High Pressure:  Tragedy at the Top of the World
Review of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air

By Whitney Stewart Contributing writer
From The Times-Picayune, Sunday, May 4, 1997

Climbing Mount Everest defies rational analysis,' said writer and mountain climber Jon Krakauer in a recent telephone interview. Yet this insightful author defies his own theory in his astounding new book, "Into Thin Air." K Krakauer is rationaland penetrating in his honest, eloquent record of the personalities and circumstances on Everest last spring.

A dense account of the May 1996 disaster in which 12 people died and others endured amputations because of frostbite, "Into Thin Air" exposes the decisions and actions of the climbing leaders, the Sherpas and the ambitious, (sometimes media-hungry) clients who played a part in the tragedy. Through objective and thorough research and in sparkling prose, Krakauer tells a story that arouses fury, disgust, admiration and tears.

No novice to climbing -- he has been obsessed with it since his first climb at the age of 9, in the company of his father and acclaimed mountaineer Willi Unsoeld -- Krakauer was sent on a commercial expedition to Everest by Outside magazine. In March 1996, he went as one of eight clients on New Zealander Rob Hall's team, and as a magazine journalist writing about a guided ascent.

Although Krakauer could have remained at Everest base camp, following team progress by radio as some journalists do, his own summit fever propelled himupward for weeks. With his teammates, he suffered the afflictions common at high altitude: headaches, loss of appetite, stuffed sinuses, sleeplessness, digestive disruption, moodiness, apathy, and fear. "I was miserable a lot -- more than onany other climb I've done," admitted Krakauer. "The ratio of pain to pleasure was overwhelming."

Few people fully understand the perils and challenges of climbing Everest or the significance of the many human deaths on the mountain. As Krakauer explains, Everest used to be the domain of elite climbers who had paid their dues through years of' smaller, but not necessarily easier, climbs. Before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to attain Everest's summit in 1953, 15 expeditions had admitted defeat, and 24 men had died trying to "conquer" the mountain.

This blindness among amateurs may account for the high number of neophytes and unskilled dreamers who now pay as much as $65,000 to mingle with the elite and to be led to Everest's summit. In peak season these days, hundreds of climbers wait their turn at base camp at 17,600 feet. Many of these men and women have no idea how to handle ice-picks and crampons. Climbers do not have to be self-reliant. They can pay guides to take them to the top, and Sherpas to carry their climbing equipment and telecommunication devices, to cook and serve their special foods, to set their ropes and ladders on the climbing routes, and to make sure they have enough bottled oxygen at every high camp.According to Krakauer, "... being guided up a mountain - the way I was guided up Everest - isn't really climbing."

Having said that, Krakauer also insists that nobody can really buy the summit of Everest. You have "to pay in sweat and blood ... work and pain," and you have "to have endurance and be stoical." On May 10, 1996, many climbers paid, some with their lives. Families and friends also paid, and now many ask why.

Just before midnight on May 9, 33 climbers from three different teams set out from Camp Four for the summit. Before long, the climbing route was bottlenecked, and members of the New Zealand team, the American team led by Scott Fischer, and the Taiwanese team led by Makalu Gao jostled and passed one another in a rush to the top. The brusque American socialite and correspondent Sandy Pittman, determined Japanese business woman Yasuko Namba, retired postal worker Doug Hansen, and altruistic guide Neal Beidleman were among those unaware that forbidding weather would soon trap them above 26,000 feet for more than 24 hours. The climbing world is still stunned that so many climbers, including two of its most talented guides, Fischer and Hall, died on the way down from the summit.

Krakauer says he was just lucky to reach the summit early and to stagger back to his tent before a blizzard socked inhis teammates 15 minutes behind him. Today he suffers relentless guilt that he could not or did not save those who died. No matter how unfounded his guilt might be, he now fights aninternal battle not stilled through the writing of this book. Krakauer understood that to record this story was essential because the tragedy disturbed his life "to the core." Now he will face an audience of emotionally stirred readers who may sympathize with or attack his record; he will face another type of Everest.