I am once again asking: Have these people heard of therapy?

This was a long book that could have been 100 pages tops if not for it also functioning as the author's biography/therapeutic diary. If you wanna know the big secret this book claims to uncover without reading 450+ pages of extraneous material here it is:

According to about half the people who replied to Radcliffe's inquiries Hall, Fischer, the Danish and the Imax teams had access to weather forecasts during their 1996 Everest expeditions. The leaders, base camp managers, and some guides from these specific teams knew about and shared info on their various weather forecast information (and supposedly did not share this info with all teams present, including the author's, lead by Todd). The forecast info the author was able to recover allegedly showed that a storm (or at least high winds) were building from May 8th -11th, culminating with the highest hurricane-force winds happening on the 11th. The main proof the author collects on this is from emails from one of the Danish team members and a phone call from the man who was supplying the forecasts to the Imax team.

Hall, on behalf of his and Fischer's teams, had purportedly asked Todd's team to wait until the 11th for their summit bid to clear the way for the other two teams. This gives the author some Big Feelings since supposedly Hall and others knew the forecast predicted foul weather on the 11th that would prevent a summit bid, or cause potentially deadly complications during one. It's worth noting that Beidleman of Fischer's team and Breashears of the Imax team responded to questions about the weather reports either in emails to Radcliffe or interviews saying that weather reports for the area at that time were not very accurate. The meteorologists that the author spoke to claim otherwise, however.

In 1996 weather forecasts were not readily available for Everest, these only became standard in 1997. So the teams with forecasts had to prearrange having forecasts for this area. The author's main questions are: Why were these forecasts not shared with all teams? Why did Hall ask Todd's team to wait until the 11th if he knew that was the worst of the forecasted weather would hit? Why did most of the press and literature including the many books and articles written in the aftermath not mention these weather reports? Unfortunately since many of the key people who supposedly had this info are either dead or chose not to reply to the author's (rather pointed, leading, and sometimes even antagonistic) inquires he can only really speculate on the answers.

If you're a bit obsessed with reading about the '96 Everest disaster this book does offer up some new info, and the first half is fairly interesting as it covers the author's 1995 and 1996 Everest expeditions and adds some perspective from a person not on one of the teams who were stuck on the mountain. However a lot of it is extra, unnecessary fluff and biographical info not at all related to the '96 Everest disaster, and this author is not a professional investigator by any means and I think a lot of what he uncovers and postulates should be taken with a grain of salt.