Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer
“We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality”
Into Thin Air details the account of the 1996 Rob Hall expedition to Everest written by journalist Jon Krakauer. The book shows the rise of commercialization on Everest where rich amatur climbers with little experience can be “guided” up to the summit. The book highlights issues regarding guiding wealthy American tourists in which lack of experience becomes a problem when faced with poor conditions, long days and little oxygen. The 1996 Everest disaster was the most deadly season (15 deaths) in Everest history until the 2014 Everest Avalanche which killed Nepalese guides.
The commercialisation of Everest can be seen in this book by who was trying to climb the world’s highest mountain. The author, Jon Krakauer attended the trip to write about people climbing Everest on guided tours, and in exchange advertising space was provided to Rob Hall to attract readers from the American market. This was interesting to me because the book talks about the negative effects of commercialisation yet is a product commercialisation. This book shows a fundamental change in the type of climbers coming to Everest and their reasons for wanting to climb. The author admires climbers Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary who climbed Everest and appreciated the challenges and risks they took in a time when the the technology was much more limited. Jon Krakauer shows his dislike for for amatur climbers throughout the book and while I feel he is more experienced than many of the clients on the trip, he is not himself experienced enough to be in a position to analyse the situation and be critical to his climbing teammates as there were many with more experience who could comment better than him. One person who Krakauer didn’t think should be on the mountain was Sandy Pittman, an amatur celebrity fashion magazine editor who was attempting to climb the 7 highest summits in the world. She would rely on sherpas to carry her small TV up the camps so she could stay connected to the civilised world. Sandy Pittman was also sponsored by many companies and she did a daily video blog on her climbs. Krakauer strongly disliked the climbing of celebrities sponsored by commercial interests which he didn't believe was a pure and natural reason to climb the mountain and it is a far different view to the many who set out to challenge themselves instead of for fame. Throughout the book I got a feeling of the author being on some self imposed moral high ground when talking about people on the expedition as he always thought he was better than others, and was quick to criticise. Afterall, the author was a journalist like Sandy, so I feel his criticism of her is misplaced.
Sandy Pittman was not in his specific climbing group but Krakauer also expressed concerns over the people in his own group.
“I suspected that each of my teammates hoped as fervently as I that Hall had been careful to weed out clients of dubious ability, and would have the means to protect each of us from one another's shortcomings.”
This is another critical comment from Krakauer which shows his belief of his climbing superiority to his team mates which is somewhat unjustified considering at the end of the book, less experienced climbers go back and try to help save people when Krakauer does not. Krakauer may be more experienced but he also neglects to think about the mental strength of some of the other clients in his group who had survived far greater challenges than Krakauer had at the time. Krakauer believes that his “experience” allows him to judge his team mates but he mostly neglects to own up to his own mistakes throughout the book.
Inexperience is blamed for the tragedy and deaths in the 1996 disaster and Krakauer makes sure he mentions this inexperience often, however I feel that his inexperience was also a contributing factor to the disaster as he wrongly thought that Andy Harris had returned from the climb to the summit and reported it back to others when in fact Andy had not returned as was still on Everest. This mistake likely ensured Andy’s death. Krakauer mistook footprints to be Andys when they were in fact Boukreev’s footprints. Though Krakauer was experienced enough to get down the mountain alive, I believe he feels a sense of guilt and to those he didn’t try to save. I also find it interesting that Jon Krakauer is able to still stand on his moral high ground despite the fact he made no serious attempt to rescue any of his team mates who were stuck in the poor visibility storm on the mountain while guides such as Anatoli Boukreev who were in a worse condition than Jon went and saved members off the mountain.
Jon Krakauer has been heavily criticized for his stance on Anatoli Boukreev. Anatoli Boukreev climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen on the 1996 trip and was a “pure” type of climber which the author would usually have liked. Despite this Jon writes that Boukreev had “extremely unorthodox behavior for a guide”. He writes this despite the fact that Boukreev went back and saved many people including some that were not his own clients. None of Boukreev’s clients suffered serious injuries from the climb while many of Rob Halls clients (Jon Krakauer’s group) died on the mountain. Boukreev’s actions are regarded as heroic as he worked tirelessly to save people yet Krakauer stayed in his tent once returning and made no serious attempt. I think the authors critical stance is unjustified. The author has dedicated the last 100 pages of his updated book to justifying his beliefs on Boukreev (defending criticism) and correcting major mistakes he made in the first edition.
Into Thin Air shows the effects of summit fever on climbers scaling Everest. I was disturbed by one particular mention of a Japanese climbing group who decided to continue with their plan to reach the summit the day after the treacherous weather conditions. This shocked me for two reasons, firstly they were not put off by the other groups failing to make it back to the camp and believe they would be better than the climbers the day before. This loss of rational thinking with climbers is called summit fever and many have died believing they could reach the top when the conditions are impossible because they were stuck in this mindset. More disturbingly to me was the loss of morality that affected these Japanese climbers. Shortly after leaving Camp 4 the climbers encountered two clients, Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba, from Rob Halls expedition who were covered in snow and just surviving. A normal person would sacrifice one day of their life and delay their summit attempt to save these climbers would otherwise die but the Japanese climbers looked at the barely conscious climbers and continued onto the summit. They also found another climber on the way up who later died.
“Paljor, lying in the snow, horrible frostbitten but still alive after a night without shelter or oxygen, moaning intelligibly. Not wanting to jeopardize their accent by stopping to assist him, the japanese team continued climbing to the summit.”
This made me think about climbers becoming overly and irrationally self obsessed as they climb. These climbers climb for their own gain, but you would think they would still have enough morality to save those dying. These climbers spend so much time challenging themselves their entire lives in the aim of climbing Everest that they don't want to save someone who poses a risk to them not achieving their largest goal. Everest shows the dark side of human aims and how we may lose perspective when we become heavily involved in a certain mindset. I have criticized Krakauer for his lack of effort but I find the Japanese conscious decision to leave people to die when they had energy to save them discomforting. At the very least they could have given the people bottled oxygen to give them more energy.
The 2014 Avalanche shows that Everest may be commercialized but it is still not safe. 16 sherpa guides were killed this year by an avalanche which makes this the most deadly period in everest history since the 1996 disaster. In the book the author describes the poor pay and treatment sherpas received and from recent new coverage it is clear that this is still the case as sherpas are on strike demanding better treatment and pay and will not climb for the rest of the year in respect to their sherpa friends. I think the pay sherpas receive for the amount of work they do is disgraceful as they often have to carry the majority of the weight for the clients. They also have worse climbing gear and sometimes don’t have bottled oxygen. Furthermore, American tourists pay upwards of $60,000 each to climb the mountain but the sherpas only receive $8000 per season which has multiple climbs. The book highlights the kind nature of these sherpas despite the poor treatment.
A solution to stop inexperienced climbers who endanger others has been posed. Some argue banning bottled oxygen from Everest would deter clients as reaching the summit unassisted by supplemental oxygen is extremely difficult. I believe this is a very purist view that climbers would naturally subscribe to as they want to think that Everest is extremely hard to climb so they feel better once they have climbed it. These climbers don’t want to share the glory and don’t like full service guide trips even though it’s none of their business.
I have mixed views about the author and his intentions. I believe he wrote the book to justify his actions on that day and criticized others to shift some of the blame for him not going back to save people. I don’t agree with the author on his stance on Boukreev who is widely considered a hero. Many said that Krakauer should have waited longer to publish this book and I agree as his impatience to write can be seen with the many factual errors he had to correct in his second edition. From this book I learned the effects of being too motivated and the somewhat toxic culture in mountaineering.
Tim Armstrong
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