The majority of the stickiest Everest myths, however, were seeded by Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s brilliant first-person account of an unusually heart-wrenching day. It remains the book about guiding on high peaks, and the lens through which just about all Everest stories continue to be viewed. But Krakauer’s scorching indictment of overcrowding, dangerously smug guides, and bumbling client climbers was written in 1996, only four years after guides first cracked the code on Everest.
