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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary: “Everest Base Camp April 12, 1996, 17,600 feet”

Krakauer is impressed with the enormous logistics involved in Rob’s management of their team of 26, including Sherpas and staff. This involves meticulous planning of menus, plans, weather, equipment, and medication. The team plans to make a number of ascents to higher camps—which Sherpas establish on the mountain—to acclimatize before trying to reach the summit from Camp Four in a month.

Rob’s group, including Krakauer, travel from Base Camp to Camp One, which requires the team to navigate the Khumbu Icefall: a dangerous and challenging area of enormous seracs or ice blocks. Avalanches in this area are common. Krakauer is terrified but also acknowledges the beauty of the icefall. Fixed lines— which climbers attach themself to with carabiners—and ladders are set up to assist the group. Krakauer is unable to use his instincts to steer him; he is terrified of every step.

Krakauer is shocked that Weathers, Hutchison, and Kasischke have brand new boots; mountaineering boots are initially extremely uncomfortable initially and need to be broken in to avoid painful blisters. Stuart realizes that his crampons, a traction device used to navigate icy and snowy landscapes, do not fit on his boots; Rob is able to adjust the crampons to allow them to fit over the boots. Krakauer is also apprehensive to hear that most of the group have not gone climbing more than once or twice in the previous year, doing their preparation instead in gyms. Krakauer notices that Weathers and Namba look very shaky with the ladder crossings and Namba seems to know little about using crampons.

Krakauer successfully reaches Camp One at the front of the group. He is shocked by the extreme effects of oxygen deprivation at this altitude; he feels breathless and exhausted. Back at Base Camp, Krakauer suffers from a debilitating headache most likely caused by ultraviolet radiation from the sun’s rays. Krakauer speaks to his wife Linda in Seattle via satellite phone. His coming to Everest is an obvious source of strain on their relationship; she is fearful for his safety

Chapter 7 Summary: “Camp One April 13, 1996, 19,500 feet”

Krakauer draws attention to the inexperience of many at Base Camp in 1996. He draws connections to previous ill-advised would-be mountaineers such as Canadian Earl Derman, who in 1947 arrives with no experience or money, but a burning ambition to reach the summit—he is unsuccessful and has to turn back. Englishman Maurice Wilson, who also has little climbing experience, dies on the mountain in 1933.

While his group will not reach the top without considerable assistance, Krakauer acknowledges that many at Base Camp in 1996 are seasoned and accomplished mountaineers. Krakauer introduces some of the members of Fischer’s Mountain Madness group who he encounters on the Icefall, including the legendary climber Pete Schoening and his nephew Klev Schoening, as well as ski-patroller and experienced climber Charlotte Fox. Krakauer also encounters members of the Taiwanese team, who he worriedly observes do not look experienced or capable. Also at Base Camp are a South African team, a group attempting to peak the summit with both Black and white climbers (a black person had not summited Everest in 1996). Unfortunately, the team’s leader Ian Woodall is deceptive, controlling, and extremely challenging to work with; many members of the expedition depart before even beginning preparations for the climb. Hall comments: “I think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll get through this season without something bad happening up high” (104).

Chapter 8 Summary: “Camp One, April 16, 1996, 19,500 feet”

The group rests for two days. They depart to Camp One again, this time with the intent of camping for two nights, then proceeding to Camp Two for three nights before descending. Krakauer gratefully notes that he has become more acclimated to the high altitude as the group proceeds through the Icefall, although he is still panting and exhausted. Ang Dorje, the group’s Sirdar (head Sherpa) mocks Krakauer; compared to the peak, “the air here is still very thick” (108).

Krakauer hikes from Camp One to Camp Two. He struggles with the cold before dawn and then heat from the intense sun as the day proceeds, and sees the body of a Sherpa who died three years earlier. At Camp Two, Krakauer suffers from intense altitude sickness and lies in his tent for most of the two days. On the third day, Krakauer feels slightly better and hikes above the camp. There he sees another body, that of a long-dead European climber.

