Rating: 
Summary: A clumsy tribute by the author to herself - just a bad book
Review: I really wanted to like this book. Most climbing accounts are written by superstars of the sport. Ms. Kocour's book held promise of an honest account of an amateur "weekend warrior". The struggle of a group of amateur climbers thrown together to climb Denali has all the elements of a superb human drama. Unfortunately, the depiction of the human spirit is perhaps the Mt. Everest of writing, and Ms. Kocour is not an Everest climber - in either the mountaineering or the literary sense. Her character development is one-dimensional at best. The guides are all-wise guardian angels whose cosmic connection to the mountain is boringly infallible. Her fellow clients are either hapless bumblers or selfish dolts who would run off in panic were it not for the heroic presence of the author. Ms. Kocour's dialogue is downright silly. She apparently equates crudity with authenticity, which perhaps accounts for her preoccupation with the many ways to defecate and urinate on the mountain. Upon her deliverance off the mountain, she gushes to her guide, "You did a great job of leading - a tribute to your family's storied mountaineering and guiding history". Do you think she really said that? Do you talk that way? Ms. Kocour compounds the problem by trying to portray her trip (and her role in it) as an astonishing mountaineering feat, which it was not. Sure, there was a bad storm, but while Ms. Kocour was spending several chapters admiring her own ability to sit in the tent waiting for her guides to cook her dinner, Park Service rangers and mountain rescue personnel were out in the teeth of the storm, working to help climbers. Their presence is barely acknowledged. Climbing Denali on a guided trip is a tremendous physical and mental challenge, and Ms. Kocour is right to be proud of it. However, her trip should not be confused with a right of passage to "serious" mountaineering. Any reasonably fit individual with three weeks and a few thousand dollars can sign on with any one of several excellent guide services to be led up the West Buttress of Denali. Hundreds of people do it every year. Ms. Kocour's very accomplished guides told the clients when to get up, what to carry, what direction to go and where to camp. The customers, including Ms. Kocour, followed their guide every day, tied in line to a rope. To assert, as Kocour does, that being led up the West Buttress of Denali along with two or three hundred other people qualifies her to climb Everest is the sort of hubris that has contributed to so many deaths on that mountain. All in all, this is just a bad book. It could have been the story of an individual's triumph over her own limits. Instead, it was a tiresome tribute by the author to herself. Were it not for the mass market success of Jon Krakauer's Everest account, this book would have been rightly relegated to the bargain bin. I won't even start on the editing
Rating:
Summary: "Facing The Extreme" A Study in Self Aggrandizement
Review: I received a copy of this book as a gift and out of courtesy I read it despite misgivings spawned by the liner notes. In a poorly writen, poorly edited, poorly researched tribute to herself the author tries to describe the horrific ordeal she and her team mates (mostly her teammates, on whom she was merciless in her criticisms) endured on Denali. They were "trapped" at the 14,200' camp on Denali in a severe storm that claimed 11 lives in May of 1992. The 14,200' camp is as large as any k-Mart parking lot and just as flat. The idea of "clinging" to the mountain from this camp is ridciulous. The camp had a ranger hut, staffed by park service rangers and volunteers as well as a medical station. I am sure that their stay there was uncomfortable,but far from life threatening. The author attempts to exaggerate her own situation at the expense of those who were truly in danger on the mountain and those who died there. Her attraction to a body bag containing the remains of a man who died at the 14200' camp (of natural causes) was ghoulish and nauseating. She put me in mind of the rear echelon soldier who presents second hand stories of the horrors of war as his own. The author claims that on "the mountain" the other climbers called her "The Woman". I would venture to guess that her team mates called her a lot of other things as well. In summary, the Author attempted to portray a professionally guided climb on the easiest, busiest route on Mt. McKinley as something much more than it was and did so at the expense of others. *Note to the editor* Orizabo is not the second highest peak in North America. Mt. Logan is much higher and far more difficult. Talkeetna is about 70 miles from Denali, not 250 as stated over and over in the book
Rating: 
Summary: I'm left feeling sour...
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the book! It was quick paced and gripping. The problem was when I put it down... I felt sour -- like I'd been cooped up on a mountain with a bunch of bumbling idiots for three weeks... That was what stuck with me... Could that have been the whole point of the book??? To convey that??? Wasn't there something more important to convey? Like Kocour's experience with the mountain, or more importantly, with herself? I wonder if she feels sour, still...
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat useful
Review: I've been immersed in books of this genre in preparation for a class I'm planning to teach, and I have to say that this was one of the most annoying. Yes, the description of the storm and the deaths of other climbers is harrowing, but gosh. Ruth Anne is so impressed with herself that it's hard to get past her self-descriptions and appreciate the narrative. The others on her team (with the exception of her tentmate and the guides) are all unworthy of being there. The other teams on the mountain are all unworthy of being there. Everyone is either foolish, obnoxious, a danger to others, or just plain weak. But not Ruth Anne. She is the best climber, the best, most supportive tentmate, the most patient teammate. At the end, she quotes one of the guides as saying, "I'd climb with you anywhere." Maybe he would, but such self-serving comments are a distraction. As a comparison, read Roskelley's Nanda Devi. Equally harrowing, but Roskelley has no qualms about portraying himself as arrogant and impatient, and one can see how his presence on a team can be destructive. I wish Ruth Anne had been a bit more scrutinizing of herself. Or maybe she really is a mountaineering saint.
