Book excerpt: "This is a truly sad and chilling book. Grief and pathos burst from its covers. It is an account of the 1974 American Pamirs/USSR Expedition. So much death and fear and so concentrated in place and time has never been recorded in climbing history. Over a period of a few weeks, earthquakes set off avalanches that killed one American, nine of the finest women climbers in Russia and five Estonian mountaineers--truly a horror show that numbs the mind where it does not bring one close to tears; the bummer to end all bummers. Perhaps it comes to us so tardy because of the anguish of its creation, which probably required a dogged, not too 'sensitive' type like Bob Craig to write." --