Time collapses as, minute-by-minute, Krakauer rivetingly and movingly chronicles what ensued, much of which is near agony to read. 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.
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.
Much of the time he lived in a hypoxic stupor, despite the standard acclimatization he underwent. 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. From childhood, Krakauer had wanted to climb Everest he was an expert on rock and ice, although he had never sojourned at Himalayan altitudes. 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. In the spring of 1996, Krakauer took an assignment from Outside magazine to report on the burgeoning industry of commercially guided, high-altitude climbing. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.And onto thin ice-Krakauer's ( Into the Wild, 1995) hypnotic, rattling, firsthand account of a commercial expedition up Mt.
Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape.Īs the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. 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. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended in the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.
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