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Analysis
It is the afternoon of May 10, 1996, and Jon Krakauer, the author, hasn’t slept for 57 hours. He stands at the summit of Mount Everest, “one foot in China and the other in Nepal,” and finds that he can’t summon the energy to enjoy the moment. The air is thin, meaning that barely any oxygen is flowing to his brain, and he’s utterly exhausted. Krakauer has arrived at the summit of Mount Everest with Anatoli Boukreev, a Russian climbing guide, and Andy Harris, a guide on the New Zealand team to which Krakauer belongs. He takes some photographs with Harris and Boukreev, and then, after less than five minutes, the trio begins their descent.
The impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster. By writing Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own.
The book begins with a strange image: Jon Krakauer is standing in one of the most sublimely beautiful places on the planet, the summit of Mount Everest, and he’s too tired to appreciate the beauty. After only five minutes or so, he turns back and begins his descent from the highest point on Earth. As we can tell, Krakauer is a client—he’s being guided by expert mountaineers, including Andy Harris and Anatoli Boukreev.
Later on, Krakauer notes, people will wonder why he, Boukreev, and Harris continued to climb down from Everest and ignored the signs of bad weather. Krakauer had been part of a team of amateur mountain climbers who’d paid a lot of money to climb the mountain safely. Now, six dead bodies, belonging to some of the mountain climbers, have been found, two other bodies are still missing, and one of Krakauer’s teammates is missing a hand. However, Krakauer insists, when he climbed down on the afternoon of May 10, the weather looked clear.
Krakauer builds the suspense by alluding to the bad weather on the horizon—weather which, we can guess, will soon cause a horrific disaster. Into Thin Air is both a history of mountaineering in general and the story of how Krakauer’s expedition to Everest—one of the best-organized expeditions that year—fell into danger.
Krakauer begins his descent from the summit. He’s in pain, and he feels weak because there’s barely any oxygen in the air. He inhales from his oxygen tank and sees that it’s almost empty. Krakauer approaches the infamous Hillary Step, a large notch in the Southeast Ridge of Mount Everest. Although Krakauer needs to descend quickly, he sees that three large teams of people are climbing up the Hillary Step, meaning that he’ll have to wait.
The passage conveys a sense of disorganization—Krakauer desperately needs to climb down to access more oxygen, but there are too many other people for him to proceed quickly. Throughout this book, Krakauer criticizes large group expeditions, and here he offers a basic reason why they can be dangerous: everyone goes at a different pace.
Krakauer asks Harris to turn off the valve in his regulator, allowing him to conserve oxygen while waiting for the three teams to climb up. Harris mistakenly turns Krakauer’s valve all the way up, and Krakauer is quickly “on the brink of losing consciousness.” There is an oxygen tank waiting for him 250 feet below, but in order to get to it he’ll need to climb Hillary’s Step. Frantically, Krakauer watches as the mountaineers slowly climb across the Step. The last one to climb across is Scott Fischer, a talented mountaineer who Krakauer has known for years.
Andy Harris is a trained, experienced mountaineer—but here, he makes a huge mistake, accidentally cutting off Krakauer’s oxygen. That a professional guide like Harris could err so greatly suggests the inherent danger of climbing Everest—in low oxygen, even a great mountaineer can become easily disoriented.
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Krakauer climbs across Hillary’s Step and reaches the fresh oxygen tank. As he inhales oxygen, he looks around, and realizes that a storm is coming; there are clouds on the horizon, and it’s starting to snow. Neither Krakauer nor his teammates realize that “a horrible ordeal was drawing nigh.”
The chapter ends just before the beginning of the May 10, 1996 Everest disaster, one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents in recent history. Having established the impending danger, Krakauer now goes back to explain how he came to join the expedition.
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Arn, Jackson. 'Into Thin Air Chapter 1.' LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 10 Feb 2017. Web. 7 Jun 2019.
Arn, Jackson. 'Into Thin Air Chapter 1.' LitCharts LLC, February 10, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2019. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/into-thin-air/chapter-1.
