Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster Paperback – October 19, 1999

Almost twenty years ago, journalist Jon Krakauer joined a guided expedition to the top of Mount Everest, led by accomplished high-altitude climber and guide Rob Hall. Ostensibly on assignment to write a magazine piece on the increasing commercialization of Everest, as outfits like Hall's made it possible for climbers with more disposable income than actual mountaineering experience to have a go at the summit, Krakauer knew this might be his only chance to fulfill his own boyhood dream by standing atop the highest mountain on earth. An enthusiastic climber since childhood - though with no experience whatsoever at very high altitudes - he was one of the most technically proficient clients on Hall's team, and on May 10, 1996, he made it to the summit. On the way back down the mountain, however, Hall's group was one of several expeditions caught up suddenly in a violent snowstorm. Krakauer, farther down the mountain than most of his teammates when the storm hit, made it safely back to the tents before he collapsed in exhaustion. He woke to discover that triumph had given way to terror and tragedy: several guides and clients, including Hall, were still out there in the storm, their bodies becoming increasingly vulnerable to the subzero temperatures as their supplemental oxygen supplies dwindled. "By the time I'd descended to Base Camp," Krakauer reflects in the Introduction, "nine climbers from four expeditions were dead, and three more lives would be lost before the month was out.""Into Thin Air," written within six months of Krakauer's return from Everest, is the product of his attempts to process exactly what happened up there, how things could go so very wrong and so many very experienced climbers, some of whom had summitted Everest several times before, could have lost their lives: "I thought that writing the book might purge Everest from my life. It hasn't, of course. Moreover, I agree that readers are often poorly served when an author writes as an act of catharsis, as I have done here. But I hoped something would be gained by spilling my soul in the calamity's immediate aftermath, in the roil and torment of the moment. I wanted my account to have a raw, ruthless sort of honesty that seemed in danger of leaching away with the passage of time and the dissipation of anguish." Thanks perhaps to the years spent honing his craft as a writer and his discipline as a journalist with deadlines to meet, Krakauer succeeds brilliantly in what he has set out to do. His account is nowhere rushed, hysterical, or lacking in polish; rather, it's a well-told story, supported by carefully researched background and dozens of interviews with other participants in the events, and Krakauer is so much in control of his narrative that it comes almost as a shock how much of a genuine emotional wallop it packs.Perhaps only a man who stood on the summit of Everest after years of dreaming, only to regret afterwards that he'd ever gone, could tell this story the way Krakauer does, neither glossing over the dangers of the mountain or the waste of good human lives, nor denying the challenge it poses the human spirit simply by being the highest spot on the earth's surface, simply, in the words of a man who died on Everest decades before, "because it is there." "Into Thin Air" is a thrilling, if sobering, tale of adventure. Let's be honest, reading a book like this is as close as most of us are ever going to get to climbing the great mountain - and Krakauer describes so well the challenges of the terrain, the moments of astonishing beauty, the plodding determination that carries the exhausted body ever onward, the effects of high altitude on the body and mind, that our vicarious ascent in his company is thoroughly satisfying. He brings his fellow climbers alive for us, too, in brief but vivid verbal portraits. We are told not only of their mountaineering prowess, but their determination, their amiability, their families, their human faults and foibles. Even though we've known pretty much all along who dies and who lives (the book is dedicated to the memory of those who died, and a photograph of the mountain between the introduction and first chapter is labeled with a map of their route indicating where major events took place, including several deaths), by the time the storm sweeps in we've come to care about these people, to hope without hope, to mourn their deaths, to celebrate every time a survivor makes it to safety.Some readers have labeled Krakauer arrogant and accused him of placing blame on everyone but himself, but I didn't find this to be the case. He comes down against the practice of guides leading commercial expeditions of clients without the skills or experience to make the climb without constant hand-holding, but he acknowledges that he himself didn't rightly belong there, and has nothing but praise for the skills of Rob Hall and the other guides he knew personally. He doesn't hesitate to point out errors of judgment that might have facilitated or compounded the perils of the situation, but it's more in the nature of pointing out the fallibility of human nature and the general unreliability of the human brain in a state of hypoxia (which, 8000 meters above sea level, supplemental oxygen can only partially mitigate) than pointing fingers or placing blame. There are no villains (except perhaps Ian Woodall, literally the only one of dozens of people he met on Everest of whom Krakauer had nothing good to say whatsoever, who for no apparent reason denied the use of his radio to help maintain contact with survivors and coordinate rescue attempts), but plenty of heroes: men and women who risked their lives venturing exhausted into a storm to rescue others, who held their own grief at bay to console the dying, who handed over their own precious bottles of oxygen to those in greater need, who calmly coordinated communications and rescue efforts during a time of crisis, or who simply managed to keep breathing when it would have been so much easier and less painful to fall asleep forever in the snow. That some of these fine, heroic men and women made the occasional mistake or bad decision says more about the risky nature of their undertaking than about them as individuals. Krakauer doesn't exempt himself from folly or fallibility, either, and in fact he's far harder on himself than he is on any of the others who were with him on the summit that day, living or dead. And granted that the fortitude, endurance, determination, and self-confidence necessary to tackle Everest tend to come hand-in-hand with a certain swagger and cockiness, Krakauer doesn't come across as particularly arrogant. This is a man who lets his readers see him, in the last chapter, broken by grief and survivor's guilt, lying across a bed naked and high on cannabis, with thick sobs "erupting out of my nose and mouth in a flood of snot."There's enough controversy surrounding the events on Everest in 1996, and particularly Krakauer's accounting of them, that readers who truly wish to understand what happened on the mountain that sad day probably shouldn't rely on this book alone. Fortunately, a number of other books on the subject exist, including at least four other memoirs by survivors of the disaster. "Into Thin Air," however, remains in any case a good place to start - and a thrilling, if ultimately haunting, read.

