Have you ever thought about how high 29,000 feet is? That’s the height of Mount Everest. When you are up that high, the air is thin, it’s hard to breathe, and it is extremely cold. Helicopters can’t fly up there, and most people need supplemental oxygen to survive at those attitudes. Not only that, but because of the altitude, you have to ascend in phases to let your body adjust properly. Despite all these difficulties, many people still want to climb Mount Everest. Jon Krakauer, a journalist and writer, decided in 1996 to ascend Everest to write a piece on climbing Everest for Outside magazine. In regards to the difficulties, he later commented, “There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.” In his expedition, the risks caught up with the group, and it became one of the deadliest in Mount Everest’s history. A total of eight people died trying to descend from the mountain on May 10 and 11 after a sudden blizzard. The climbing guides made several mistakes on those fateful two days, and this event (along with many others) shows that climbing Mount Everest is just an inherently dangerous activity. In addition to the piece he eventually wrote for Outside magazine, Krakauer also published a more extensive account of the disaster in his book “Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster.” If you are interested in learning more about the incident, I’d recommend giving it a read. I found it to be engaging and well written. It was certainly worth my time.
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