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Since 1852, human beings have known that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world, and for almost as long, explorers and daredevils have been trying to climb it. In the 1950s, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first human beings to climb to the summit of Everest. The half-century since Hillary and Norgay’s achievement has seen a lot of interest in mountaineering. Jon Krakauer, the author of the book, grew up worshipping Hillary, Norgay, and other mountaineers, and since his late teens, he’s been an accomplished mountain climber. Krakauer notes that, in recent decades, Everest has inspired a surprising amount of tourism: expert climbers lead guided expeditions up to the summit, charging their clients huge sums of money. In 1996, Krakauer made an arrangement with Outside magazine to write a feature article on the growing commercialization of Everest mountaineering. Into Thin Air is about Krakauer’s expedition to climb Everest, which resulted in a notorious catastrophe.
In March of 1996, Krakauer flies to Kathmandu, where he meets his guide, Rob Hall. Hall is a famous mountaineer, known for being extremely cautious and orderly with his clients. Krakauer meets some of the other people who’ll be climbing Everest with Hall, including Beck Weathers and Peter Hutchinson, both doctors, Yasuko Namba, a Japanese personnel director, and Doug Hansen, a postal worker. Krakauer gets along fairly well with his teammates, but he feels strangely disconnected from them, in part because most of them are exceedingly wealthy, and have had little actual experience climbing mountains. One notable exception is Doug Hansen, who has succeeded in paying the $65,000 permit to climb Everest with the help of a local elementary school. The previous year, Hansen attempted to climb Everest with Hall, but was forced to turn back due to an impending storm. This year, Hansen is determined to reach the summit.
Hall’s team also includes many Sherpa mountaineers. The Sherpa are a small ethnic group native to the Himalayas. Because most Sherpas grow up in high altitude, they’re natural climbers. Krakauer notes that Everest tourism has ruined some Sherpa communities and replaced them with hotels and lodges. He also points out that Sherpas, in spite of their skill at climbing, are disproportionately likely to die while climbing Everest. This is probably because many Sherpas work for climbing expeditions, and aren’t given the same high treatment as paying clients.
There are many other teams climbing Everest around the same time as Hall’s team. Scott Fischer, Hall’s friendly rival in the mountaineering business, is leading his own team to the summit, including a celebrity client, Sandy Hill Pittman, a well-known socialite. Fischer has a reputation for being more laid-back and easygoing than Hall. There is a Taiwanese team, led by a man named Makalu Gau; the previous year, the Taiwanese team had a serious accident while climbing Mount McKinley, resulting in the death of a team member. There is also a South African team, headed by an unlikeable man named Ian Woodall. Woodall initially assembled an impressive, diverse team of climbers; however, his boorishness and argumentativeness caused most of the climbers to resign, leaving Woodall with second-rate climbers. Finally, there is an IMAX team making a movie about Mount Everest; the team is led by David Breshears, an old friend of Krakauer’s. Of these teams, Hall’s is by far the most prepared and organized—in other words, the team one would least expect to suffer a serious accident.
Hall’s team proceeds with the expedition. They arrive at a Base Camp at the bottom of Everest, and for the next few weeks, they undergo a series of exercises designed to adjust their bodies to the rising elevation of the mountain. Hall slowly leads his team from Base Camp to Camp One, which is higher up, and then to Camps Two and Three. Along the way, Krakauer develops friendships with Doug Hansen, as well as Andy Harris, a likeable young guide. He also begins to respect his teammates more and more: although Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba are clearly amateurs, they’re sincere, motivated people. On the way up the mountain, Krakauer and his peers suffer from frequent bouts of nausea, dizziness, and dehydration, brought about by altitude sickness as well as the physical exertion of climbing. Krakauer has always loved the feeling of independence and freedom that mountaineering affords him, but he finds it difficult to savor the thrill of climbing Everest, because he’s part of a big group.
On Scott Fischer’s team, one of Fischer’s hired guides, Anatoli Boukreev, proves himself to be a highly talented, but strangely neglectful guide. Although it’s his job to help the weaker climbers up the mountain, Boukreev climbs ahead of everyone else, claiming that if the clients need his help that badly, they shouldn’t be on Everest at all. As a result of Boukreev’s negligence, Fischer has to work twice as hard, and, in spite of his vast experience as a climber, begins to suffer from exhaustion and altitude sickness.
