Dead Mountain

In 1959, a group of experienced young hikers, working to earn the most prestigious hiking credential in the Soviet Union at the time, headed deep into the Ural mountains of Siberia in February. Only one would return alive. Fifty years later, the author of Dead Mountain, Donnie Eichar, found himself so obsessed with the conspiracies and details of the tragedy that he actually traveled to Russia on multiple occasions to immerse himself in the documents and information obtained by a Russian group dedicated, and also obsessed, to uncovering the truth behind the case. Eichar's book, dubbed literary nonfiction, intertwines the narratives of three related stories over the course of the work. He recounts the story of the hikers themselves based on their journals, photographs, and his interview with the lone survivor. Alongside the main narrative of the hikers, he tells his own first person account of traveling to Russia to learn about the case and travel to the location where they all perished, and he also tells the story of the search and rescue parties and the subsequent investigation into the hikers' deaths (Eichar).

I finished reading Dead Mountain, the second book that my friends and I selected for our book club, in about a week. The photographs and intertwining narratives that Eichar uses and develops throughout the course of this book make this an incredibly fast read. Mysterious deaths, epic hiking adventures, Russian cultural experiences, old photographs, shady soviet business, and intriguing storytelling: what's not to like?