by russell bell, May 26 , 1998

Outside magazine's editors asked Jon Krakauer, a long-time mountain-climber and journalist, to travel to the base camp whence most climbers start up to the top of Mt Everest, to report on the mess they have left; climbers have for years dumped their trash along the way, not hauled it out. Though he thought he had freed himself of the desire to climb Everest, he realized he hadn't. He convinced the editors to let him have a year to prepare and sponsor him to go to the top. In Spring 1996 Outside worked out a deal with an experienced guide firm.

Though Krakauer had climbed many difficult routes in thirty years, he had never gone higher than 5240m (17,200'). To climb Everest he would have to spend a month higher than that. Krakauer joined a crew of eight clients who paid $65,000 each (as much as the mortgage on his house, he noted) guided by three professional climbers, with sherpas to carry the equipment, lay out the ropes, make camp. His crew included a 46-year old postal worker who had worked two jobs to save the money, now on his second attempt (the guides gave him a heavy discount for the second attempt), a 56-year old anesthesiologist, a 53-year old lawyer, a 53-year old publisher, a 47-year old personnel officer, who wanted to become the first Japanese woman to climb the highest summits on all continents (she succeeded). None of them had high altitude experience as climbers and none the climbing experience Krakauer had. They wanted to get to the top of the highest mountain in the world, not climb.

To get to the top, you leave a camp on South Col (7900m, 26,000') in the early morning (about 1 AM) and 'day hike' to the top. If you haven't made it to the top by some predetermined time, usually 1 PM or 2 PM you turn around. Since you are slowly dying above 7600m (25,000') you don't get a second chance, at least not on that trip. Four groups went to the summit on 10 May 1996. No group returned without a casualty: nine of the climbers died when a ferocious storm arrived and they had not turned around at a prudent time. Two of the three guides, including the leader, of Krakauer's team died, as did the experienced leader of another team, one of the guides of a third, the postal worker, and the personnel officer.

No one has the strength to haul someone down from the South Col or higher; helicopters cannot fly that high; yaks cannot live that high. Everyone who has died there remains there, unless blown off by the winds. You see them on the way. Rob Hall, the leader of Krakauer's team, waited until 4 PM for the postal worker, Doug Hansen, to make the top. At the first difficult traverse on the descent, Hilary's Step, Hansen did not have the strenth to descend it without help and Hall did not have the strength to help him down. Hall would not leave without Hansen until he had lost the strength to descend himself. He miraculously survived the night, talked to his seven-months pregnant wife from New Zealand by phone patched through to his radio but the weather did not permit a rescue team to reach him with oxygen and food. You pass him on your way up. The other guide on the team, a man who had gone to the summit before, disappeared sometime during the descent.

One team member had a radial keratotomy (corneal surgery to correct myopia) which so weakened the cornea that the low pressure at high altitude turned him blind. Though he did not make it to the top he ended up lost and given up for dead. Miraculously he roused himself after spending that night out and walked to camp. He lost one arm and much of his face to frostbite.

In Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, Krakauer tells his story straight, readably, unsentimentally, unjudgmentally. He admits that he could not have made the summit as an independent climber despite his experience and says that none of the other clients could have made it without guides. He thinks that as long as unprepared dreamers can climb Everest by paying a fee they will die: many experienced strong climbers have. His book has spent a long time on the New York Times best-seller list; I had to wait a year before I could get one of my library's seventeen copies. It deserves this. If a first-hand account of an ascent into Hell appeals to you, read this book.

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