Into Thin Air

Krakauer's probably best known for his book “Into the Wild”. I'd also recently read his book about Mormonism. However I had no idea he had first-hand experience climbing Mt Everest, in which multiple people on his expedition team died.

This was a very tragic (and fairly short) book surrounding the extreme dangers of attempting to climb Everest. Climbers spend time acclimatizing at camps, but even by this point they've lost a lot of weight and have other debilitating illnesses - and yet even through these struggles, fhey still go on to attempt the summit.

In the end the biggest danger is not knowing your own limits. It's not so hard to make it up the top of the mountain, but if you've used up all your energy, or you've spent most of the daylight hours trying to get up there, making it safely back down can become impossible.