Into Thin Air:
A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

Jon Krakauer

New York: Anchor Books, 1997; ISBN: 0-385-49478-5; Pp: xxv, 333

Review © 2004 Branislav L. Slantchev

I never understood what could possess seemingly rational people to climb to the cruising altitude of a jetliner. After reading Mr Krakauer's book, I am no wiser. I still have no clue about anything that I would understand in a logical cold-headed sort of way. But the book does show one thing: I have been looking for an explanation in the wrong place. As the author himself flatly states, "attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act---a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument'' (p. xvii). So I read the book attempting to discern what is this drive beyond reason that could propel ordinary people to such extraordinary heights, where the bitter cold conspires with oxygen deprivation to render even the mentally soundest into barely coherent wrecks with the cognitive abilities of mildly retarded children. That most of them came out of the harrowing experience the way they did, seems in itself an astonishing feat.

Let me hasten to say that whatever transpired on Everest on May 10-12, 1996, I feel unqualified to make any sort of moral judgment. While figuring out what happened may have some value in preventing future disasters, Mr Krakauer is rather emphatic that this was not his purpose in writing the book. Given the unpredictability of mountaineering and the uncanny ability of the peaks to swallow even the most experienced climbers, catastrophes are bound to recur. The book seems more of an act of personal expiation of what the author sees as contributing role to the tragedy. I do not know whether it worked in achieving such catharsis, but for me it provided an unforgettable glimpse into a world of unfathomably passionate desire to excel and to endure. The book refuses to affix any blame (in fact, Hall and Fischer, the two main guides come off rather well) and I am not about to question life-and-death decisions under extreme conditions that I cannot possibly comprehend sitting in my living room, and having never been above 16,500 ft myself.

This is not to say that there aren't people who emerge from the ordeal way better than others. Take, for example, Rob Hall whose decision to stay behind to help the American Doug cost him his life, which he probably knew that it would. Or take Andy Harris, who resolutely walked back to Hall with an oxygen bottle despite his poor state, losing his life in the process. Contrast these guys with the leader of the South African team (who refused even to lend his radio during the emergency), and the leader of the Taiwanese team who paid no attention to the death of one of his team's members. Or with the people who sort of voted to leave Yasuko and Beck for dead while they were still alive. One cannot help but draw this contrasts and it is obvious that Beck, who miraculously survived abandonment twice (losing his hands and nose to frostbite), did not mince words in the interview included on the IMAX disc: While he "understood" that someone might not want to drag his large frame to the camp, he certainly did not understand that someone might not even try saving the 90lb Japanese woman. As he said, you want to survive these things, but you want to do the right thing in the process.

It is a story, not a very complicated one, of an expedition where things went terribly wrong in spite of careful preparation. With the possible exception of the Japanese climbers who callously pass by raving stranded members of an Indian expedition thereby sealing their grim fates, most everyone seems to have behaved like basically decent human beings who occasionally made small mistakes that compounded and, aided by the Everest multiplier, culminated in the deaths of so many.

Mr Krakauer is a vivid story-teller. Having read one of his other books, I expected as much. I was less prepared for the brutally honest assessments of his own behavior that, alongside his honest, if at times grudging, admiration for the Russian Boukreev, made a rather jarring read during which I had to remind myself that I was not reading fiction. This book is not an attempt to minimize one's role or to find excuses, despite the rather liberal finger-pointing employed throughout.

The paperback edition that I read includes a lengthy postscript in which Mr Krakauer responds to his critic DeWalt who authored of an alternative account of the disaster based on recollections of Anatoli Boukreev. The rebuttal is quite persuasive but perhaps we shall never know what exactly transpired on the top of the world now that Boukreev and another crucial witness, Lopsang Sherpa, have both lost their lives in the mountains.

At any rate, Mr Krakauer provides a thoroughly engrossing and frightening read. I could not put the book down until I turned the very last page, upon which I immediately headed for the bookstore to seek out books with more pictures. If there is one huge shortcoming in the paperback edition, it is the nearly total absence of photos and maps. One look at the superb National Geographic picture book describing the IMAX team's ascent is an eloquent proof as to what this one could have been had it been packaged better. But perhaps this would have detracted from the drama, sanitizing it behind glossy pages and making it appear slick and unreal. So I am not sure.

One thing is certain: Mr Krakauer now left me wondering whether I could not go on a trek to Base Camp. I am not insane, I don't want to climb the mountain. But I would like to be near it, at least once.

September 12, 2004