Would you believe me if I told you that “Into Thin Air” was supposed to be a magazine article?

Well it was. The author Jon Krakauer who’s experience it is based off of was hired by Outside Magazine to do an article on the taking of people up and down Mount Everest via a climbing service.

While the article was published the book goes into a more detailed and descriptive account of the events that took place.

Everest is very well known around the world as not only the tallest, as one of the most treacherous mountains to climb in the world. If you didn’t know this before reading the book, you will after.

Krakauer details him and his teams group of climbers experience as they get acclimated to the severe altitude. They make several trips up and down the mountain going to the different camp locations (see map above). Many of the clients have trouble adjusting.

It isn’t until the ascent to the summit of the Everest that the group reaches when the problems arise.

After setting a time to turn around and head back down the mountain by, group leader, Rob Hall, and the rest ascended the mountain. The team climbed proceeded to ascend even after the time Hall set and would pay the price for it.

The events that followed were some of the traumatizing things that anyone could ever go through. In the end twelve people died on Everest that day from two different groups.

Mortality had remained a conveniently hypothetical concept, an idea to ponder in the abstract. Sooner or later the divestiture of such privileged innocence was inevitable, but when it finally happened the shock was magnified by the sheer superfluity of the carnage…

This quote from the book really shows how much of an impact this event had on Krakauer. His encounter with death that day taught him more then he probably could’ve ever dreamed of knowing.

This incident is regarded as one of the worst climbing accidents ever on Everest, which is saying something.