Into Thin Air

I recently realized I love real-life adventure tales. Memoirs of extraordinary journeys that are true tales. Into Thin Air is one such telling of a trip to climb Mt. Everest by a journalist writing about the commercialization of Himalayan adventures. Things go horribly wrong and the result is one of the worst years in history for climbers. I've never wanted to go to Everest (well, maybe base camp could be fun) but after reading this I feel cold just thinking about it.

Rating: 7.3/10

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is a compelling look into the nitty gritty of Everest expeditions, every detail painstakingly described. A bit too painstaking for my taste but it was still an interesting story. The main problem I had with this book was the nonstop naming and in-depth descriptions of characters who would have almost no impact on the story or better yet, would never be mentioned again in the story. This issue might have had a smaller impact if I was reading the book physically, so I could have flipped back and forth between the pages to keep better track of the characters, but in audiobook form, it was a hopeless endeavor. I had to make a tangible effort just to remember the names of the most important members of Krakauer's party

The story itself was chilling and showed just how quickly things can go wrong on the slopes of the world's tallest mountain. Something in particular that stood out to me was the author's honesty about his mistakes in the expedition and how he was all but the reason for a friend's death on the mountain. Additionally, I learned that oxygen is actually not a necessity for everyone when climbing Everest. It certainly helps, but based on certain genetic factors and intense training, one can climb the peak with no oxygen assistance whatsoever. I always assumed that a ton of oxygen was required at such altitudes.

In conclusion, the subtitle for this book is “A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster” and that's exactly what it is: an account. For better or for worse, Jon Krakauer spares no detail of his run-in with Everest. I would not recommend this book, too much commitment for too little payoff (about two chapters of gripping action)

I recently realized I love real-life adventure tales. Memoirs of extraordinary journeys that are true tales. Into Thin Air is one such telling of a trip to climb Mt. Everest by a journalist writing about the commercialization of Himalayan adventures. Things go horribly wrong and the result is one of the worst years in history for climbers. I've never wanted to go to Everest (well, maybe base camp could be fun) but after reading this I feel cold just thinking about it.

I had to stop reading this while eating because the stress was giving me stomach cramps. The author's writing is so vivid, so compelling, and the story is truly horrifying. In the Prologue the author explains that he wrote the book so soon after the disaster in part to help himself process everything that took place up there, and I could really feel that come through in his writing (this is not a criticism, it is a compliment). Grappling with the choices everyone made, how people's flaws or prejudices or bravery or tenacity played a role, would absolutely require some heavy-duty processing for a survivor, and it makes for fascinating reading. Highly, highly recommend.

I read this book quite some time ago, and found the story disturbing and haunting. I recently had the occasion to re-read this book, and found the story even more compelling than I remembered. In this book, Jon Krakauer describes the events on Mount Everest that resulted in the deaths of so many experienced and well regarded mountain climbers. The firsthand account is well researched and brutally honest. The story drives the reader toward the conclusion with an obsession that makes it easy to understand the mindset of the climbers on Everest, and have compassion for everyone on the summit that day. A great piece of journalistic writing, highly recommended.

This book was much different than any sort of biography or memoir based book I've ever read. It provides immense detail into the 1996 season of Rob Hall's Everest team.

I used to think about Everest as kind of an adrenaline junkies playground, but after reading this book, it really opened my eyes to what climbing Mount Everest actually entails and the devastating actions survivors have had to take to save themselves in theface of imminent death.

I've always loved into the wild by John Kracker and this book is highly rated so it's always been on my to read list. This book is highly researched and highly analytical. So much of the book is going over timelines, collecting information and trying to divulge that to the reader. But at some point there's so much information that it's hard to even know what's going on. so many proper nouns, names, and time points that you wonder while reading it how Krakauer was even able to figure this out.

It's easy to say It seems like leadership made mistakes. that they should've turned around at the turnaround time, that prefixed line should've gone up way before they did, but I think the very end of the book really summarizes it properly that people wanted to make it to the top and with your brain working at 29,000 feet altitude You will do anything to get there .

