Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

Ok, so we're reading Into Thin Air by the man himself, Jon Krakauer.

I think we'll just use this space for the first few chapters to write down our ideas and gather thoughts for when we do a discussion. Let me know if you guys think we should try to find a way to host a forum here on my site for discussing. Maybe.

We can each have a spot on the page:

Italo's Thoughts

Before I even write anything, I want to lay down some of the stuff I'm looking for while reading this.

As some background, I just finished a book called The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt. It is a book about the same climbing season that Krakauer is writing about in Into Thin Air, from the perspective of 2 separate expeditions, Boukreev is a guide for the "Mountain Madness" expedition and Krakauer is just a journalist-client on the Adventure Consultants expedition.

Boukreev actually saved a bunch of people later in the story (I won't say more yet) from both his expedition and from others. Jon Krakauer, however, claims that Boukreev was being irresponsible in some of his actions that day and blames him for some incidents, so I want to see exactly what Krakauer has to say.

Anatoli Boukreev [Анато́лий Букре́ев] (Currently one of my climbing heroes)

Jon Krakauer

OK, that out of the way, let's read.

Chapter 1

So I guess we just start the story at the top of the mountain. It's interesting to hear everything from Krakauer's perspective, he writes in a very unique way.

I have now read a lot of accounts of trying to work and climb at high altitude and it always fascinates me how people's mental capacity changes. I guess I can imagine how it would feel, but it sounds really funny to me when I hear about them struggling with simple things.

I think if I ever got to climb like this, using an oxygen mask would really bother me. But I would probably need it.

Krakauer talks about Scott Fischer, the owner of Mountain Madness, and Anatoli Boukreev, one of the guides for that company, briefly in this chapter. That was the expedition I read about, so I know a good bit about them.

Honestly, those clouds sound really scary to see when you're climbing down. But maybe a blizzard would be fun?

Anyway, interesting start to the book.

Everything Else

I have been reading a while now without writing about it, it’s really interesting.

So they make it to base camp they start climbing, blah blah. I watched some videos yesterday of people’s experiences on Everest (would not recommend, too many AI clickbaity things) and it is so silly to see the way people climb at that altitude. So slow and exhausted looking. They also all get really bad sunburn things on their faces and in their eyes. I wanna do it.

I keep hearing that Everest is too commercialized now that people are so interested in it. I I think I would like to try to climb a mountain under my own power. So maybe I would climb a less known Himalayan mountain, with virtually no one else there. For me it’s not about climbing the tallest mountain in world, but the type of climbing there. It just sounds so enticing to me.