Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Everest Base Camp: Close Call is a nonfiction adventure travel memoir written by Catina Noble. Noble had been an adventurer for years already and had recently soloed El Camino in Spain, but there was one trek she had always dreamed of pursuing, even though she never believed she’d have the opportunity -- Everest. And while she thought it was highly unlikely, Noble still had a trip to Everest Base Camp on her bucket list. Then, in an email from the adventure travel company she had traveled with in the past, she saw her opportunity. They were offering a significant discount on a trip to Everest Base Camp. She called David, her partner, and made him promise to put down a deposit for her as she was at work. He did, and a year later, she was on her way to Nepal.

Everest Base Camp is not the first Everest memoir I’ve read, nor it will be the last. I’ve also long been fascinated by that mountain range and love reading about the treks others have made in the Himalayas. Noble’s story goes a bit further than many of those I’ve read before. She gets the reader involved in the actual dynamics of preparing for her trek, and her day-to-day account of expenses, emotions, and experiences makes her memoir memorable indeed. Everest Base Camp is well-written and a marvelous read for anyone considering a trek to the Base Camp as well as those of us who are armchair explorers and Everest fans. I loved following along as she traveled from Canada to London to Nepal, and reading her journal entries as she sets out and follows her guide toward Base Camp is captivating. The photographs Catina Noble includes make the reading experience even more profound and involving. And while the author has decided, and wisely I might add, not to seek in future those altitudes which could easily have killed her, I’m looking forward to reading of her other adventures both past and still to come. Everest Base Camp: Close Call is most highly recommended.