Into Thin Air: Personal Account of the Everest Disaster (Paperback)

Into Thin Air is a riveting first-hand account of a catastrophic expedition up Mount Everest. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.

On 9 May 1996, Mount Everest was swarming with people as five expeditions were poised to tackle its summit. Of the teams, three were commercial outfits, guiding inexperienced mountaineers to the summit, and Krakauer, a journalist and experienced mountaineer, was accompanying one of these in order to write an article about this controversial new development in Himalayan mountaineering. Within 24 hours, however, Krakauer found himself participating in a tragedy of awesome proportions as a huge storm swept over the mountain, finally killing eight people and leaving others fighting for their lives. Prior to the climb, Krakauer had misgivings about the nature of the expedition but its leader, Rob Hall, had a good track record and had been responsible for pioneering this development in mountain climbing. He ran his expeditions effectively and successfully, and his business was going from strength to strength. However, as Krakauer shows, mountain climbing as a business is very different to mountain climbing as a sport, and brings with it many new pressures which can cloud the judgement or force decisions that would otherwise not have been made. Krakauer suggests that the people in the party were, for the most part, simply not up to making the ascent, himself included, and similarly criticizes the other commercial parties. His account suggests that there was insufficient training or preparation before the ascents were made. Nevertheless, even while recognizing his own inexperience, Krakauer climbed the mountain and reached its summit. His account of the storm and its aftermath makes for harrowing reading, as exhausted climbers struggled to rescue those still stuck on the mountain, or else accept that they were incapable of helping. Terrible blunders were made - Krakauer himself made errors in identifying the whereabouts of other party members. Still others singlemindedly made their way to the top of the mountain, unable to bring themselves to stop and help those they passed. Into Thin Air is a meticulous account of events of May 1996. Yet Krakauer still fails to address the central issue on which he was originally reporting - the validity of commercially organized expeditions to Everest. He has been criticized by relatives of those who died for his effortless ability to determine what everyone was thinking and to analyse what went wrong, and certainly his detachment and perfect hindsight are hard to bear. Even so, Krakauer's account is a useful addition to the growing collection of books on the tragic events of those two days. (Kirkus UK)

And onto thin ice - Krakauer's (Into the Wild, 1995) hypnotic, rattling, firsthand account of a commercial expedition up Mt. Everest that went way wrong. In the spring of 1996, Krakauer took an assignment from Outside magazine to report on the burgeoning industry of commercially guided, high-altitude climbing. Many experienced alpinists were dismayed that the fabled 8,000-meter summits were simply "being sold to rich parvenues" with neither climbing grace nor talent, but possessed of colossal egos. From childhood, Krakauer had wanted to climb Everest; he was an expert on rock and ice, although he had never sojourned at Himalayan altitudes. While it has become popular to consider climbing Everest a lark and the South Col approach little more than a yak route, Krakauer found the altitude a malicious force that turned his blood to sludge and his extremities to wood, that ate his brain cells. Much of the time he lived in a hypoxic stupor, despite the standard acclimatization he underwent. As he tells of his own struggles, he plaits his tale with stories of his climbing comrades, describes the often outrageous characters on other expeditions, and details the history of Everest exploration. The writing builds eerily, portentously to the summit day, fingering little glitches that were piling up, "a slow accrual, compounding imperceptibly, steadily toward critical mass," when a rogue storm overtook the climbers; typical by Everest standards, it was ferocious in the extreme. Time collapses as, minute-by-minute, Krakauer rivetingly and movingly chronicles what ensued, much of which is near agony to read. Unjustly, Krakauer holds himself culpable for aspects of the disaster, but this book will serve an important purpose if it gives even one person pause before tackling Everest. A brilliantly told story, and one that won't go begging when the year's literary honors are doled out. (Kirkus Reviews)