Eventually he discovered mountain climbing, a sport that fit the goal-oriented young doctor perfectly. Refusing to give up on her marriage, Peach directed her loving energies toward her two children.īeck, still plagued by almost crippling depression, found he could keep his by now familiar enemy at bay with athletic activity - and lots of it. Beck's inability to sustain emotional intimacy disappointed Peach. He finished college, then medical school, and married Margaret 'Peach' Olson on his way to becoming a talented pathologist. He passed out of that dark cloud after a few months. In his first year in college, he dealt with his first round fighting the 'black dog' of a recurring depression, even entertaining thoughts of suicide. In his highly focused family, palpable achievement was ever the goal. The middle of three sons in a military family, Seaborn Beck Weathers was a born risk-taker. Weathers' Left for Dead focuses not so much on the doomed expedition itself as how he came to be there and how his life's focus has changed as a result of his near death in a raging mountain blizzard. While Krakauer joined the Everest expedition as a journalist, Beck Weathers set out to climb the mountain that May because, as they say, it was there. Jon Krakauer's cautionary Into Thin Air, published less than a year after the event, chronicled the tragedy in a popularly accessibly way and spent months on both the hardcover and paperback New York Times bestseller lists.

Everest in particular, has maintained a steady high level since the May 1996 disaster that claimed the lives of more than a half dozen climbers. Layman's interest in mountain climbing in general, and Mt.

Beck weathers into thin air