"Four hundred vertical feet above, where the summit was still washed in bright sunlight under an immaculate cobalt sky, my compadres dallied to memorialize their arrival at the apex of the planet, unfurling flags and snapping photos, using up precious ticks of the clock. None of them imagined that a horrible ordeal was drawing nigh. Nobody suspected that by the end of that long day, every minute would matter." Chapter One, p. 9Because famed mountaineer/filmmaker David Breashears was exhibiting his photos at Asia Society in July, I became intrigued with this small detail in his biography concerning the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. So I hunted down a copy of Jon Krakauer's account of the events, his gripping novel, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1996).
All I can say is, this book was very hard to put down once I started reading. Krakauer is such a great writer, the events are nail-biting and filled with a horrific suspense, even when you know from the beginning the outcome and deaths that happened.
Krakauer was part of the team that experienced the most loss of human lives. His mission in joining Adventure Consultants expedition team was to write about the commercialization of climbing expeditions to Everest. What he experiences is more than he originally signed up for. The disastrous outcome deeply scars him, and the book is in part a memoir of the events that remind us all of just how dangerous mountaineering, and Mt. Everest, can be. Krakauer weaves into the tragedy the history of climbing on Mt. Everest and other important storylines that all shed light on the 1996 disaster- the lives and culture of the Sherpas, the evolution of climbing culture and equipment on Everest, high-altitude effects on the human body, and the personalities that have survived, or perished, in the May 1996 climbing season.
I hope you will also get a chance to check out David's photos of Mt. Everest online: http://sites.asiasociety.org/riversofice/
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