I am an absolute sucker for mountain climbing books. Although the highest peak I have ever stood on was me being dropped off by a ski lift, the mountain exploration genre of books immediately pulls me in. This began after picking up a copy of Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and since then I have tried to read at least one mountaineering book a year. For 2024, that book was Buried in the Sky. While I have now completed a few publications discussing Mt. Everest expeditions, Padoan and Zuckerman’s book provided an extremely intense story about Everest’s smaller brother—K2. While K2 may be a shorter peak than Everest, for those who are unaware, at a certain nexus in history there were more people who had floated in space than who had stood atop the peak of K2. The percentages in yearly casualties divided by those attempting to summit make K2 one of the deadliest mountains in the world. With this foreknowledge, I knew this book was going to be a hell of a ride—it did not disappoint.

The authors of Buried in the Sky do an excellent job at providing K2’s history and even a better job of telling the story from a unique standpoint: the sherpas. There is no doubt that the sport of mountaineering is dominated by rich westerners, and therefore most books about expeditions reflect that reality. That is where Buried in the Sky differentiates itself from the pack: the chapters are filled with a broad scope of sherpa’s backgrounds, along with their thoughts on weighing the balance between adventure and profits against the perilous requirements that their occupation demands.

At first the story was complex to follow because of the sheer number of characters involved. But as the summit bid begins, I was unable to stop reading—the plot’s insanity could not be written better by Hollywood executives. The intensity of this book slowly grips until it burns. I will go out on a limb here and say that Buried in the Sky is my favorite mountaineering book—sorry Krakauer, I still enjoyed your writings about Missoula and the Latter-Day Saints. I hope that because of the success of this book, its publication has positively affected Sherpas and their communities.