Reaction of Into Thin Air

I am writing this blog post as a reaction to the personal recollection by author John Krakaeur of a disasterous event that took place on Mount Everest. I am more so reflecting the desire, pride, and grit of the individuals that took to this extreme endeavor. Of course, as we now know, it turned out to be one of the worst things to ever occur on Mount Everest. But, when the set off on this excursion led by the legendary mountain climber Rob Hall, they all had the same goal. To succesful climb to the summit and back of the tallest mountain in the entire world. This is a lot easier said than done. Hours upon hours of training and preparation go into this kind of trip, and this is something that these people all felt they could accomplish. Before I ever read this book I never thought too much on how difficult, life threatning, scary, and intimidating climbing these mountains are but after reading this book and watching the movie, Filling the Void, I learned these people who set out to do this are the real deal to say the least. They risk everything, losing there family, their life, their limbs, anything. All for the accomplishment to say that they conquered something that most people only see on TV. Something that most people don't even dream to set out and climb these extreme mountains. These are a rare breed of people who are willing to risk everything to accomplish what they feel is life consuming the amount of time and thought they think about it.

Nick

Into Thin Air: Rob Hall

Rob Hall

   I thought that this post would be appropriate if it was about Rob Hall because in the chapters we read you learn a lot about Hall's personality. Rob was born January 14th in 1961, growing up in New Zealand he was instantly attracted and exposed to mountain climbing. In 1988 Rob Hall met his climbing partner and best friend Gary Ball. Soon after they met they decided that they were going to climb the seven summits, but they were going to do it in seven months or less. They started with Mount Everest in May of 1990 and climbed their final peak, Vinson Massif, in December just hours before the deadline. Following their success both me saw that there was no way to continue to get sponsorships so they quit professional climbing and opened Adventure Consultants. The first year of the companies opening they successfully guided 6 people to the top of Everest. Tragically in 1993 during a high altitude climb Gary Ball developed cerebral edema and passed away. Hall continued to run the company following Ball's death and since the opening of Adventure Consultants had successfully guided 39 climbers to the top of Everest. Unfortunately for all the great things that Hall accomplished, to the outside world he was best known for the 1996 disaster on Everest that we are reading about in Into Thin Air. To the climbing community he was a well respected man for his climbing abilities but also for his decision making in times of hardship.

         In the three chapters that I read you can see that Rob Hall is more concerned with his team getting down safely rather than himself. Base camp keeps radioing to Hall telling him to leave Doug Hansen and descend on his own but Rob will not do that. Also the book talks about how not very many people can survive a night in the open on Everest, but Hall did. While he was confused and cold he seemed fairly normal up until his last words to his wife where he assured her not to worry so much. My take on this disaster is somebody didn't follow their job. If the whole team had turned around at the designated time they may have been able to reach camp 4 before the storm became "hurricane like". I think Hall is partially to blame because he wanted Hansen to summit so badly that he actually put him on his back and carried him to the top. This string of unfortunate events was severely unlucky for Mountain Madness and Adventure Consultants because I honestly believe that they could have made it out alive if everyone had stuck to the plan.

Into Thin Air Ch. 10-14

             Chapters 10 through 14 of Into Thin Air, dont really deal with our topics of race, ethnicity and religion. However, throughout the book there is mention of a number of different nations that attempt or have attempted Everest. In Krakauer's group there are the native, Nepal Sherpas aalong with the New Zealanders such as Rob Hall and Andy Harris. Mike Groom is from Australia, Yasuko Namba is a Japanese woman, Dr. Stuart Hutchinson is Canadian and Jon Krakauer is one of a few Americans on the Adventure Consultants Expedition. There are seperate expeditions from the nations of Taiwan and South Africa, New Zealand and Malaysia. There are smaller expeditions from Sweden, Norway, Tibet, India and Japan. Other individuals that went for the summit in 1996 represent the nations of Russia, Spain, France, Austria, Great Britain, Australia, China, Denmark and Finland. I found on this website, http://www.factmonster.com/spot/everest2.html, that more than 4,500 people have summited Everest and more than 80 nations have had a representative reach the top.
               I think this great variety of different races that share this same goal says a lot about people in general. People have this desire to climb Everest for different reasons. The Sherpas view the mountain as more a religous monument. They place their  flags at the summit and their ability to reach this is based on their Gods and how pleased they are. Other countries, such as Great Britain, climbed Everest to claim the mountain as a source of national pride. The flag they placed on the summit was not one which represented their religon, but their pride in their country. Although the reasons for the climb vary, it seems that all of these nations view Everest as a great challenge to be conquered. I think this shows the way people view the Earth. In some ways, it seems that people, no matter what race, view Earth as a set of obstacles put here for humans to try and conquer. I think it shows the self center of humanity in the way that they view nature as there own personal jungle gym. This is obviously not the case for all humans, because many of the characters in this book show true respect for the mountain. I may have strayed from the topic a bit, but I think this is an important thing to recognize. If every nation and race fails to view nature with the respect that it deserves, there is an obvious problem with humanity.

