Reviews for Into Thin Air
Review - Into Thin Air
When somebody is thrust into a dangerous situation accidentally or of necessity and dies as a result, that is tragedy. When somebody pays $65,000 in order to be taken into a dangerous situation and then dies as a result, that is farce.
In 1996, Krakauer, a fairly-accomplished mountain climber, was sent on an ascent of Mount Everest by Outside magazine along with a team organized as a commercial venture. There were eight clients, three guides and several Sherpas (Nepalese locals hired to carry gear). At the same time, several other teams, a few of them also commercial in nature, were on the mountain. On May 10, Krakauer, two other clients and three of his team’s guides reached the peak. Several members of two other teams also reached the top — in fact, so many people were on the mountain that it was actually crowded in places and people had to wait in line to climb ropes in some areas. Shortly after Krakauer began his descent, and before many of the other climbers even reached the top, a heavy storm set in. Krakauer was one of very few who made it back to the nearest camp, 3,000 feet below the peak but still 26,000 feet above sea level. A group of climbers got lost and huddled together in the snow, without food or oxygen, through an entire night until the storm let up. The wind chill that night reached -100°. Two of them died. Two of the team’s guide and the guide for another team also perished. Before the season was over, 12 people had died on Everest. Others were seriously frostbitten and lost limbs. There was a world-wide uproar so extensive that I remember being aware of it, although I’m not at all interested in mountain climbing.
Krakauer gives an account of his adventures during the entire trip, from the time he landed in Nepal until the time he left. He ends the book with a statement of his own feelings. As an accomplished climber, he feels like he should have been more aware of what was happening and done more to save others. His reasons for not doing so are that he had a client mentality that resulted in him being unaware when his guides needed help, figuring they were the experts, and that the high altitude had impaired his ability to think clearly.
My take on the event is that a bunch of people risked their lives for whatever reason — pride, money, proving something to themselves, acclaim — and some of them lost. That’s what happens with risks. I don’t think Krakauer or anyone else is directly responsible for the deaths. On the other hand, all of them were responsible because they were there.
In 2002, Michael Scarbrough and I drove (drove!) to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. When we reached the top, I discovered cold winds, a splitting headache and a bunch of rocks. The view was nice, but no nicer than the one from the warm, safe airplane the day before. (There was a gift shop where I bought a clove doughnut and a “Real men don’t need guardrails” refrigerator magnet. That was fine, as long as I was there, but they weren’t worth a great deal of effort.) I’ve never had the desire to climb a mountain above the altitude where I’m likely to see birds. I frankly don’t understand why anyone would want to. OK, I can understand why Hillary tried — to be the first to reach the top would be cool if you were into that sort of thing. But who cares if you’re the 453rd person to do it?
Here’s what Krakauer says the experience gave him:
“Despite the many trappings of civilization at Base Camp, there was no forgetting that we were more than three miles above sea level. Walking to the mess tent at mealtime left me wheezing for several minutes. If I sat up too quickly, my head reeled and vertigo set in. The deep, rasping cough I’d developed in Lobuje worsened day by day. Sleep became elusive, a common symptom of minor altitude illness. Most nights I’d wake up three or four times gasping for breath, feeling like I was suffocating. Cuts and scrapes refused to heal. My appetite vanished and my digestive system, which required abundant oxygen to metabolize food, failed to make use of much of what I forced myself to eat; instead by body began consuming itself for sustenance. My arms and legs gradually began to wither to sticklike proportions. Some of my teammates fared even worse than I in the meager air and unhygienic environment. Andy, Mike, Caroline, Lou, Stuart, and John suffered attacks of gastrointestinal distress that kept them racing to the latrine. Helen and Doug were plagued by severe headaches. As Doug described it to me, “It feels like somebody’s driven a nail between my eyes.”
Where do I sign up? And that was just at Base Camp, at a mere 17,600 feet (as opposed to the 14,110 feet at the top of Pike’s Peak) and still more that two VERTICAL miles from the top.
Later in the book: “At 21,000 feet, dizzy from the heat [although the altitude is high, Everest is near the equator and the sun is hot], I came upon a large object wrapped in blue plastic sheeting beside the trail. It took my altitude-impaired gray matter a minute or two to comprehend that the object was a human body. Shocked and disturbed, I stared at it for several minutes. That night when I asked Rob about it he said he wasn’t certain but he thought the victim was a Sherpa who’d died three years earlier.
At 21,300 feet, Camp Two consisted of some 120 tents scattered across the bare rocks of the lateral moraine along the glacier’s edge. The altitude here manifested itself as a malicious force, making me feel as though I were afflicted with a raging red-wine hangover. Too miserable to eat or even read, for the next two days I mostly lay in my tent with my head in my hands, trying to exert myself as little as possible. Feeling slightly better on Saturday, I climbed a thousand feet above camp to get some exercise and accelerate my acclimatization, and there, at the head of the Cwm [a Welsh word pronounced ‘koom’ meaning ‘valley’], fifty yards off the main track, I came upon another body in the snow, or more accurately the lower half of a body. The style of the clothing and the vintage leather boots suggested that the victim was European and that the corpse had lain on the mountain at least ten or fifteen years.”
And still he went on. Toward the end of the book, I read this:
“… The murderous outcome of 1996 was in many ways business as usual. Although a record number of people died in the spring climbing season on Everest, the 12 fatalities amounted to only 3 percent of the 398 climbers who ascended higher than Base Camp — which is actually slightly below the historical fatality rate of 3.3 percent. Or here’s another way to look at it: between 1921 and May 1996, 144 people died and the peak was climbed 630 times — a ratio of one in four. Last spring, 12 climbers died and 84 reached the summit — a ratio of one in seven.”