I've never been moved to climb a killer mountain, and after reading this account of a tragic season on Everest, I think that's a wise decision on my part. I still don't understand the appeal of deliberately subjecting yourself to exhaustion, misery, and a good chance of death just to say you did it. I mean, it's your choice, yeah, but if you have a family, it seems kind of selfish to risk your life like that. That said, the story was gripping and very well written. I could picture everything that was happening, to the point where I felt a little breathless myself at times. I can't say it was a pleasant book to read, but it was exciting, fascinating, and horrifying.

I have to say, before reading this book I had NO idea what climbing mountains entailed. It is how shall I say, "another world" - one I would be terrified to be a part of after having read this book. I agree with others that - perhaps also it is because it was written at such an emotional time, but Krakauer does seem to have a lot of emotional distress boiling inside of him, but I am certain it has to do with possible, survivors guilt, which he does mention and the fact that this feud brewed between him and Boukreev, and I agree - having read and reread many different POVs on this particular part of Boukreev not using oxygen, turning back before alot of the people but then saving 3, I agree that Krakauer has a particular amount of anger toward this man, who is deceased now, but the impression even with the ending of him ultimately coming to a certain amount of admiration for him, it seems as though a large amount of his distress stems from a seemingly small incident at the top of the mountain (but again I am no mountaineer) and from what I read, it wasn't such a small problem though to me almost seems irrelevant in regards to the rest of the book and the huge feat of ALL of the climbers, survivors or not, of what they accomplished, God Rest the Souls of those who did not survive.To have gone through what he had, being a journalist and not a mountaineer as they say, one can only imagine - there has to be a lot of pain in his heart about seeing people he went up with only to watch 10 of them I think it was? die, And at one point - (Im terrible with the names) there was a part where he sees who he thinks is Andy Harris but turns out to actually be another man who survived and it brought him a tremendous amount of pain that he originally thought the man was alive and in a camp, his significant other called only to have to call them back the next day to tell her that he was in fact dead. Again, the book was a HUGE undertaking for me as far as keeping everyone's names straight so I might be confusing that one point - I just know that Krakauer seemed to be emotionally terribly distraught by a lot of the events that happened. To debate this Boukreev using oxygen I think is pointless - what happened happened - to me, anyone who climbs mountains for a living or for sport I admire, I suppose, but I also think YOU ARE CRAZY LOL - (said as light heartedly as I can) my goodness, what possesses people to want to do this? It has to be a calling a true inner calling that I can just not fathom. It sounds like an awful lot of pain for a little gain but hey, the same can be said for life in general.I admire Krakauer and enjoyed the book thouroughly. I did not read the Climb and probably never will - one mountain book for me is enough. It was enthralling but scared me to a degree. Again, I cannot imagine the pain of being that cold and without oxygen, being asthmatic, and thinking back to my oxygen depleted youth NOTHING hurts worse than not being able to breathe so climbing any mountains for me is OUT OF the question, especially after reading this book WOW is all I have to say!!!And for anyone a part of the 1996 climb who is still alive - give yourself a break, you too, Krakauer, what you did was fine and I see no reason for you to feel guilty - let go of those negative feelings - at one point in the book a Sherpa gets hit in the back of the head with a stone several times and turns to tell Krakauer, WHAT have we done to make the mountain Gods so angry???That part more than any other made me think....what INDEED????