Into Thin Air

John Krakauer

Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer's account of how 10 climbers lost their lives over several days on Everest in 1996.

Some people here have read that other mountaineering book: Touching The Void. What's most chilling in Joe Simpson's book is the isolation of the stricken climbers. Simpson and Yates on the Siula Grande are many days trekking from the nearest peasant settlement. At the moment Simpson injures himself he is certain he will die, since rescue is utterly impossible even assuming they have the means to communicate with the outside world (they don't).

Contrast with Krakauer's book. In 1996, the reader learns, there were doezens of people on Everest. Popular routes up the mountain were jammed. When climbers got into difficulty there were frequently several fellow climbers nearby. There are no villages above about 17,000 feet but the various camps strung higher up the mountain on the route to the summit are villages of a kind and are well organised and well supplied.

This false sense of security adds an extra layer of horror to the Krakauer account. Communications with the outside world were good and the most experienced of the 1996 victimes was able to speak to his family back home in New Zealand as he lay dying and beyond rescue. And while a climber in trouble was never more than a few hundred feet from other climbers it was often impossible, as the weather deteriorated, to effect any kind of rescue. Where assistance was possible the rescuer risked fatally endangering himself. That's if the nearest climber is minded to help. Krakauer describes exhausted climbers numbly trudging past the bodies of the dead and (on occasions) the dying.

But there is heroism too. And many reminders of the human body's enormous capacity for punishment and its will to survive. Reading Into Thin Air is a powerfully affecting experience. I remember the high praise it received in disucussions in the early days of the Barn. With every justification.