The Last River The Tragic Race for ShangriLa (Audible Audio Edition) Todd Balf Dennis Boutsikaris Random House Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Last River The Tragic Race for ShangriLa (Audible Audio Edition) Todd Balf Dennis Boutsikaris Random House Audio Books
The Last River The Tragic Race for Shangri-La is a breathtaking account of the ill-fated October 1998 expedition of an American whitewater kayaking team who traveled deep into the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet to run the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the "Everest of rivers". For Wick Walker and Tom McEwan, extreme whitewater pioneers, best friends, and trip leaders, the Tsangpo adventure was the culmination of a 25-year quest for glory. Yet the team's magnificent dreams crumbled when their ace paddler was swept over a thunderous eight-foot waterfall, never to be seen again.
Here is a fascinating exploration of both the seething big water and perilous terrain of the legendary Shangri-la, and the men who dared challenge the furious rapids that raced through this 140-mile-long canyon. The Last River invites us to view the Himalayas from a totally new perspective - on a historic river so remote that only the most hardy and romantic souls attempt to unlock its mysteries.
The Last River The Tragic Race for ShangriLa (Audible Audio Edition) Todd Balf Dennis Boutsikaris Random House Audio Books
There are troubling questions in The Last River that are never fully dealt with: Did our intrepid kayakers blunder into a dangerous situation because they were racing others to be the first to explore and conquer a new territory? Were they pressured by big money sponsors to move forward with an ill-timed expedition?Well, there's been another race, too, a rush among big-money publishers to be the first to capitalize on the Tsangpo saga. This race is to blame for Todd Balf's faltering missteps. In a book obstensibly about kayaking the last great untamed river, there's almost no kayaking. Some guys plan a trip, things go wrong, they go home, and people argue about it in Internet newsgroups.
There's no bone-pounding thrill of whitewater; the river is just cubic feet per second. The landscape isn't spiritual or ugly or haunted or massive; it's just a curvy line on a globe. And the kayakers aren't driven or psychotic or lonely or deluded; they're just pins on a map. And the pins are all the same color.
Balf wasn't there, and the people who were haven't shared much with him, and it shows. Don't buy this book; don't read this book.
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The Last River The Tragic Race for ShangriLa (Audible Audio Edition) Todd Balf Dennis Boutsikaris Random House Audio Books Reviews
"Extreme", "lantern jawed", "boulders the size of buildings". Mix these three cliches, stir in an almost incomprehensible mix of first names and some [partial] biographies and you have the essence of Todd Balf's The Last River - The Tragic Race of Shangri-La. Ostensibly the tale of a river exploration by kayak gone awry it's focus is continuously blurred by disorganized snippets of arcana and personal information about the participants and (too many) peripheral players in this tale of a grand scheme gone bad. The real tragedy of this story seems to be the fact that Balf is the self- appointed chronicler of it. Balf continuously mires the reader in minutiae that is scattered seemingly hodge-podge throughout the story. The timeline of the book wavers between serpentine and non-existent and further clouds an already confusing tale. The story itself, the story of a group of experienced paddlers seeking the ultimate challenge on one of the mightiest rivers in the far east, has unlimited potential to be engaging. Instead, Balf scrawls such a circuitous, hackneyed missive, that the weakly developed principal characters rush down a river of unpredictable, choppy and confusing prose long before they reach the river that shares those qualities. In the Author's Note Balf writes of his struggle to give shape to an original article about the topic of his book. The reader is predisposed to think that Balf underwent the same struggle with the book..and lost. Balf seems overwhelmed by the topic at hand too much information, too much forced drama and too many characters have resulted in an unruly pastiche of a story. In the end it is the story that suffers the clarity of the participant's vision has been lost, the essence of the experience that beckoned them left unexplored. For [the money] CAN there are more entrancing journeys for the reader to take.
Like others, I wondered at the number of people who slammed this book, which I found to be gripping, enjoyable, and in places hard to read for all the right reasons. The answer is simple this book is not written for the armchair adventurer, for someone who will watch the Discovery Channel but never actually go to any of those places they'll see on the screen. It tells some hard truths, and I can easily understand why those who bought the book hoping to be entertained by someone else's tragedy would be greatly disappointed. If, however, you've ever been closer to real adventure than picturing yourself in an SUV ad, I have a feeling this book will work for you.
It is not a fun book. No book with a tragedy at its center should be fun or light reading, really. But it is fascinating, compelling, a page-turner. It is highly educational, particularly for those who are inclined to view adventure athletes as brain-dead adrenaline junkies. By taking the reader through the expedition members' hard work and preparation, the hassles and hardships they endured, the book forces us to see them as being in many ways the antithesis of the stereotype they are patient, painstaking, and thorough.
The bottom line is that this book isn't the literary equivalent of America's Most Death-Defying Videos. It's not written to titillate the folks back home. It seeks to tell the truth about a pursuit that many people find simply incomprehensible. If read with an open mind and without an expectation of being thrilled by death-defying feats, I think it will give the reader that understanding.
The book The Last River I have odered came fast and in excellent condition. I was very satisfied.
Even with our satellite photos, gps and other technical advances, nature still has the last word. I hope this river is never tamed!
I enjoyed it completely.
i realy enjoyed this book. i am a whitewater kayaker myself, and i was very interested in the planning and dynamics of the expedition. it seemed like real life to me. the only thing i wish is that there were some photos or maps...
Very well written with interesting in depth background of the region and the paddlers. The last 50 pages or so were mostly about the reaction of the pading community to the tragic death of one of the team. I lost I interest in that part
There are troubling questions in The Last River that are never fully dealt with Did our intrepid kayakers blunder into a dangerous situation because they were racing others to be the first to explore and conquer a new territory? Were they pressured by big money sponsors to move forward with an ill-timed expedition?
Well, there's been another race, too, a rush among big-money publishers to be the first to capitalize on the Tsangpo saga. This race is to blame for Todd Balf's faltering missteps. In a book obstensibly about kayaking the last great untamed river, there's almost no kayaking. Some guys plan a trip, things go wrong, they go home, and people argue about it in Internet newsgroups.
There's no bone-pounding thrill of whitewater; the river is just cubic feet per second. The landscape isn't spiritual or ugly or haunted or massive; it's just a curvy line on a globe. And the kayakers aren't driven or psychotic or lonely or deluded; they're just pins on a map. And the pins are all the same color.
Balf wasn't there, and the people who were haven't shared much with him, and it shows. Don't buy this book; don't read this book.
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