By the beginning of May, Fischer and Hall’s teams, as well as the Taiwanese team, have reached Camp Four, very close to the summit of Everest. Hall announces that he and Fischer will be climbing to the summit on May 10, but unbeknownst to either of them, the Taiwanese team is planning on climbing up on the 10th as well. In preparation for the final ascent, Hall encourages his clients to breathe condensed oxygen from special canisters; this will strengthen their bodies and protect them from hypothermia and other altitude-related problems. Krakauer notices that Boukreev doesn’t use supplemental oxygen, perhaps because of his machismo and self-confidence, neither of which is uncommon among professional mountaineers.
On May 10, the teams set out for the summit. Krakauer makes it to the summit of Everest before 2 pm, the cutoff time Hall has suggested (but not confirmed) for his team; however, he runs low on oxygen, and has to turn back almost immediately. Meanwhile, other members of the team, including Hutchinson, decide to turn back earlier rather than risk being on the summit past 2 pm. Shortly after 2 pm, storm clouds appear on the horizon, and soon, there’s a massive snowstorm on the summit of Everest. Krakauer is able to make it back to Camp Four in spite of the storm. On the way back to the tent, he passes someone who he believes to be Andy Harris, and points him in the direction of the tents, not realizing that this person is suffering from severe oxygen deprivation, and can barely function. When Krakauer reaches the tent, he falls sound asleep.
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Krakauer doesn’t realize it at the time, but most of the other members of his team and Fischer’s team have ben caught in a dangerous snowstorm. In part because Hall didn’t confirm a cut-off time, in part because Fischer is easygoing with his clients, and in part because of the overall stress and confusion brought on by oxygen deprivation, the climbers become highly disorganized. Scott Fischer, exhausted and oxygen-deprived, blunders off in the wrong direction, and many of Hall’s clients, including Beck Weathers, Yasuko Namba, and Doug Hansen—as well as Rob Hall himself—become lost in the storm.
At this point, it becomes impossible to know for sure what happens to some of Krakauer’s peers and teammates. Anatoli Boukreev, who, as before, has climbed ahead of his clients and made it back to Camp Four, bravely goes out into the storm to search for stranded clients, along with Neal Beidleman, a guide for Scott Fischer’s team. Beidleman and Boukreev succeed in saving several lives, including Makalu Gau’s. Boukreev also finds the dead body of Scott Fischer, which he is forced to leave in the snow.
How do i download multiple files from dropbox. In the absence of Rob Hall, the de facto leader of Hall’s team becomes Peter Hutchinson. Hutchinson organizes the remaining members of the team into a search party, and they succeed in finding the bodies of Yasuko Namba and Beck Weathers. However, when they find Namba and Weathers, barely alive, the group makes the agonizing decision to leave them in the snow, since they’re almost certainly going to die, and the group needs to conserve its resources.
Back at Camp Four, Hutchinson and the others radio for help. Base Camp sends a team of Sherpas up to Camp Four to help, and the group begins a descent. As the group is about to descend, Beck Weathers appears outside of Camp Four. Despite being left for dead, Weathers miraculously found the strength to get up and walk back to camp. Though Krakauer wants to stay at Camp Four to take care of Weathers, Hutchinson convinces him that he needs to begin the descent or risk dying himself.
The team descends, and, once the storm dies down, helicopters arrive to take Gau and Beck Weathers to the hospital. Many climbers have died in the storm, including Yasuko Namba, Scott Fischer, Doug Hansen, Andy Harris, and Rob Hall. Krakauer is overcome with guilt: if he hadn’t gone to sleep when he reached Camp Four, he could have saved the lives of Andy Harris and Yasuko Namba. Krakauer publishes his article on the Everest climb for Outside magazine, and immediately becomes the target of much vitriol from the deceased climbers’ family members. He continues to struggle with survivor’s guilt, and finds it difficult to open up with other people about his feelings. He meets with Neal Beidleman, one of the guides for Scott Fischer’s team, and they both admit that they’re suffering from guilt for the death of Yasuko Namba.
Arn, Jackson. 'Into Thin Air Plot Summary.' LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 10 Feb 2017. Web. 7 Jun 2019.
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Arn, Jackson. 'Into Thin Air Plot Summary.' LitCharts LLC, February 10, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2019. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/into-thin-air/summary.