Mt. Everest disaster from 1996 still chilling Part 1

My oldest son bought me three used books by Jon Krakauer for Christmas gifts and I was unable to put the first one down once I’d read the first page.

Into Thin Air, a personal account of a 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, sounded familiar, perhaps because I’d seen TV shows in the last few years about the same event, and I was immediately hooked even though I remembered many details related to the outcome.

I wasn’t hooked because I’m a mountain climber.


[Photo link]

Far from it. My low tolerance for risk wouldn’t allow me to climb higher than Base Camp (17,600 ft.) on Everest (29,028 ft.).

Of course, if I became light-headed, I might try for Camp One (19,500 ft.) or Camp Two (21,300 ft.). But that would be as far as I would go.

(As a former marathoner - 13 in all - I’m not confident I could develop suitable strength and endurance to even reach the Base Camp.)

I wasn’t hooked because I wanted to revisit the disaster and read about gory details.

My main reason was to see if there were answers to questions I had about the climb:

What drives people beyond a point of (what I consider) reasonable risk?

Could the disaster, in which several lives were lost, have been prevented?

Would I try to even reach Base Camp?

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Part 2 to soon follow

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