{"id":2033,"date":"2015-12-20T08:10:10","date_gmt":"2015-12-20T15:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2015-12-20T21:23:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T04:23:02","slug":"msu-alumnus-book-tells-tragic-tale-of-mt-everest-climb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/golf\/lifestyle\/2033\/msu-alumnus-book-tells-tragic-tale-of-mt-everest-climb","title":{"rendered":"MSU alumnus\u2019 book tells tragic tale of Mt. Everest climb"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Michigan author’s amazing adventure story took him sky high, where I was reading his book in comfort<\/p><\/div>\n

It was 50-below-zero Fahrenheit in the sunshine when I reached 29,000-feet of elevation and could see for miles. I wasn\u2019t too uncomfortable, though, since I was in a partially reclined window-seat of a Delta flight. Lou Kasischke, though, had experienced those six-mile high conditions without a climate-controlled, cabin-pressurized airliner to protect him. During the flight I was reading his new book, \u201cAfter the Wind\u2026Tragedy on Everest; One Survivor\u2019s Story.\u201d<\/u> It sat on my tray table next to some pretzels and a Bloody Mary. Kasischke, a Michigan State University alum who lives in Northern Michigan, survived, along with a few others, the fateful 1996 summiting of the world\u2019s tallest mountain that resulted in the deaths of 12 of his fellow climbers.<\/p>\n

As I read, in my cushy convenience, about the punishing conditions of climbing that high, the irony struck me. I could only imagine what Kasischke, who was trapped up there freezing for nearly three days without food or water (and temporarily robbed of his sight), would have given for a single melted ice cube from my cocktail. I held up his book and snapped a photo of it next to the plane\u2019s altitude display screen and emailed it to Kasischke. He wrote back: \u201cLook out the window at the clouds below and think about how smart you are to be inside and not outside. That temperature was about the same, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kasischke\u2019s wife Sandy would heartily agree with him. Both her trepidation and her devotion to him are described \u2013 and even documented \u2013 in his very honest book, because in addition to Everest, Kasischke climbed the highest mountains on each of the seven continents while simultaneously achieving a successful business career.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the Wind\u201d reveals that while the final 12-hour push the summit gets all the attention, the entire journey up Everest takes a minimum of six weeks of trekking and acclimatizing at various elevations in third-world conditions and the same clothes beginning at 4,500-feet in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, after flying from Detroit to Tokyo and connecting through Bangkok. Only the very final portion of summiting Everest is technically even on Everest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live on a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan where high winds frequently hammer the shoreline, so I set up a tent there to train in the dark and melt snow for water,\u201d writes Kasischke. He also had a close call with a mother bear and her cubs while training all night climbing the nearby Boyne Highlands ski area in the dark. The summit of Boyne Highlands, via chairlift, is 1,290 feet; Everest, via superhuman endurance: 29,028 feet.<\/p>\n

Michael Patrick Shiels may be contacted at\u00a0<\/em>InviteYourself@aol.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or via TravelTattler.com\u00a0His talk show can be heard weekday mornings in\u00a0Lansing\u00a0on 92.1 FM.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 50-below-zero Fahrenheit in the sunshine when I reached 29,000-feet of elevation and could see for miles. I wasn\u2019t… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3665,18],"tags":[998773,972589,998775,2834,3872,151],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-library","category-lifestyle","tag-novels","tag-msu","tag-mount-everest","tag-michigan","tag-michigan-state","tag-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2015\/12\/After-the-Wind.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2035,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}