Reading Section 5: Into Thin Air

Summary
(182-236)

Jon Krakauer doesn't celebrate his ascent that much because he realizes he doesn't have much oxygen and needs to make haste. As he's walking down Harris turns his valve on his oxygen tank all wasting all his oxygen by accident. He independently descends the mountain and when he arrives at his tent he celebrates reaching the summit. Also a blizzard is arising. Many things occur that leads to the tragedies. As one of the guides leaves to get more oxygen and leaves the climbers alone to descend. The climbers get lost and the guides start trying to find and rescue them. But they leave two people behind thinking that they could not save them. Also Hall and Fischer are missing. Krakauer at first, believes that Andy Harris successfully got to camp, and tells many people. But then he can't find him and someone tells him what had become of Harris. Many people try to help and save each other, especially the guides. They stick with their team and try to help them descend. This eventually leads them all to a doomed fate because they become too tired and ill to descend. Hall's death is one of the more tragic ones, because they know where he is, but it is almost impossible to save him. He radios the camp and they tell Hall to that they can't rescue him and he'll have to descend on his own.

Personal Reaction

I think the reading here becomes very tragic. This is when all the terrible deaths begin and the true acts of courage also begin. Although not extremely credible the description of the deaths are very sad. His descriptions are not very credible because he was proven wrong twice with what he thought occurred during the day his almost all of his team died. The events that occur in this reading section are the climax of this book. All the suspense leads up to this part and the foreshadowing does too. Everything bad that could have happened happened. Though the deaths were tragic many people showed great acts of loyalty. As they stayed with each other through the end, and especially the guides tried to save every climber they could find. The story is all suspense up to this point till everything just explodes and people start dying. Although not unexpected, some of the details were shocking and the ways in which some died. Death can occur and it is very real. It can happen anytime, anywhere. Just because you can climb Everest it doesn’t make you invincible. Although this is the climax there is still much left in the book. I don’t know what’s to come or what it’s about, but now that he’s told us of these events there’s really little to tell in his story.