Into Thin Air: Thoughts

1996 was the single deadliest year in the history of Mount Everest expeditions. Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air chronicles the events leading up to the May 10, 1996 summit attempt where 8 people lost their lives and many others were in danger of losing theirs as well.

I know this is a famous book, perhaps one of the most widely read from the whole National Geographic Adventure list, but I had a hard time getting into it. Something about me just automatically goes cold when I find out that one of these adventure books is written by a journalist, whose main purpose of going on their adventure was to write about it. It’s difficult for me to put these adventurers into the same category as an Earnest Shackleton or a John Muir. That being said, I do respect the theme of the story that Krakauer set out to write. He was commissioned to write a magazine article about the commercialization of Mount Everest and the associated risks and repercussions. Interestingly, this month’s Issue of National Geographic Magazine had an excellent article on this exact issue. The thrust of the argument is that commercialization of the mountain has led to overcrowding, which is making the mountain more dangerous. More climbers with less experience are crowding the slopes and as a result, many have to sit around at dangerously high altitudes just waiting for their turn up a rope. Krakauer spoke of this when he was trying to descend after his summit and he had to wait around in the “death zone” while waiting for the group below him to clear out. Sitting around for two hours in the death zone (above 26,000 feet) is dangerous for anyone, but more especially for an inexperienced climber.

“Above the South Col, up in the Death Zone, survival is to no small degree a race against the clock… Depending on each person’s acclimatization and physiological makeup, we would still be able to function above the South Col—but not well, and not for long. We would instantly become more vulnerable to HAPE, HACE, hypothermia, impaired judgment, and frostbite. The risk of dying would skyrocket.”

Another problem associated with the overcrowding of Everest is the mass amounts of waste produced by the hordes of climbers. This isn’t so much a problem at the lower camps, where garbage can easily be carried off the mountain, but in the higher camps there are piles of trash and human excrement that have been building up for years. A related problem is what to do with all of the human bodies scattered all over the mountain. The slopes of Everest are littered with the frozen remains of hundreds of unlucky climbers. Many of them have fallen down cliffs or crevasses and been lost, but some remain just off the beaten path. Krakauer encountered two such corpses, one which had been on the slopes for three years, and one higher up which had been there for 10-15 years.

“The first body had left me badly shaken for several hours; the shock of encountering the second wore off almost immediately. Few of the climbers trudging by had given either corpse more than a passing glance. It was as if there were an unspoken agreement on the mountain to pretend that these desiccated remains weren’t real—as if none of us dared to acknowledge what was at stake here.”

In his book, Krakauer presents a possible solution to the overcrowding of Mount Everest, and after reading his story, I am inclined to agree with his proposal. He believes that no one should be allowed to climb Everest with supplemental oxygen. For one thing, this would reduce the amount of litter on the mountain, but it would also cause people to prepare much more intensely for their summit attempts. Perhaps people would take the mountain more seriously if they had to face it head on without the crutch of an oxygen tank to support them. Or perhaps only serious climbers would make the attempt. All I know is that it is an idea worth considering.

All this being said, the National Geographic article was quick to point out that although more people flock to Everest each year, the overall mortality rate has not gone up significantly in the past decade. More experienced guides and better technology are making the mountain safer than it has ever been. For instance, on May 19, 2012, 234 people reached the summit and only 4 climbers died. Even so, I can’t help but think how bad it could be if something went wrong on a day like that. If a freak change in the weather occurred, the death toll could be catastrophic. Basically, my main takeaway from this book is that I’m never going to try and climb Mount Everest.

“In the midst of all the postmortem ratiocination, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that climbing mountains will never be a safe, predictable, rule-bound enterprise. This is an activity that idealizes risk taking; the sport’s most celebrated figures have always been those who stick their necks out the farthest and manage to get away with it. Climbers, as a species, are simply not distinguished by an excess of prudence. And that holds especially true for Everest climbers: when presented with a chance to reach the planet’s highest summit, history shows, people are surprisingly quick to abandon good judgment.”

My rating: 6 out of 10