Definitely shed tears while reading this book, just such a loss of life in a way that doesn't mean anything. What you would give to say you did something. Something I don't know how you would ever recover from being even a survivor.

4/5

A breathtaking account of a calamitous expedition on Mount Everst to which Krakauer took part. Very well written and engrossing. In the old journalist list, it attempts to be fair and not biased in the portrayal of the other men and women who participated and died in the expedition. Also, very informative regarding the extreme psychological and physical conditions in which men operate at such altitude, impairing their judgment and physical skills. A great read.

I read this and mainly felt sure of two things: 1) I never, ever, ever want to climb Mt. Everest, or really any mountain and 2) I felt very deeply sad for all of the emotional turmoil Jon Krakauer and the other members of his team felt. Since I don't really know... anything about rock climbing I felt a little bit outside of this story. I mean he explained all the climbing terminology and everything. Mainly I could not get over like, why the fuck would anyone want to put themselves through that? Whyyyyy. So whatever, I mean it was well-written and I really admired the painful honesty involved, but it's not my new favorite book or anything.

Immediately after I finished reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer last summer, I was left convinced that Krakauer is one of the great biographical storytellers. The yarn he spun about Chris McCandless still sticks in my memory and refuses to leave! I HAD to read more of his works, so, soon after finishing my review for Into the Wild, I decided to return to my library's eBook portal once again and download Into Thin Air, his second offering. It's a story I won't soon forget.

In 1996, Krakauer was working for Outside Magazine, a publication that highlights outdoor recreation. He was sent on assignment to Mount Everest to write a piece on the over-commercialization of mountain-climbing expeditions. Evidentally, mountaineering is serious business. Companies with major sponsorship deals were popping up. People who could afford the trip got a chance to pursue a lifelong dream in a controlled and supervised environment. An experienced mountain climber, Krakauer was initially planning to climb Everest as far as base camp only; he was never to reach the summit. But, his personal desire to fulfill a lifelong dream of climbing the tallest mountain above sea level trumped all professional protocols, and he eventually convinced his editors that making it to the top would make for a good story. Little did he know that he would experience one of the most tragic events in climbing history. Into Thin Air details the fateful day when eight people lost their lives (four from Krakauer's team) and many more were left stranded when a freak unrelenting storm blew through during the descent from Everest's summit.

Into Thin Air is quite an immersive and suspenseful read. Krakauer's descriptions of the majestic mountain, the crisp thin air, the crunching snow, was rich. The reader also got a look into the lives of a wide cast of mountaineering characters, including Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, duelling leaders of opposing expedition companies, whose big personalities sometimes got in the way of making sound decisions during Krakauer's trip.

I have never been interested in pursuing the sport of climbing, and Krakauer certainly did not make it appear cool or thrilling. The endeavor is unattractive to me..and frankly a little nuts! At the same time, I can understand the appeal of perseverence that climbing affords; having a goal as hard as climbing a mountain is, how unfathomable it is to imagine reaching the summit. And then the high and satisfaction you get when ticking Mount Everest off of your bucket list.

Into Thin Air was an excellent story - I highly recommend it!

Frost bites, hypoxia, summit fever, Man's ego and a series of unfortunate events lead to the deaths of several climbers attempting to reach Mount Everest in 1996. What remains is this extremely suspenseful and harrowing account of the event, transmitted with a certain level of guilt by the author. It reads like a thriller.

My mind is stuck on what those Japanese climbers said, about passing other climbers in clear distress, while on their way to the summit, without administering any help. “We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.” And you can't even fault them.

Sadly, what this book didn't accomplish, is to slow down the commercialisation and exploitation of Everest.

After watching the film “Everest” I was interested in the details of the 1996 disaster and this book came up more frequently than others. Although it's a difficult read in places, not down to the author's ability to describe events, more so the amount of death at the hands of the conditions and the inner turmoil that remains to this day. Intriguing, horrific and personal. Recommended if you're after an honest account of the events.

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.