Once they return to Base Camp, Krakauer spends time with some members of the South African team. Fischer learns that one of his Sherpas, Nawang Topche, was feeling weak and short of breath. Recognizing the signs of high-altitude pulmonary edema, Fischer orders Nawang to return to Base Camp. However, Nawang proceeds to Camp Two, where his condition worsens quickly: He coughs blood and is delirious, barely able to walk. Fischer’s clients are forced to care for Nawang at Camp Two; there are no guides present. They give him medication as radioed by their camp doctor and assist him down the mountain. Nawang seems to be recovering, but suddenly his condition worsens. He is too weak to be escorted down from Base Camp. Weather makes a helicopter rescue impossible, and Nawang is carried to Periche in a basket. Nawang suffers from cardiac arrest which leaves him brain damaged. He dies in a Kathmandu hospital in June.

At Base Camp, Krakauer encounters Sandy Hill Pittman, a controversial socialite from Manhattan who has laptops, gourmet food, CD-ROM players, chocolate Easter eggs, and an espresso maker brought up to Base Camp for her. Sherpa runners arrive with copies of fashion magazines.

Chapter 9 Summary: “Camp Two, April 28, 1996, 21,300 feet”

The group climbs from Base Camp directly to Camp Two during their third and final acclimation hike. Krakauer awakes in his tent at 4 am at Camp Two. Krakauer and Hansen, who share a tent, struggle through the night, feeling breathless and unwell in the high altitude. The group leaves for Camp Three, needing to travel up the steep Lhotse Face. Krakauer climbs up the face using a jumar, a device which allows a climber to propel up a slope. He is freezing and losing feeling in his toes. Rob orders the group to abandon their climb to Camp Three and return to Camp Two. Many members of the group find that they have been injured by the cold when they return to camp, including Doug, who suffers incipient frostbite on his toes and a frozen larynx.

A disagreement arises over which team’s Sherpas are required to erect ropes on the Lhotse face, causing a fall-out and ill will between Rob’s team and the South African team. A romance develops between two expeditioners. This causes the highly superstitious Sherpas concern—“somebody has been sauce-making. Make bad luck. Now storm is coming” (131). The Sherpas do not believe that anything “unclean,” such as sex outside of marriage, should be allowed to happen on the sacred slopes of Sagarmatha. One of the Sherpas who disapproves of the extramarital romance is Lopsang Jangbu, the charismatic and highly regarded young climbing sirdar of Fischer’s Mountain Madness group. He has high hopes of his career with Fischer.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Lhotse Face, April 29, 1996, 23,400 feet”

Most of Hall’s group, including Krakauer, make another attempt to reach Camp Three after the storm has abated the following day. Krakauer considers, as he ascends the Lhotse Face, that ascending Mount Everest is characterized by one's ability to endure pain and suffering. As he observes his fellow climbers ascending determinedly behind him, Krakauer reflects that he has grown to like and admire his teammates’ tenacity more and more, even Beck Weathers, who he initially characterized as arrogant and brashly Republican, a political viewpoint not shared by Kranauer.

In the midst of individuals he has grown to admire, Krakauer feels guilty about being a journalist. He feels that perhaps it’s unfair to observe and report on them. In an interview, Beck later confirms that Krakauer’s presence added a lot of stress for the group members, and likely for Rob and the other guides as well.

Krakauer reaches Camp Three, located halfway up the Lhotse Face. Krakauer has a headache and hopes that it is the heat and a regular case of altitude sickness and not high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), which a member of another group, Dale Kruse, recently suffered from at Camp Three. As the temperature lowers, Krakauer is reassured that he is not suffering from HACE. The next day the group returns to Camp Two, where they spend a night, and then climb back down to Base Camp, their acclimatization climbs now completed. Krakauer is still afflicted with the cough he developed in Lobuje; he also has lost muscle mass and fat. Hall ensures that the chosen summit day for his group will not be overcrowded with other teams. It is decided that Hall and Fischer’s groups will summit on May 10.

Chapters 6-10 Analysis

Krakauer draws attention to the duality of the landscape—it is both immensely beautiful and dangerous. The icefall epitomizes this duality. Krakauer draws attention to the immense risks of hiking through the area—“as the glacier moved, crevasses would sometimes compress, buckling ladders like toothpicks” (83). At the same time, Krakauer marvels at the “vertical maze of crystalline blue stalagmites” (83). His tone of awe and wonder, combined with his fearfulness, conveys his respect for the landscape and his awareness of his own vulnerability and insignificance within it. This connects to a recurrent theme: The Immense Power of Nature and the Frailty of Man.

