One of
the climbers engulfed by the storm was writer Jon Krakauer, who was on assignment
from Outside Magazine to do a story on the commercialization of Everest climbs.
His magazine piece eventually became “Into This Air.”
Krakauer
was on a team led by famed guide Rob Hall. Four climbers from Hall’s team died,
including Hall himself. (A fifth member of Hall’s team, Beck Weathers, was left
to die on Everest, but miraculously revived and walked down to safety.) Also dying was Scott Fischer, the lead guide
on a second team, plus three climbers from India.
A series of mistakes caused by miscommunication
and lapses in judgment led to climbers continuing up the mountain hours past a reasonable
turnaround time. Contributing to the mistakes was the pressure on guides Rob
Hall and Scott Fischer to successfully get their paying clients to the summit.
When the unexpected storm it, it was too late for them to safely return to
camp.
“Into Thin Air” is intense, sometimes painful to read. Krakauer’s account of the phone call between Rob Hall and his pregnant wife in
New Zealand, made when Hall knew he probably wouldn’t make it off the mountain
alive, is powerful.
“Into Thin Air” is the kind of book that stays with you long after you finish it.
(For other accounts of the disaster, see Anatoli Boukreev’s “The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest”, and Beck Weathers’ “Left For Dead: My Journey Home from Everest”.)
