topics: |  adventure | mountaineering | everest

Excerpts

Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in
Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder
against the wind, and stared absently at the vastness of Tibet. I
understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath
my feet was a spectacular sight... now that I was finally here,
actually on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the
energy to care. ... I hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours. ... At 29,028
feet up in the troposphere, so little oxygen was reaching my brain
that my mental capacity was that of a slow child. Under the
circumstances, I was incapable of feeling much of anything except cold
and tired.

-
"[Hillary wondered] rather dully whether we would have enough strength
left to get through. I cut around the back of another hump and saw
that the ridge ahead dropped away and we could see far into Tibet. I
looked up and there above us was a rounded snow cone. A few whacks of
the ice-axe, 
a few cautious steps, and Tensing and I were on top." [May 29, 1953]
- p.17

-
In New Zealand, Hillary is one of the most honoured figures in the nation;
his craggy visage even stares out from the face of the five dollar bill. - p.34 

--
Here at the base camp -- the mere toe of Everest -- I was already
higher than I'd ever been in my life [17,600 ft] ...
When confronted with an increase in altitude, the human body adjusts
in manifold ways, from increasing respiration, to changing the pH of
the blood, to radically boosting the number of oxygen-carrying red
blood cells -- a conversion that takes weeks to
complete. [acclimatization] -p.69

"To turn away that close to the summit, [about 28,700 ft, abt 60 min
from the peak]" Hall mused with a shake of his head on May 6 as Kropp
plodded past Camp Two on his way down from the mountain. "That
showed incredibly good judgment on young Goran's part. I'm impressed
-- considerably more impressed, actually, than if he'd continued
climbing and made the top."  [Goran, who had soloed from Stockholm on
a bicycle (seven months, several robberies) and was climbing alone and
without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support. He finally summitted on May
22 along with the IMAX team. Four days later, Hall was to disregard
his own advice and go well past the return point, not so much for
himself, but also for client Doug Hansen, who had had to return from
striking distance the previous year, and had been cajoled and
discounted by Hall for this second attempt.]

The night had a cold, phantasmal beauty that intensified as we
climbed. More stars than I had ever seen smeared the frozen sky. A gibbous
moon rose over the shoulders of the 27,824 foot Makalu, washing the slope
beneath my boots in ghostly light. - p.165.
	[They started for the summit at midnight - when the storm
	abated. Anyway sleep is impossible. Most people reached summit
	around 2PM-5PM.  Storm broke shortly after 5.]

Suffice it to say that [Everest] has the most steep ridges and
appalling precipices that I have ever seen, and that all the talk of
an easy snow slope is a myth... My darling, this is a thrilling
business altogether, I can't tell you how it possesses me, and what a
prospect it is. And the beauty of it all!
	- George Leigh Mallory, letter to his wife in 1921, three years
	before June 8, 1924 when he and Irvine were seen climbing on the
	very upper reaches in blizzard, before disappearing forever.

Plodding slowly up the last few steps to the summit, I had the sensation of
being underwater, of life moving at quarter speed. And then I found myself
atop a slender wedge of ice, adorned with a discarded oxygen cylinder and a
battered aluminium survey pole, with nowhere higher to climb. - p.180

[On the way back, out of bottled oxygen for some time, in a gale] I was so
far beyond ordinary exhaustion that I experienced a queer detachment from
my body, as if I were observing my descent from a few feet overhead. I
imagined I was dressed in a green cardigan and wingtips. And though the
gale was generating a wind-chill in excess of seventy below zero
Fahrenheit, I felt strangely, disturbingly warm.  [He sat down at 6:30 PM
within 200 vertical feet and 650 horizontal feet of Camp four] I just sat
there as the storm roared around me, letting my mind drift, doing nothing
for perhaps forty-five minutes.  - p.192

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw
breath . . . I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I
have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more
feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles
out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just
lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I
make a few steps again.
	- Reinhold Messner, The Crystal Horizon. First oxygen-less ascent
	w/ Peter Habeler, May 8, 1978, and then again, solo with no
	support, from the Tibetan side on August 20, 1980.

--
Died 1996: Ngawang Topche (sherpa), Chen Yu-Nan (Taiwan team), Doug
Hansen (client-Hall), Scott Fischer (org-Mountain Madness), Andy
Harris (guide), Yasuko Namba (client-Hall), Rob Hall (org-Adventure
Consultants), Bruce Herrod (S African team), Tsewang Smanla, Tsewang
Paljor, Dorje Morop (ITBP team), Reinhard Wlasich (two-person non-O2
team) - Total: 12. 

Climbed the peak- 84. 
(About an average ratio - 144 deaths from 630 successful summitting since
1921-1996). 

blurb:
"Into Thin Air" is the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season
in the history of Mount Everest -- told by acclaimed journalist, and
bestselling author of "Into the Wild" and "Eiger Dreams, " Jon Krakauer. On
assignment for "Outside" magazine, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to
the Himalayas to report on the growing commercialization of the planet's
highest mountain. When he reached the summit in the early afternoon of May
10, 1996, he hadn't slept in over 57 hours and was reeling from oxygen
depletion. Twenty other climbers were pushing for the summit, and no one had
noticed the clouds filling the sky. Six hours later, and 3,000 feet lower,
Krakauer collapsed in his tent. The next morning he learned that six of the
climbers hadn't made it back. Even though one climber in four dies attempting
to reach the summit, business is booming as guides take the rich and the
adventurous up the mountain for a fee of $65,000. Krakauer examines what it
is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to
throw caution to the wind and willingly subject themselves to so much danger,
hardship, and expense.Written with emotional clarity, Krakauer's account of
what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.