Judgement Days in a mountaineering life

Tom Richardson is a mountaineer, long established member of the Alpine Club,
Leader for KE Adventure and the Gear Editor for Climb magazine. This book,
Judgement Days is his story of climbing in the Himalaya and Karakoram over
more than thirty years. His aim in writing it is to reflect on decisions and
judgements he has made in the mountains and to try to draw some conclusions
about them and their sometimes life and death outcomes. Good outcomes can be
achieved despite bad decisions and sometimes vice versa. He attempts to
explore where the narrow line between adventure and misadventure lies and what
place luck has in events.

Clearly the ability to make correct judgements is not simply the result of
cumulative experience; otherwise it might follow that the most experienced
mountaineers would not die in the mountains. In reality judgement is impacted
by many things including personality, other people, perceived expectations and
the value put on the hoped-for outcomes.