Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

While this book makes for a very compelling reading, it raises several questions about the accuracy of the story as told by Krakauer. Krakauer consistently downplays and denigrates Boukreev's heroics and experiences of climbing without use of bottled oxygen. In the meantime, Krakaeur opens the book by describing how on the way down from the summit, he asked a fellow climb to shut off the oxygen during a traffic jam, only to find that the fellow climber accidentally turned up the valve. According to Krakauer, this unplanned use of oxygen left him even very groggy and Krakauer implies that the fellow climber's error contributed to his near "comatose" state once he got down. (and why he did not join in on rescue). Note that several people who were on top saw Krakaeur coming near the summit, and reported him as going very strong.

Anatoli Boukreev's Climb and Above the Clouds should be read alongside the book. See also Ed Vieustur's take on 1996.

No matter what the reason, when beckoned to assist other climbers, Krakauer did not do so. Boukreev did assist. Heroically.

You then decide, whose story is more accurate, and closer to the truth.

I recently became obsessed with reading about Everest and this book has been by far the best I have read. Jon Krakauer is a fantastic author and has put together arguably the best account of the tradgedy of 1996.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster I never dreamed of climbing Mt. Everest whether it was there or not, hell I get winded on the ski lift. Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air evokes intoxicating wonder in the endeavor, while tempering it with the stark reality of deadly conditions and daunting sacrifice.

Krakauer writes in a way that is so pain-stakingly specific to the subject, yet somehow he leaves room for the reader's imagination to fill in the scene. A rudimentary map in the prologue pages colored by about a dozen black and white glossies mid-way through the book were all I needed to paint an intimate picture of the 1996 Mt. Everest Disaster.

I'd never put much thought into what it would take to do something as monumental as climbing Mount Everest. Logistics aside, preparing oneself for such a quixotic adventure must include long hours staring into the mirror. I was captivated by the soul cleansing effect of pushing one's mind and body so far beyond the boundaries of safety and sanity. Krakauer's story enlightens this aspect as only someone writing from real experience can. The reality and tragedy of these events only begin in the text. The full force of the story gripped me far beyond words.

Shivering through pre-dawn walks to the subway in Brooklyn while reading Into Thin Air, I tried to picture myself trudging across the frozen waste of the Western Cwm with a trusty Sherpa by my side. Fifty below zero, sixty mile per hour wind gusts, hundred foot crevasses, thirty percent oxygen levels, sheesh, count me out, I'll wait for the DVD.

Now, I don't want to turn my blog into a book review site (how friggin' boring would that be?), but I love this guy! Into Thin Air is recommended reading.

Vinny

This is an amazing story of an unimaginable nightmare that happened on Mt Everest. Even though I have no mountaineering experience or even much interest, I read this book in just a few days. The story is haunting and Krakauer does an amazing job retelling what happened on that fateful expedition.

Jon Krakauer is a great storyteller. I literally could not put this book down, reading it cover to cover in one day. Most books can't hold my attention for more than 50-60 pages at a time, but I was simply so engrossed in this story and the vivid imagery Krakauer painted with his words that I simply couldn't stop reading it.

The reader gets a palpable sense of what the expedition teams members suffered through. The extreme miseries of cold, exhaustion, and oxygen deprivation. The book consistently portrays the dangers of the low oxygen environment. The worst of these are pulmonary and cerebral edema, which can both cause death unless the climber is brought to a lower altitude. But probably the most deadly effects of the thin air is hypoxia, the under-saturation of oxygen in the blood. Although not directly life-threatening, it can cause confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations. In an already dangerous environment, having less the full faculties is a deadly hindrance. Krakauer recounts many incidents where team members, due to hypoxia, failed to put on their harnesses correctly, neglected to put on their gloves to protect their hands from the below freezing temperatures, or gave team members incorrect information in their confused state that could have proven deadly.

Also palpable is the overwhelming drive and determination to reach the summit that ultimately cost some their lives. And the agonizing, heart-breaking dilemma that comes when deciding when a team member can't go on and can't be rescued. When do you leave them for dead? But there are moments of inspiration even in those stories. Take Beck Weathers, a forty-nine year old Texan left for dead, not once but twice. His will to live defied all odds. After being left buried overnight in the snow, Weathers was found barely alive by teammates the next day. They determined he was beyond saving and left him to let nature take it's course. But hours later, he roused himself up and managed to walk back to camp. Even then, his condition was so poor he was not expected to live and was left back at camp in favor of getting more viable members down the mountain. Defying the odds, he descended to base camp with the aid of another expedition crew and was flown back to a hospital in Kathmandu.

Then comes the ultimate question, how can an expedition led by an experienced and talented climbing guide like Rob Hall go so wrong? In a nutshell, Hall made an exception to his own guidelines in an apparent sympathetic attempt to see one team member make the summit after failing to do so the year before. It left the expedition to descend far later than Hall knew they should have. It cost eight people their lives, including Hall himself.

In reading this book, you really get a sense of who all the team members are. Krakauer writes with great clarity and empathy. He has a very readable narrative style. This is one book I'll be recommending often.