Into Thin Air

by Jon Krakauer

Tibetans who lived to the north of the great mountain already had a more mellifluous name for it, Jomolungma, which translates to “goddess, mother of the world,” and Nepalis who resided to the south called the peak Sagarmatha, “goddess of the sky.”

And thus, shortly before noon on May 29, 1953, did Hillary and Tenzing become the first men to stand atop Mount Everest.

Nobody was admired more than so-called free soloists: visionaries who ascended alone, without rope or hardware.

My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.

On December 12, 1990, mere hours before their seven-month deadline was due to expire, they reached the crest of the seventh summit—the Vinson Massif, at 16,067 feet the highest point in Antarctica—to considerable fanfare throughout their homeland.

But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.

Dinner conversation was dominated by the three clients who were doctors—Stuart, John, and especially Beck, a pattern that would be repeated for much of the expedition. Fortunately, both John and Beck were wickedly funny and had the group in stitches.

heart of Sherpa country is the Khumbu, a handful of valleys draining the southern slopes of Mount Everest—a small, astonishingly rugged region completely devoid of roads, cars, or wheeled vehicles of any kind.

“For our first date I proposed going to Alaska and climbing Mount McKinley together. And she said yes.” They were married two years later.

(At Base Camp there was approximately half as much oxygen as at sea level; at the summit only a third as much.)

But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad. . . .

It was as if there were an unspoken agreement on the mountain to pretend that these desiccated remains weren’t real—as if none of us dared to acknowledge what was at stake here.

It is not uncommon for doctors to be chronic overachievers;

Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest,

* If there is a more desolate, inhospitable habitation anywhere on the planet, I hope never to see it.