20. Into Thin Air

20. Into Thin Air – by John Krakauer

Secretly, I dreamed of ascending Everest myself one day; for more than a decade it remained a burning ambition. By the time I was in my early twenties climbing had become the focus of my existence to the exclusion of almost everything else. Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from tipping the ordinary plane of existence on the end.There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. 

-Thomas F. Hornbeim (Everest: The West Ridge)

Krakauer recreates the great mystique of the mountain from the words and quests of past adventurers who tried for a hundred years before summiting Everest. Known as Chomolungma (mother Goddess of the Universe) by the Sherpas –and later renamed Sagarmatha by the Nepalese officials –, Everest became a natural next aim once the poles had been reached and the globe circumnavigated. George Leigh Mallory’s attempt in 1924 ended in his disappearance. Unlike many who were never found, Mallory’s body was found 75 years later by an expedition sent out to find his remains. Whether or not he reached the top is unknown. Until 2010 there have been 219 fatalities on the mountain, a rate of less than 5 percent of attempts.

Krakauer storytelling is big on witness testimony from Sherpas, clients and guides, and shields the reader from none of the raw macho or emotion endured. He is the quintessential journalist despite the scathing criticism he received from family members and readers of his September 1996 Outside article. His pain over his mistaken observation of Andy Harris walking towards camp during the descent from the summit and later assumption that Andy must have walked off the edge of the Col show his vulnerable mind in the hold of high altitude stupor and caught him undeserved flak. He is, in fact, his harshest critic saying “My actions – or failure to act – played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris” outdoes even the letter from an enraged lawyer from Florida who said of Jon: “I don’t know how he can live with himself.”

As Jon fully explains in the book time and time again, and should be obvious to anyone who has spent any time outdoors, climbing is a dangerous proposition and the stakes don’t get much higher than on Everest. The combined effects of bravado on the expedition leaders to take as many clients to the top as possible with the sharp decline in mental and physical abilities led to the events of May 10, 1996. Even Rob Hall, who is described as methodical and exacting, falls behind his own schedule and allows climbers to summit at 4:00pm. He had turned Andy Harris around 300 ft from the summit just the year before when 2:00pm had arrived. We can never fully know why such bad decisions were made but Krakauer gives perfectly logical motivations, especially subconscious ones, for how they were made. In addition, he is in a unique position to make these extrapolations based on his familiarity with the characters, his mountaineering experience and thorough investigation following criticism of his first article.

Even for a non-climber like me the anguish of climbing Everest was vivid at each step. From the long layovers to acclimatize to the thinning air (there is just half the oxygen content at base camp and one third at the peak compared with air at sea level), the arduous terrain of the glacial ice and the leaning office blocks that must be traversed, danger looms at every step. The book was particularly insightful into the Sherpa superstitions and bravery, the industry that has sprung up around Everest and the unknowns of high altitude sickness.