The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again

“In this deft and honest memoir, Jim Davidson exorcises the demons of a tragedy. He turns personal disappointment into humanitarian witness after the disastrous Everest season of 2015, when an earthquake shut down climbing and took a far more horrendous toll on a whole nation. Returning two years later and at last reaching the summit, Davidson sagely weighs the rewards of individual achievement against moral questions that transcend mountaineering.”
―David Roberts, author of The Mountain of My Fear and Limits of the Known

“Among all outdoor pursuits, climbing mountains offers the purest, most direct challenge. Jim Davidson weaves his experiences with avalanches, crevasse falls, earthquakes, altitude, frostbite, and other Himalayan hazards into an exciting, sometimes somber introspective narrative, describing not just how he survives climbing the highest mountains in the world, but more importantly, why he must go again and again.”
―Roman Dial, author of The Adventurer’s Son

“I’ve climbed with Jim for almost two decades, and in The Next Everest he skillfully binds together his wit, geology training, quirky analytics, and enormous sensitivity into a delightful style. He weaves a tapestry of life lessons and experiences that take the reader along with him to Everest.”
―Alan Arnette, Everest and K2 summiteer and contributor to Outside, Rock & Ice, and National Geographic

“Davidson puts the reader on the mountain, and in a position to learn. Out of tragedy emerges the human will to survive and help others. A tour de force of resilience.”
―Chris Tomer, coauthor of Sleeping on the Summits, mountaineer, and Emmy Award–winning meteorologist

“[Davidson] follows in the literary trail blazed by Krakauer. He provides a gripping account of a series of avalanches on Everest on April 25, 2015, which followed a powerful earthquake in Nepal.”
―The New Yorker

“[The Next Everest] nicely bookends Into Thin Air and the author’s own Ledge as considerations of adventures that have only three outcomes: summiting, turning back, or dying. Essential for alpinists, though armchair travelers will be bound up in Davidson’s thrill-a-minute narrative, too.”
―Kirkus

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