'Angeles Four' is a pretty good read because the author David Nott doesn't spare us any of the gruesome details of the rather major mishaps that this team of four very lucky guys experienced on their way to the summit of Angels Falls.

The Angels four team is composed of a South American climber named 'Timo' a North American climber named 'Vogel', a never been on a climb before neophyte that I will call 'The Doc', and lastly the chain smoking, 45 year old out of shape ex climber named David Nott. Timo and the Vogel seem to be reasonably competent climbers that are called upon to literally haul The Doc and David up the side of the cliff at times.

Two of the major mishaps on this climb are when 'The Doc' drops half of their climbing gear, the stove, and most of their food into the jungle 1000 feet below. Then of course one third of the way into the climb the author David Nott realizes that his physical condition is so poor that he can no longer reliably grip the rock.

I admire the writer for his honesty and candid assessment of his own frailties and for his candid description of a true 'epic' that seems to be full of miscalculation and ineptitude.

The one thing that shines through in this book is that this is the description of a real adventure. The tale is very different from the professionally guided yuppie adventures that can be had by anyone for a price in this era of cheap thrills. With no assurance of success these four individuals had a collective vision and armed only with their desire and limited resources succeeded in climbing three thousand feet of wet, slime covered and nearly vertical sand stone in the south American Jungle.

I recommend this book to any climber or general reader that is sick of reading stories about well to do but none the less chicken hearted yuppies that buy their mountaineering adventures from professional guides.