I'm really with you on hating his writing style. He's got a lot of climber's pretension he seems to buy into. Reading his description of each person on the mountain I felt vaguely guilty, like I was listening to a shameless gossip talk trash about everyone else. I understand each person processes trauma differently, I'm not passing judgement on him as a person. I just don't think I'll be reading any of his other books any time soon.
If you're looking for polar opposites, I recommend Mark Bowden or Sebastian Junger. Bowden's writing style is basically "these are people doing their job, which is dangerous and difficult." Sebastian Junger is more of a "at 8:30 am things weren't too terrible, but they were pretty terrible by 9, and by 9:30 people were dying despite their noble and valiant efforts, here's a 20-page writeup on meteorology."