult it can be – as well as focusing heavily on the more mundane details that a lot of other books leave out, such as how you actually get to the Base Camp, what you have for meals, and so on.

I think this book was, on the whole, fairly well-written, and it was definitely engaging - there were some emotive bits of writing and I do think he had a talent for the more descriptive parts. But I do think the whole thing needed a really, really good edit. Some phrases are very repetitively used and sometimes he goes into possibly too much detail about some things. I found myself skim-reading a lot of the end of the book as I felt like it was wandering a bit.

I just found it hard to warm to the book in general; the author certainly did some incredibly brave and admirable things in the aftermath of the avalanche, but I don’t personally think he came across well in a lot of the book. I struggled at times to get past this.

As an account of the reality of climbing Everest, and an eyewitness account of the tragic events of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, then this is fairly solid, and is very insightful. But the writing needed a good edit and I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed reading it after a certain point.

Content Notes:

Warnings: References throughout to death, serious injuries, blood, gore, effects of high altitude-related sicknesses such as high altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema.

[Julie Brinkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat unnerving, but an essential read for anyone who's ever wanted to conquer Everest. Although the journey can go very smoothly every mountaineer needs to understand the grave risks they're taking and the freak events or even minor errors compounded that can scupper the best-laid plans.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable book, interesting to learn more about Everest and the devastation of the 2015 earthquake