Rating:
Summary: SO YOU SAY YOU WANT TO CLIMB DENALI?
Review: If you are seriously considering climbing Denali,or are dying for a harrowing adventure to read about, then this book is a good read. But if the answer to the above question(s) is no, think about skipping it. The author is a literary lightweight, leaving one to wonder just what she needed the co-author for in the first place; the writing still is weak. Truly bothersome is the mostly feeble attempts at humor in the conversations between herself and her climbing partners, especially "Craig". In the early going, her goody-goody humor is dull; but if you can stick it out and get to the section where the massive storm engulfs their camp, the book does indeed become engrossing. I am not certain that the author had , as of this climb anyway, yet attained the claim of "world-class" mountaineer. Clearly she seems to be a solid climber with good instincts and a good understanding of preparation. But from her writing in this book I am convinced she is a ..., and would, like other reviewers of this book, love to read an account of this climb from any of her companions' perspectives. I have climbed and camped with people that didn't belong on the mountain and had personalities that can repel even the most sympathetic of individuals; I wouldn't dream of trashing them in a book the way this author did. Sure she changed the names of all but the two leaders, but .... The paperback edition has decent b&w photographs, but lacks a map. It is too bad the author chose not to include the real names of her fellow climbers and especially unfortunate not to see a team photograph or photos of the other climbers. ....
Rating: 
Summary: Not easy to climb a mountain; not easy to write a book
Review: Like another reviewer of Facing the Extreme, I had just read Krakauer's Into Thin Air and had to read more on mountain climbing. I choose Facing because of the title and because it was about one of "The Seven Summits". Kocour portrays herself as an accomplished mountianeer, but imho her writing is far from accomplished. I wished the book had included a good map so I could follow the progress of the group up the mounain. I also needed a Dramatis Personae. (I finally wrote-up my own.) I was annoyed as Ms. Kocour's words revealed her over-idealization of the guides and her general contempt for the other climbers (except for her tent-mate). (It would be nice to read a book about the climb written by one of the others; I wonder how they saw her.) Her writing imho is juvenile and, especially disconcerting, are the numerous (unintended, I assume) puns. Still, I'm glad her friends et al encouraged her to write the book and overall I'm glad I read it. I know more about climbing than I did and more about Denali aka Mt. McKinley. Before her next book, and I hope she writes again about her climbs, I hope she will enroll in a good basic writing class; one in which she will Face an Extreme(ly) rigorous teacher!
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome!
Review: No other book captures the gripping emotion of climbing, from the depths to the heights, like this one does. Best of the bunch (and I've read many of them.) Definitely a winner, and I really don't feel that she was being arrogant. But those who think she was...well, they need to get off their exalted pinnacles and reread her book.
Rating:
Summary: This book was OK.
Review: Not a classic like Ino Thin Air, but pretty good to kill a few hours
Rating:
Summary: A can't put it down book-- taut, inspiring, frightening
Review: One of the ten best adventure / mountaineering books I have ever read. Hodgson takes Kocour's adventure and guides the reader on a compelling, frightening, frequently shocking, sometimes inspiring climb up one of the world's most difficult climbs. Brilliant! I will be very surprised if this book does not become a best seller.
Rating:
Summary: More fiction than fact.
Review: One unfortunate outgrowth of the success of excellent climber/writers such as Jon Krakauer, Greg Child and Bill Sherwonit is the publication of books such as Facing the Extreme, which seek to capitalize on the sudden interest in human suffering in the mountains. Facing the Extreme, by Ruth Anne Kocour and Michael Hodgson is filled with many seemingly small factual errors, which in the end add up, and made me question Ms. Kocour's journalistic credibility (though she is not a journalist by trade, it is still her responsiblity as an author to get it right). Though not a factual error, in the Author's Note, Ms. Kocour tells us that she has changed the names of her fellow climbers (with the exception of the guides) as she cannot "...speak for them or tell their story". What she dosen't come right out and tell you is that her portrayal of her fellow climbers is focused almost entirely on both their personal and mountaineering shortfalls. If we are to believe Ms. Kocour, she was the toughest, mentally and physically, the most skilled and the person with the fewest personality shortcomings. After elevating herself, she clearly had no choice but to change the names of her fellow climbers. My biggest problem with Facing the Extreme comes with the obvious lack of fact checking. Ms. Kocour states that Talkeetna is 70 miles from Anchorage, when it is approximately 114 miles. She also tells us that Denali is 250 miles from Talkeetna and the single engine Cessna made the flight to Denali Base Camp in 40 minutes, an obvious impossiblity. Denali is actually only 60 miles by road from Talkeetna. In addition, there are serious climbing factual errors as well, all the more shocking considering Ms. Kocour's oft repeated (in the text anyway) expertise. Ms. Kocour claims that while camped at high camp at 17,200 feet the climbers had now entered the "death zone". Actually, the "death zone" as it is known to climbers, begins at approximately 26,000 feet, nearly 9,000 feet higher than high camp on Denali. In fact, Base Camp on Mount Everest, where climbers spend close to 2 months at a time is at approximately 17,700 feet, some 500 feet higher that high camp on Denali. Ms. Kocour also states that she "...had been to 23,000 feet on Aconcagua", difficult to do since Aconcagua is 22,841 feet high, a seemingly small error, but an important distiction to climbers. If you want to spend money reading books by female climbers/explorers I suggest The Climb of my Life by Laura Evans, or Artic Daughter by Jean Aspen.
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