Book Report

Into Thin Air: Jon Krakauer

            In Jon Krakauer's book, “Into Thin Air,” he explains a personal account of the Mount Everest Disaster in 1996.  He has been hired by O Magazine to document an ascent of the famed mountain.  At first, he is sort of reluctant to go because of his wife and her hard feelings, but he eventually commits.  The magazine tells him not to climb all the way to the summit, but he insists that with his technical climbing skills, he should climb it.  He and many other climbers were led by Rob Hall to get to the top of the summit in 1996.  Little did they know, the spring of 1996 would go down in the history books as one of the deadliest years ever on Mount Everest.  The book is about the experiences he, and many others from his group, faced in the Spring of 1996 during one of the worst storms of the mountain’s history.

            Hall is a certified guide for any group aspiring to be on the top of the world.  Hall decides to quickly speed up the acclimatization process and hopefully guide all of the climbers to the summit of the mountain safely.  The mountain is set up with a series of camps that the climbers stay at to help acclimatize.  Hall’s plan is to stay at base camp for a couple of weeks before continuing.  After they leave they stop at camp one.  They continue to make a series of ascensions up and down the mountain to speed up the process of acclimatization to prevent altitude sickness.  All of the clients have troubles adjusting, but some however, are more qualified and independent than those who have to rely heavily on the guides and the Sherpas.  The first death in the book happens when a climber from another group contracts HAPE—a serious altitude sickness that happens to a person when they climb up in altitude way too fast.  There is then a 2:00 turn-around time that Hall instructs to all of the climbers.  This means that no matter how close they are to the summit of the mountain, they must turn around at 2:00 pm.  Krakauer and a few others reach the summit just before the time.  However, some of the other climbers reach the summit as late as 4:00 pm because the turn-around time was not enforced.  Some of those later arrivals included Rob Hall, his guide.  Krakauer was lucky enough to just hit the tail end of a storm that hits the top when he reaches camp four, the highest camp.  Unfortunately, all of his teammates are still at the top in the middle of one of the worst storms of the mountain’s history.  Hall eventually gets stranded and his partner, Hansen, runs out of supplemental oxygen and cannot continue down the mountain.  Also, another group gets stranded in the blizzard and a Sherpa rescues all but two of that group.  Hall is also killed along with a Sherpa that was trying to rescue him.  Surprisingly, one of the climbers left for dead makes it out of the mountain alive.  Beck Whethers makes it out, but he eventually has to receive extensive amputations and surgeries because of the injuries he received from the extreme temperatures.

            While Jon was sent up just to document the effects of the industrialization of Everest on the mountain, he became part of history.  He was in the middle of the most severe modern storm Everest had ever experienced.  After he got home and wrote the article for the O, he had to write this book.  He saw terrible things up there that one can never forget.  He apologizes for all of the frustration and anger this book might ensue to the families of lost climbers of Everest.