-Jordan

Into Thin Air- Chapters 8 & 9

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            In chapters 8 and 9 of Into Thin Air, I decided to focus my attention on the culture of the Sherpas. The definition of Sherpa is “a member of the Himalayan people living in Nepal and Tibet who are famous for their skill as mountaineers.” On page 108, we are introduced to Ang Dorje, the well-respected sirdar (head Sherpa) of the Adventure Consultants expedition. Krakauer says that Rob Hall “considered Ang Dorje’s role crucial to the success of our expedition” (110).

            Krakauer makes it very clear that the Sherpas play a very important role in climbing Mount Everest, but it seems like they are not always treated so. Hall makes a comment about Fischer’s consideration for Ngawang’s illness in which he says, “If it had been one of Scott’s clients who was this sick, instead of a Sherpa, I don’t think he would have been treated so haphazardly” (117). Not only did Fischer not make a great effort to save his life, but Ngawang himself resisted treatment.

            Ngawang’s refusal to accept his own dire situation was interesting to me, but it is just the way of the Sherpa culture. Krakauer explains this by saying, “But there is an element of machismo in the Sherpa culture that makes many men extremely reluctant to acknowledge physical infirmities. Sherpas aren’t supposed to get altitude illness…Those who do become sick and openly acknowledge it, moreover, will often be blacklisted from future employment on expeditions” (113). What do you guys think? Are the Sherpas willing to risk their lives because it is part of their culture? Or is it that moreover they feel pressure to secure their jobs with Western society?

-Amanda

Into Thin Air Chapters 6 and 7

Like Shane talked about in the last post, neither race, ethnicity, and religion are common themes or issues throughout this text. But in trying to relate big overarching themes of some of these categories, what Krakeaur and his team led by Rob Hall, experiences in their excursion fall into them. One of the themes that relates with religion along with something that was an issue when they prepare to climb the mountain is faith. Faith is probably one of the most important things to posses when one is going to experience an extreme feat, and during chapter 6, Krakeaur seems to have been lacking faith. He is climbing with people who he is unfamiliar with, and when he sees that some of the climbers put on new and unused boots in begining to climb it he loses a lot of faith as well, and before the reader even gets to the part where everything goes bad, the lack of faith he has plays a huge foreshadow of things to come. Faith is one of the key aspects of religion, if one has faith in a religion, it means that it is their guide in life, if one doesn't have faith, then it has no role in their life. Faith is not something that one can just create, it is what they truely believe. The lack of faith that was seen by Krakeaur may not have been the exact reason why their trek went "into thin air", but it certainly played a role in it and also in the development of the book, it shows a grim foreshadow of things to come. 

Nick

Into Thin Air: Free Climbing

Free Climbing

         After reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer I knew that my blog post was probably not going to have anything to do with race, ethnicity, or religion. While I am sure that there is a way that you could twist the story and relate it to some sort of religious views, I decided to take Professor Heaney's idea and just post about something in the reading. With that being said I decided to do my post about free climbing. Free climbing is is a type of rock climbing in which the climber uses only hands, feet and other parts of the body to ascend. I remember watching a 60 minutes on free climbing and it has always been something that has interested me ever since.

      Solo climbing is not the same as free climbing because you can solo climb with safety gear while free climbing is generally done with nothing but hands and feet. I say generally because some people implement ropes in their climb in case they fall, but I'm willing to bet that that is considered cheating in the free climbing community. It has to be one of the most physically challenging feats in the world. While im sure they take the time to plan out their routes up to the top there is no way it could ever be classified as "easy", except for maybe the people who do it. I watched one video with Alex Honnold in Yosemite where he solo free climbs the Regular NW face of Half-Dome. It is incredible to think that he made this climb of over 2000 feet in under 3 hours with no safety gear or anything. After watching all these videos I heard something in one of them that really makes you understand why they do this. One free climber named Dan Osman would always be asked by reporters if he had a death wish; his response was simply "No I have a life wish". In the book Jon was a climber but he was not a free climber. I can say that he connects with the people in a way that shows that he lives for that feeling of freedom. While he does not dedicate his life to being an accomplished climber it seems that he lives for that feeling he gets while he is climbing. After hearing that It makes me realize that these people who many would consider maniacs for what they do are nothing more than a person who is looking for those moments in life that take their breathe away, and this is how they accomplish that.

- Shane Wilson

Reminder to Professor Heaney-

Just a reminder that we had a week off from blogging, which included "The Yellow Wallpaper". Thanks!