Would you engage in any activity that was likely to kill every seventh person? Like I said — farce.
In 1996, Krakauer, a fairly-accomplished mountain climber, was sent on an ascent of Mount Everest by Outside magazine along with a team organized as a commercial venture. There were eight clients, three guides and several Sherpas (Nepalese locals hired to carry gear). At the same time, several other teams, a few of them also commercial in nature, were on the mountain. On May 10, Krakauer, two other clients and three of his team’s guides reached the peak. Several members of two other teams also reached the top — in fact, so many people were on the mountain that it was actually crowded in places and people had to wait in line to climb ropes in some areas. Shortly after Krakauer began his descent, and before many of the other climbers even reached the top, a heavy storm set in. Krakauer was one of very few who made it back to the nearest camp, 3,000 feet below the peak but still 26,000 feet above sea level. A group of climbers got lost and huddled together in the snow, without food or oxygen, through an entire night until the storm let up. The wind chill that night reached -100°. Two of them died. Two of the team’s guide and the guide for another team also perished. Before the season was over, 12 people had died on Everest. Others were seriously frostbitten and lost limbs. There was a world-wide uproar so extensive that I remember being aware of it, although I’m not at all interested in mountain climbing.
Krakauer gives an account of his adventures during the entire trip, from the time he landed in Nepal until the time he left. He ends the book with a statement of his own feelings. As an accomplished climber, he feels like he should have been more aware of what was happening and done more to save others. His reasons for not doing so are that he had a client mentality that resulted in him being unaware when his guides needed help, figuring they were the experts, and that the high altitude had impaired his ability to think clearly.
My take on the event is that a bunch of people risked their lives for whatever reason — pride, money, proving something to themselves, acclaim — and some of them lost. That’s what happens with risks. I don’t think Krakauer or anyone else is directly responsible for the deaths. On the other hand, all of them were responsible because they were there.
In 2002, Michael Scarbrough and I drove (drove!) to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. When we reached the top, I discovered cold winds, a splitting headache and a bunch of rocks. The view was nice, but no nicer than the one from the warm, safe airplane the day before. (There was a gift shop where I bought a clove doughnut and a “Real men don’t need guardrails” refrigerator magnet. That was fine, as long as I was there, but they weren’t worth a great deal of effort.) I’ve never had the desire to climb a mountain above the altitude where I’m likely to see birds. I frankly don’t understand why anyone would want to. OK, I can understand why Hillary tried — to be the first to reach the top would be cool if you were into that sort of thing. But who cares if you’re the 453rd person to do it?
Here’s what Krakauer says the experience gave him:
“Despite the many trappings of civilization at Base Camp, there was no forgetting that we were more than three miles above sea level. Walking to the mess tent at mealtime left me wheezing for several minutes. If I sat up too quickly, my head reeled and vertigo set in. The deep, rasping cough I’d developed in Lobuje worsened day by day. Sleep became elusive, a common symptom of minor altitude illness. Most nights I’d wake up three or four times gasping for breath, feeling like I was suffocating. Cuts and scrapes refused to heal. My appetite vanished and my digestive system, which required abundant oxygen to metabolize food, failed to make use of much of what I forced myself to eat; instead by body began consuming itself for sustenance. My arms and legs gradually began to wither to sticklike proportions. Some of my teammates fared even worse than I in the meager air and unhygienic environment. Andy, Mike, Caroline, Lou, Stuart, and John suffered attacks of gastrointestinal distress that kept them racing to the latrine. Helen and Doug were plagued by severe headaches. As Doug described it to me, “It feels like somebody’s driven a nail between my eyes.”
Where do I sign up? And that was just at Base Camp, at a mere 17,600 feet (as opposed to the 14,110 feet at the top of Pike’s Peak) and still more that two VERTICAL miles from the top.
Later in the book: “At 21,000 feet, dizzy from the heat [although the altitude is high, Everest is near the equator and the sun is hot], I came upon a large object wrapped in blue plastic sheeting beside the trail. It took my altitude-impaired gray matter a minute or two to comprehend that the object was a human body. Shocked and disturbed, I stared at it for several minutes. That night when I asked Rob about it he said he wasn’t certain but he thought the victim was a Sherpa who’d died three years earlier.
At 21,300 feet, Camp Two consisted of some 120 tents scattered across the bare rocks of the lateral moraine along the glacier’s edge. The altitude here manifested itself as a malicious force, making me feel as though I were afflicted with a raging red-wine hangover. Too miserable to eat or even read, for the next two days I mostly lay in my tent with my head in my hands, trying to exert myself as little as possible. Feeling slightly better on Saturday, I climbed a thousand feet above camp to get some exercise and accelerate my acclimatization, and there, at the head of the Cwm [a Welsh word pronounced ‘koom’ meaning ‘valley’], fifty yards off the main track, I came upon another body in the snow, or more accurately the lower half of a body. The style of the clothing and the vintage leather boots suggested that the victim was European and that the corpse had lain on the mountain at least ten or fifteen years.”
And still he went on. Toward the end of the book, I read this:
“… The murderous outcome of 1996 was in many ways business as usual. Although a record number of people died in the spring climbing season on Everest, the 12 fatalities amounted to only 3 percent of the 398 climbers who ascended higher than Base Camp — which is actually slightly below the historical fatality rate of 3.3 percent. Or here’s another way to look at it: between 1921 and May 1996, 144 people died and the peak was climbed 630 times — a ratio of one in four. Last spring, 12 climbers died and 84 reached the summit — a ratio of one in seven.”
Would you engage in any activity that was likely to kill every seventh person? Like I said — farce.
Reviewed by Roger on 2005-05-02 09:25:53