Into Thin Air: Jon Krakauer

On the edge

Images Credit: Birdy

I absolutely love trekking and hiking and for a long time have been nourishing a thought of making it to Mount Everest base camp. I know I will not climb the mountain per se because I know my limits. And after reading Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” my conviction has only deepened. Krakauer’s hair raising and harrowing account of his Everest summit in 1996 kept me riveted till the very end. A brief summary from the book jacket –

Jon Krakauer, an accomplished climber, joined a commercial expedition run by guides for paying clients, many of whom had little or no climbing experience. In Into Thin Air he gives a thorough and chilling account of the ill-fated climb and reveals the complex web of decisions and circumstances that left a group of amateurs fighting for their lives in the thin air and sub-zero cold above 26,000 feet – a place climbers call ‘The Death Zone.’

Krakauer describes everything with plenty of details right from the time he reached Namche Bazaar in Nepal before the climb. I realized how expensive a commercial expedition can be – some of them cost as much as $65,000! Most importantly, I realized how commercialized Everest had become even 14 years back at the time this book was written. Anyone and everyone were attempting the most treacherous mountain in the world. Krakauer introduces a few colorful characters who were brave enough to make this dangerous attempt. My favorite among them was Sandy Pittman a quirky socialite from New York albeit a somewhat experienced climber. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the contents of her luggage while climbing Everest. She commissioned Sherpas to bring her the latest issues of Vogue, Vanity Fair and other magazines. Her Sherpas, the porters who help carry equipment during expeditions, were doubled over under the weight of “two IBM laptops, a video camera, three 35mm cameras, one Kodak digital camera, two tape recorders, a CD ROM player, a printer … supply of Dean & Deluca’s Near East blend and my espresso maker.”

The expedition started off well enough, but soon after there were a lot of hitches. People fell ill with gastro troubles, some could not get acclimatized well enough and some had vision problems with the thinning air. But it was the test of endurance and pain that had me reading the book open-mouthed many a time. There were climbers who had summited Everest without the use of oxygen at all, a rare feat. But Rob Hall, the expedition leader, constantly urged his team members to breathe oxygen consciously, even while resting or sleeping in tents, from the cylinders they carried.

“Every minute you remain at this altitude and above,” he cautioned, “your minds and bodies are deteriorating.” Brain cells were dying. Our blood was growing dangerously thick and sludgelike... Even at rest our hearts beat at a furious rate.”



I cringed at points where Krakauer describes horrific frostbites and felt truly sad when tragedy struck and some of his team mates perished. Krakauer strongly believed that he could have played a bigger role when the entire tragedy was unfolding and could have perhaps saved a life or two. And the fact that he failed to do so due to some unthinking actions, remains heavily weighted on his mind and his survivor guilt and pain echo through the book.

Into Thin Air is an excellent read even for those not much inflicted by the travel bug. Scaling this behemoth of a mountain is a completely life-changing experience. In Krakauer’s case, it was not as much positive. I could almost visualize the crevasses and the icy chasms that lay all along the way and I involuntarily shuddered even in the heat of my room. Perhaps, Krakauer could have avoided a lot of repetitions in the book and it could have been edited a bit more tightly. These are but small observations that do not hinder the experience of reading this chilling story.


Verdict: Know the speciousness of Everest up close and personal

Rating: 4.5/5