Into Thin Air
Into Thin Air is the story of the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing disaster. Jon Krakauer, who you might know from Into the Wild, while also being a writer, had been a fairly active mountaineer with dreams of Everest before settling down. Eventually Outside, a magazine, wanted him to write about the mountain, and even paid for his expedition to the top. From there, Krakauer presents a story of slowly impending doom, disaster, and necessary choices.
Throughout the beginning of the book, you know that disaster is going to happen. It’s not an if, but a when. So Krakauer decides to focus on all of the things that seemed off to him before the disaster. Normally, these things - like crews from South Africa being too gung-ho, or certain climbers being unprepared, or hypoxia affecting decision making - wouldn’t be the end of the world, but pair them with a hurricane like blizzard, and things become significantly more dangerous. It also builds this feeling of dread. As I was reading, I couldn’t help but feel that just washing over the novel. Oh, this climber hasn’t put in the work, AND these two teams seem unprepared and without leadership, AND not to mention the fact that it is basically impossible for people to survive in a place called “The Death Zone” without bottled oxygen anyway, AND various climbers are being forced to wait hours at a time for the group to catch up. All of those things are the types that you might brush past because they would only matter if something goes wrong. Slight annoyances that never really turn into anything worse, except here, they did.
After Krakauer summits is when the real trouble begins. A storm hits, and almost everyone is lucky to get back to the camp alive, if they do at all. Some are left out overnight. Of those, some are found, and some aren’t. Some are brought back alive, and some left to die. It’s equal parts harrowing, brave, and terrifying. I won’t say more because it’s really something you just have to read for yourself.
A quick note before the end to say that Krakauer does make some assumptions as to what is and isn’t proper emergency safety actions and who did the right thing, especially when it comes to guide Anatoli Boukreev. I’m no expert, but this does seem to be the type of thing that many people have mentioned (it came up more than a couple times when I googled this book) so it seems like Krakauer’s assumptions may not be quite right. Something to mention.
Otherwise, this book is why I love reading, even if it is tragic. The right person at the very wrong time, and only they could tell this kind of story. Even if the topic is terrible, this book does have some kind of magic to it. First HOFer in a while!