Three Cups of Tea disputed

1 According to Three Cups of Tea (pages 10 and 44), Mortenson
was an accomplished mountaineer who, before attempting
K2, had made “half a dozen successful Himalayan ascents,”
including climbs of 24,688-foot Annapurna IV and 23,389-
foot Baruntse, both of which are in Nepal. But there is no
record in the American Alpine Journal (which meticulously
documents all ascents of Annapurna IV, Baruntse, and other
major Himalayan peaks) of Mortenson reaching the summit
of, or even attempting, any Himalayan mountain prior to
1993. Scott Darsney, Greg’s climbing partner on K2, confirms
that Mortenson had never been to the Himalaya or Karakoram
before going to K2.

David Oliver Relin is a Portland-based writer and the author of the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time

Three Cups of Tea wasn't a co-written book, but you share a byline with the main character, Greg Mortenson. How did that come about?

That’s been the only negative thing about this whole adventure for me. After I turned in the manuscript, ]I received a galley back from the publisher with two names on it. It was published that way over my objections.

According to Three Cups of Tea (pages 10 and 44), Mortenson was an accomplished mountaineer who, before attempting K2, had made “half a dozen successful Himalayan ascents,” including climbs of 24,688-foot Annapurna IV and 23,389-foot Baruntse, both of which are in Nepal.

Also, one of the reasons I decided to climb a mountain to honor my sister Christa is that the very same hour that my sister died, I actually was climbing in Mount Sill which is in the east Sierra Mountains in California, and I fell about 800 feet. And the exact same hour that my sister died from epilepsy, I fell about 800 feet down a mountain. And earlier in the day, I had seen a ruby-throated hummingbird up near the top of the mountain, and ruby hummingbirds don't fly at 14,000 feet. ~GM

He and another climber, Scott Darsney, walked off the mountain, into rural Pakistan, devastated.
"I was pretty exhausted, emaciated and emotionally kind of shot," he said from his office in Bozeman, Mont., this week.
The climbers eventually stumbled into a Pakistani village, Korphe, where two Balti porters took them in and patiently nursed them back to health with goat's milk, yak butter and unleavened bread. "I was overwhelmed with their hospitality," he recalls. "It was to the point of embarrassment."
Mortenson asked his hosts if the village had a school. They led him to an orchard where 84 children squatted in the dirt, doing their lessons by sharing six slate boards. Their teacher, an expensive luxury at $1 a day, was shared with another village and was nowhere to be seen this day.
Mortenson never let the image or those children's faces (whose look of determination reminded him of his sister) leave his thoughts. He vowed to return to this country and raise money to build them a school, which he figured would cost $12,800.

We spent a night at the snout of the Biafo Glacier.
 
The next morning I was so weak that I pretty much ditched everything I had. We started walking at around 10 or 11, I got left behind as usual, and I was alone when I hit a fork in the road. When you’re coming out from there, there’s a fork in the trail about two hours before Askole, a village where expeditions park their jeeps when they hit the trailhead. If you go north, to the left—which I did—it goes to Korphe. The main trail goes right, or to the south, heading to Askole. I made a wrong turn there. So I ended up in Korphe. I was met there by Hajj Ali, the village chief.
I got to Korphe, I would say, early afternoon. And this is my best memory: I wandered into the village. There were graves before the village, some kids met me, and we went up to the house of Hajj Ali. I remember collapsing by the inner hearth of his house. I thought I was in Askole, but they said, No, you’re in Korphe.
 
I was there a few hours, probably two or three hours, had tea, and I said, I gotta go to Askole. They took me to a cable-pulley bridge over the Braldu River. And I can’t remember now, but Mouzafer either came over to me or I went over to him, but that’s where we met. Later, we rejoined Scott and the others and we drove to Skardu.

Though he's done good, to me, his credibility is shot.