# Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a storm. Krakauer's expedition was led by guide Rob Hall. Other groups were trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants.

## Summary

Krakauer describes the events leading up to his eventual decision to participate in an Everest expedition in May 1996, despite having mostly given up mountain climbing years before. Krakauer was a journalist for the adventure magazine Outside, and initially his intention to climb Everest had been purely professional. He had planned to climb only as far as the mountain's base camp, and to report on the commercialization of the mountain. However, the idea of going to Everest reawakened his childhood desire to climb the mountain. Krakauer asked his editor to put off publishing the story for a year so that he could train for a climb to the summit.
From there, the book moves between describing events that took place on the mountain, and the unfolding tragedy, which occurs during the push to the summit. (The 1996 expedition season saw eight recorded deaths, including that of Krakauer's guide, Rob Hall. It also saw the third-highest recorded number of deaths on the mountain in a single day. The April 2015 Nepal earthquake had caused the most, at 21.) Krakauer concludes that essential safety methods that had been adopted over the years by experienced guides on Everest were sometimes compromised by the competition between rival guiding agencies to get their respective clients to the summit.

## Controversy

Krakauer's recounting of certain aspects of the climb generated criticism, both from some of the climb's participants and from fellow mountaineers such as Galen Rowell. Much of the criticism centers on Krakauer's account of how Anatoli Boukreev, an experienced Kazakh high-altitude climber and guide for Scott Fischer, had handled the climb. Boukreev had descended the summit before his clients did, ostensibly out of concern for their safety, in order to prepare for potential rescue efforts. Although Krakauer acknowledged that Boukreev's efforts after descending the mountain were heroic (he engaged in repeated solo rescue efforts, saving at least two climbers' lives), he questioned Boukreev's judgment during the climb, in particular his decision to descend from the summit ahead of his clients, his decision not to use supplementary oxygen, his choices of gear on the mountain and his interactions with clients. The author also acknowledged Boukreev's aforementioned accelerated descent excuse (ahead of his clients), 'in preparedness of potential rescue,' but questioned how feasible a coordinated rescue would have been executed without radio-relay (since Boukreev was without a radio, when he returned to camp). Boukreev provided a rebuttal to most of these claims in his 1997 book, The Climb.
Mountaineer Galen Rowell criticized Krakauer's account, citing numerous inconsistencies in his narrative, and observed that Krakauer had been asleep in his tent while Boukreev was rescuing other climbers. Rowell argued that not only were Boukreev's actions heroic but his judgment was also prescient: “[Boukreev] foresaw problems with clients nearing camp, noted five other guides on the peak [Everest], and positioned himself to be rested and hydrated enough to respond to an emergency. His heroism was not a fluke."
Krakauer's account has also been criticized for omitting to mention that the team members were receiving accurate daily weather forecasts and knew about the impending storm.
In Krakauer's 1999 paperback edition of Into Thin Air, he addresses some of the criticisms in a detailed postscript.

## Adaptation

Film rights for Into Thin Air were purchased by Sony almost immediately after the book's publication. The book was adapted into the TV movie Into Thin Air: Death on Everest (1997), starring Peter Horton as Scott Fischer and Christopher McDonald as Krakauer. The book and the film both contain the same strong editorial viewpoint regarding the fundamental causes of the tragedy, although the film differs sharply from the book in details regarding responsibility.
The 2015 film Everest, by director Baltasar Kormákur, depicts the same events as the book, with actor Michael Kelly portraying Krakauer. According to Kormákur, it is not based on Krakauer's book.