Into Thin Air
After reaching the top of Mount Everest, Jon Krakauer was able to descend soon enough to avoid the disastrous storm that took the lives of five other teammates. He found it useless to "recognize some greater good that's resulted from so much suffering..." In other words, he questioned if climbing up to the highest point on earth was worth dying for.
May 10, 1996 was the date set for the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition to reach the 29,028 peak of Mt. Everest. There were several other groups leaving Camp Four for the summit on the same day, and this could cause bottlenecks along the trail. But all the enthusiastic climbers had paid up to $65,000 to be guided to the summit of Mt. Everest, and nothing was going to stop them.
The guides responsible for these different groups did not enjoy competing with each other in reaching the top, even though more clients on the trail could mean more help in emergencies. Most important to them was supplying bottled oxygen for their climbers and making radio contact with the lower camps.
But no seasoned climber or expedition guide predicted the sudden storm on May 10th which took so many lives. Two of them were guides themselves, both friends of Jon Krakauer. And at the end of his account, he grieved that nearly all Everest climbers, himself included, are "surprisingly quick to abandon good judgment." Krakauer also felt remorse that he was too exhausted and sick to help those climbers who were lost in the storm.
The fact that that several climbers chose to reach the top rather than aid others along the way who were near dead, cannot be ignored. Even passing by a teammate lying dead in the frozen snow seems inhuman.
Into Thin Air is a breathtaking story, but that twelve lives were lost there in 1996 might give second thoughts to any overzealous mountain climbers.