Krakauer’s fear and constant acknowledgement of the risks of climbing Everest—“I felt myself wince with each pop and rumble from the glacier’s shifting depths—” also foreshadow the imminent disaster (81). Rob Hall echoes this foreshadowing: “I think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll get through this season without something bad happening up high” (104). It creates an eerie effect; Rob Hall is one of the climbers who will die and seems to be predicting his own death. Hall’s falling out with the South African team also foreshadows disaster, as this team will be unwilling to share their radio to help in Hall’s rescue (131).

Krakauer reevaluates the beliefs which he held as a young man, that any rich individual could be ferried up a relatively easygoing trail by an experienced team. He realizes that the commercialization question is more complex and nuanced than he had originally imagined; it is evident that he has infinitely more respect for those who have safely reached the summit than he did as a twenty-year-old man, even for those who have the help of an experienced team, like him. He reflects on his previous misconceptions and ponders that “the question of who belongs on Everest and who doesn’t is more complicated than it might first appear” (95).

The bodies Krakauer sees in the snow also foreshadow disaster, serving as a reminder of the undertaking’s life-threatening risk. Furthermore, although the exchange is light-hearted, The head Sidar Ang Dorje’s comment—that the air at Camp One “is still very thick” compared to that of the peak—foreshadows the hypoxia which will overwhelm even experienced climbers during the summit attempt (108). Ngawang’s rapid deterioration and death from HAPE forewarn of health threats: “Ngawang was delirious, stumbling like a drunk, and coughing up pink, blood-laced froth” (113). His death reminds readers that even individuals with extensive climbing experience can succumb to altitude-induced complications.

After his journey to Everest, Krakauer is convinced that commercial expeditions of relatively inexperienced climbers, using guides and bottled oxygen, are inadvisable, as revealed in the final chapter. To convince readers of this, Krakauer details Ngawang’s death in chapters 5-10 and refers to his own group’s relative inexperience with high altitudes. The juxtaposition of the group’s inexperience and Ngawang’s death make catastrophe feel almost inevitable. Krakauer is shocked when “Stuart […] discovered that his crampons didn’t even fit his new boots” and to see “Beck, Stuart, and Lou unpacking brand-new mountaineering boots that, by their own admission, had scarcely been worn” (78). His apprehension is solidified when he discovers that “few of my fellow clients had had the opportunity to go climbing more than once or twice in the previous year” (79). Confirming his lack of confidence in his team, Krakauer observes that “Yasuko seemed to know nothing about using crampons […] Andy […] spent the whole morning coaching her on basic ice-climbing techniques” (85). Krakauer critiques the underprepared members of the group; his skepticism seems to be confirmed in the events which unfold on May 10.

Krakauer pairs observations of his teammates with historical examples of woefully unprepared climbers to examine the mentality of people determined to reach the top of the world—“it sometimes seemed as though half the population at Base Camp was clinically delusional” (92). Spending time acclimating in the oxygen-thin air above Base Camp worsens the state of the already ill-prepared climbers; Krakauer and his teammates lose muscle mass and fat, and any pre-existing health conditions worsen dramatically, such as Doug’s throat and Krakauer’s cough. Krakauer observes that “most of the other climbers were in similarly battered shape—it was simply a fact of life on Everest” (145). The compromised health of both groups, as well as some of the guides, contributes to the disaster which takes place.

There is a forewarning of the lethal effects of the storm on May 10; in the freezing wind the group must retreat to the relative safety of Camp Two, frostbitten and injured. Krakauer reflects that “even without unleashing the worst it could dish out, the mountain had sent us scurrying for safety” (130). The reader is invited to consider the effects that a more extreme storm higher on the mountain may have.

Krakauer examines the repercussions of Everest’s commercialization in the controversial character of Sandy Hall Pitman. Pitman is characterized as the epitome of Everest’s commercialization; she hires others to haul piles of luxuries and equipment up for her, like the runners from Kathmandu who deliver the latest copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Krakauer presents her as the antithesis of a traditional, independent climber and positions readers to question whether money should allow an ill-prepared individual to “buy” their way up Everest in comfort and style.

Krakauer reflects on his own role his teammates’ discomfort; he invites readers to consider how this might have impacted the disaster. Beck concedes in an interview, when speaking of Krakauer’s presence on the expedition, that: “It added a lot of stress […] I was concerned that it might drive people further than they wanted to go. And it might even for the guides. I mean, they want to get people on top of the mountain because, once again, they’re going to be written about, and they’re going to be judged” (142). Krakauer’s inclusion of this implies that he feels some culpability in the disaster.