Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

By the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, Jon Krakauer had climbed to the top of Mount Everest, exhausted from the lack of sleep for the previous fifty-seven hours and suffering from the debilitating effects of oxygen deprivation on his brain. While he turned to start his hazardous and protracted descend from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still making a determined effort to reach the summit. The clouds had started to gather in the sky, but no one had noticed. After six hours and descending 3,000 feet via 70 mph gusts and blinding snow, Krakauer froze and had hypoxia and tiredness hallucinations in his tent, but he was safe. He found out the next morning that six of his fellow climbers were still alive and battling for their life after they had failed to return to their camp. Five of them would be dead when the storm eventually passed, and the sixth would have to have his right hand amputated due to severe frostbite.

The renowned writer and best-selling book of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air is the ultimate chronicle of the deadliest season in Everest history. As a client of the world's most reputable high-altitude guide, Rob Hall, climber Krakauer traveled to the Himalayas on assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the increasing commercialization of the mountain. The thirty-five-year-old, rangy New Zealander Hall has guided thirty-nine climbers to the summit of Everest four times between 1990 and 1995. A guided crew headed by the forty-year-old American Scott Fischer—a man known for his strength and determination who had scaled the summit without the use of oxygen in 1994—was climbing the mountain near Hall's team. However, Hall and Fischer perished in the May 1996 rogue storm.

In his investigation, Krakauer explores the qualities of Everest that have driven countless individuals, including himself, to forgo prudence, disregard the worries of those close to them, and voluntarily expose themselves to such danger, suffering, and cost. A unique accomplishment, Krakauer's firsthand account of what transpired on the top of the world is written with emotional clarity and backed by his unquestionable reporting.