Book Review: Into Thin Air

“Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.” Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good natural disaster story. There’s some sort of morbid fascination that comes from watching a horror movie or reading a horror book, especially when it happens to be true. Because at its core, that’s what Into Thin Air is – a horror story. Beautifully written, Krakauer tells his personal account of the events that occurred during the 1996 climbing season, one of the most deadly in history.

Into Thin Air is a perfect tale of many little mistakes culminating into one huge disaster. It becomes a story of “what if’s.” What if all of the teams on the mountain at the time had worked together… what if guide Andy Harris hadn’t mistaken full oxygen tanks for empty ones…. what if guide Rob Hall had stuck to his turnaround time… what if the storm had hit two hours later…. and it goes on and on and on.

In his retelling, Krakauer takes us through the weeks leading to the deadly summit attempt, gives us background on each and every party involved in the trek, and adds mountains (pun intended) of emotion from both himself and survivors he was able to interview after the fact. In every word, you can feel his survivor’s guilt. You can hear his agony even before he shares the guilt he feels for those he couldn’t save, and those he felt personally responsible for. It’s just such a raw story. Such a passionate account of an event that left so many dead, and ruined the lives of so many others, including the author himself.

You know a book has done its job when you spend hours and hours researching the events upon finishing. This story has stuck with me, as I’m sure it did with the countless readers before me (it’s not a new story!). If you want something real, something emotional, and something you can go get more information on later (plus, a movie with Jake Gyllenhaall, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley…), please pick this one up.

On to Into The Wild – let’s see what else Krakauer’s got.

P.S. true story, I started this book LAST boat season and finally finished it when we put our guy in the water this past weekend. #success