Book Club Pages

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Another Covid bookclub so three us were present including Lynn Smith who kindly connected us to Zoom so that Liz Dobson and Tina Boonyai could join us. This is the story of a disaster unfolding for climbers during a time of overcrowding and commercialisation of Everest in 1996. It is written by Jon Krakauer - a journalist and a climber who was on assignment from Outside Magazine to write the story of his experience in a guided climb group. He joined a guided climb led by New Zealander Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants who was the first person to conceive the idea of guided climbs to get groups to the top of Everest and back safely, despite many of the clients having limited skills and experience for such a task. That spring in 1996, Everest was crowded with expeditions from Taiwan, America, New Zealand, South Africa and more. According to Jon Krakauer this crowding was the first contributing factor to the disaster and the commercialisation of Everest was noted also to be a contributing factor. Success at getting climbers to the summit one year meant more climbers the following year. Rob Hall and an American, Scott Fischer, leader of Mountain Madness joined up because of their concerns about the numbers of climbers and the lack of ability of some groups to cooperate eg on which days to go to the summit. Eventually things did start to go wrong, eg two of their Sherpas were supposed to attach the fixed ropes but one of them went to do the bidding of an NBC anchor on Scott Fischer’s team basically holding her hand. As a consequence, the other Sherpa didn’t do the fixed ropes either and this resulted in holdups and very cold and irritable climbers. As the teams got closer to the summit some climbers were in bad shape and did turn back but then Rob Hall was persuaded by a client (who was on his third attempt at the summit), against his better judgement, to pass the turn around location and they were both caught in a sudden storm. Their plight was then compounded by the realisation that there were no full oxygen bottles. Another climber went back to help but unfortunately the three of them died on the mountain. By this time, Scott Fischer was also in a bad way having been affected by the altitude and this also killed him. Eight climbers from those teams died on the mountain on May 10th 1996. Many of the others were also in a bad way. One Russian man climbed back to bring in as many people as he could. Jon Krakauer, who was down at base camp, was unable to help because of snow blindness.

’I was shocked at how self centred and callous they were - walking past people needing help’ ‘It was interesting - not a book I would have picked up’ ‘I enjoyed it. It was informative and I liked the way Jon Krakauer wrote’ Another of us remarked on the way the Russians just kept going out to rescue people though not in good shape themselves. ‘I found this book an easy read, well-written, informative, fast moving, and I marvelled at courage of climbers climbing a mountain because it is there’ ‘There is an excellent film on Netflix based on this book’ Laura’s husband has climbed Everest and it was thought it might be interesting to hear his thoughts when they return to Bangkok.

Scores

5 - 7/10 and 1 - 9/10

I was hoping that we would have the next meeting, and my last in Bangkok, here at Urbana - as I leave here at the end of July. However my apartment is upside down with me packing. Lynn Smith has kindly offered to step in as coordinator when she comes back from the UK in October time. In the meantime Liz D, already wearing many hats with the BWG will cover.

I spoke yesterday with Giuseppe at Trattoria Delina and he has agreed to host the bookclub on Tuesday mornings. We have to provide our own biscuits.

We are in strange times- at least 8 bookclub members are in UK and EU and a few more are in self quarantine at the moment. Therefore how many will come to the next meeting is anyone’s guess. Let’s see. The next meeting will be not on Tuesday 6th but on Wednesday 7th at Delinas. We just changed the day temporarily so that a few of us can still make crackers on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday 7th we will meet at 10am-12 noon for bookclub and then follow up with the Wednesday lunch at Delinas if anyone likes that idea.

Thank you all of you for being so lovely and making the bookclub so enjoyable.

Hope to see you soon.