Book Reports On Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air is author Jon Krakauer’s personal account of how his first attempt at climbing Mt. Everest resulted a storm in 1996. Jon is hired by an adventure magazine to write about the treacherous climb to the world’s tallest point, and that in itself could be a nail biting thriller. Add in the giant storm that caused the death of multiple people on the climb, the intensity is multiplied. Jon felt the same way, because he decided to write this book instead of a simple article. The story revolves around Jon, the friendships, heartbreaks, and pure fear that he went through while climbing mount everest. The two main guides that Jon associates with in his group of 26 are Rob Hall and Andy Harris. Hall is the most experienced of the group, and

Andy Harris, the second guide, strikes Jon as an extremely loose cannon. This is because Harris has never summited everest. This causes Jon to see Harris as just a fellow climber, not a guide. In the first third of the book, Jon seems be get increasingly worried about the climb. The subtle things like hearing about how unqualified hikers can pay enough money to be taken on the expedition, or seeing how some of his group members are wearing brand new hiking shoes (you are supposed to break them in on easy climbs first,) make Jon very paranoid about the upcoming climb. He also sees how his group members (particularly Andy Harris) are getting very sick and frail even at base camp, which is only the first station. Jon knows it is going to get worse, and he is afraid that many of his fellow climbers won’t be ready. I predict that Jon’s paranoia is going to get increasingly worse throughout the book, and that the moments of sheer enjoyment of climbing will get fewer and fewer. I also believe that Harris will be one of the people that will die once the storm hits, due to the fact that he is very inexperienced for the job he

The main lesson would be that there are consequences for actions. While summiting, the guide Rob Hall had set a turn around time at 2:00 p.m for his group. This would mean that by 2, everyone in his group had to turn around, even if they reached the summit. About half the group continued ascending after 2, including Hall. Some summited as late as 4:00. Almost all of these people ran into trouble. Many were lost in the storm, or fell down crevices. Hall got stuck at the Summit due to the storm, and there were many failed rescue attempts to get him. One of the attempts resulted in the death of the person who was trying to get to Hall. Hall’s body was found 10 days later, once the storm had cleared. I was also unfortunately right about Harris. Jon thought he saw Harris reach base camp, but it turns out that that was a different climber named Martins. Jon had so much altitude sickness that he could not tell who was who. Jon also remembers that he had left Harris at camp 4, because he could not carry him all the way down. No one knows what happened to Harris, and Jon blames himself for that. This story reminded me about the Titanic a little bit. In both cases, there were clear signs of danger, and clear rules to follow. In Titanic, the crew was supposed to read all the telegrams, and then they could have seen the ice berg warnings. In this case, there were clearly storm clouds approaching, yet