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