Publisher : Random House Audio
Publication Date : 1998 04 06
>> A gripping account
Into Thin Air is an absolutely gripping account of an ill fated trip to summit Mt Everest Krakauer s reliving of his experience is difficult to read yet difficult to stop reading A must read for any climber or anyone who dreams standing on the roof of the world
>> Why commercialising high altitude mountain guides is fatal
Imagine you are about to start climbing the world s highest mountain Everest having paid a large fee to one of the climbing guide organizations to get you there and you learnt that for the whole climb you would not be directly connected by a rope to any other climber plus you saw other paying members of your team with less climbing experience starting to wear brand new climbing boots they had not yet broken in
These two examples reflect many of the contradictions which this book evidences very well of the recent mass commercializing of an activity that by its nature will always be governed by the natural physical and prevailing weather conditions Mountain guides have existed for centuries but the mass exploitation of Everest shows how a simple concept can quickly lose the plot
As one of the two books written by people who were there at the time of the tragedy in May 1996 Jon Krakauer JK has come in for his fair share of praise and criticism and the latter is openly covered at the end of the book The book itself was written shortly after the 1996 events from a magazine article that was JK s reasons for originally making the climb While JK was a climber of many years experience though he accepts not at the very top levels of that sport his book is a very good account of what he saw and believed happened
The story is told in pretty much chronological order alongside coverage of the history of attempted Everest ascents Nepalese culture and Sherpas plus many other aspects including the attitudes of the different teams attempting ascents in 1996 and the range of mountain illnesses that can afflict anyone without warning Overall it makes for a well constructed story However by the end while I have never personally climbed mountains there seemed an almost fatal inevitability that high altitude climbing above say 20 000 feet and commercially guided expeditions are never going to be easy bedfellows unless perfect conditions prevail because
1 People s access to the commercially guided team option was based on money not skills and experience
2 The role of the guide was open to interpretation and operates variably as to what is required of them at such dangerous high altitudes from the evidence presented here
3 The commercial pressures lead to doing things that if climbing only with other professionals would never have been permitted the lady journalist requiring the transporting of a heavy and ultimately non functioning radio by a Sherpa being the most extreme but not the only such example
4 With little advance training unquestioning reliance was placed by team members on the guides always knowing what to do as right and an incorrect assumption that they would never suffer the health problems other climbers at that altitude did
JK does not ultimately pull all these self observed lessons together and in his final analysis seems to accept that matters will never easily change What does come across though again stated indirectly is that to succeed at this high level of thin air mountaineering requires a very clinical and focussed approach with self preservation being paramount to your making it back safely whether an experienced climber or not
>> I think the author is too self serving and biased
I was looking forward to reading Into Thin Air I love mountaineering and Mt Everest and the life death struggles that come with it and nothing like sad tragedy to make me feel alive and thankful
I read this book in 2 days but went from enthralled with the mountain drama to disappointed with Mr Krakauer s growingly evident biases
I wish he could have been more objective and less self serving
Once I sensed his own selfishness coming through the accounts of this journey the book and his writing turned me off completely
