Anybody read "Into Thin Air"

[TorchTheWitch]

about the disaster on Mt. Everest in 1996? Really moving. So good that when I got to the end of the story I flipped right back to page one and read it all again.

I'll still never understand why anyone would spend over $65,000 to put themselves through such an ordeal.

[candy]

1. I read it years ago and think I'll read it again.

The wonder of the thing is that those bodies are still there.

Thanks for reminding me of a great book.I'm heading down to my bookcase now and will start it .

[TorchTheWitch]

3. some really old bodies still there too

The wonder of the thing is that those bodies are still there.

I think I remember it saying somewhere in the book that you could walk past bodies that had obviously been there for decades considering their clothing and equipment. Kind of freaky.

I had been so facinated and moved by the book that I did some internet research about the tragedy and the aftermath... I'm looking for it again, but I believe that I found out that Rob Hall's body is still where he died with only the legs visable with the rest covered over with ice and snow, and Anatoli Boukreev went back the next year, found Scott Fischer's body and "buried" it in a crevasse.

[likesmountains 52]

2. Yes, I recall shivering in my bed feeling like I was freezing

at camp on Mt. Everest..he was magical in his descriptions.

[RagingInMiami]

4. I met the guy who wrote that book a few years ago in southern california

I was a newspaper reporter and I was interviewing him because he was suppose to speak at a local college about his experience.

I will never forget it because his hands had been amputated and at the end of the interview, when i was taking photos of him, I asked him to hold up his hands to show the readers, and he refused and said, "I am not a freak show".

[Fiona]

6. Are you sure it was the author of Into Thin Air?

I've never heard that Jon Krakauer ever had anything amputated as a result of his ordeal on Everest.

[RagingInMiami]

7. The author's name has escaped me

But yes, I am almost positive it was the same guy cause my editor hyped it up to me before the interview. It was either later 1999 or early 2000 when I was working for the San Bernardino Sun.

[RagingInMiami]

8. He also told me he had gone temporarily blind during the ordeal

cause he had gotten RK surgery before the trip

[Fiona]

9. ah, ok

that wasn't Jon Krakauer, who wrote "Into Thin Air". That was the Texan guy, Beck Weathers, who was part of the expedition.

[RagingInMiami]

11. So he was part of the book, but he didn't write it?

That probably explains why they only gave me ten inches of copy and placed the story on the B1 section.

[Fiona]

12. Well...

he was IN the book "Into Thin Air", but he also wrote his own book, but it was nowhere near as popular as I.T.A. It was called "Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest".

His hands were the most obvious sign of his ordeal? He lost his nose to frostbite.

[RagingInMiami]

13. Yes, that's the guy

[TorchTheWitch]

16. have you read Beck's book?

is it any good?

A few days ago I found the movie of "Into Thin Air" at the rental shop... hadn't known they ever a did a movie based on the book. It was pretty good. Not nearly as good as the book, of course, but it was nice to have a visual of what I had read anyway. The actors they had play Rob Hall and Scott Fischer looked sooooooo much like the original people.

[TorchTheWitch]

14. That was Beck Weathers

A pathologist from Texas who was one of the clients on Rob Hall's team, not the author. Beck was the one who had the vision problems during the climb and as a result was unable to make the summit, got caught in the storm while waiting to be short-roped down the mountain and was unfortunately left for dead. At some point, he miraculously popped up out of the snow and made his own way back to camp somehow. One of his hands, several fingers from the other hand and his nose were amputated because of frostbite. His nose was reconstructed from tissue from his ear (and some place else... his neck?). I just recently watched a brief interview of him on the IMAX film that the IMAX team was making at the time of the disaster.

The author, Jon Krakauer, is apparently still writing and still climbing (although he refuses to go back to Everest).

[MountainLaurel]

19. You're thinking of Beck Weathers

Who wrote a book about his experience on Everest but did not write "Into Thin Air," which was penned by Job Krakauer.

[warrens]

5. Yes, and an American climber just fell off yesterday

I can see doing one challenge, but these people are heroin addicts. I have little sympathy.

[CanuckAmok]

10. It's a great read. I love non-fiction.

Hey, Torch, where ya been?

[TorchTheWitch]

15. oooooo, creepy!

I was just wondering about you, and here you are! :hi:

I've been around... you know me, I don't normally post much of anything (more of a reader then a writer I guess).

[CanuckAmok]

17. More good non-fiction for you:

Not in the same genre, but a good "hammock read" for the summer:

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins.

Good times, good times...

[Wilber_Stool]

18. Think I'll bring this one back to life.

Yeah, I've read it and listened to it a couple of times as an audio book.The audio is great because Krakauer reads it himself.
Being guided up Everest is like going for a joy ride with someone that really drives good when their drunk.
It's available now at alt.binaries.mp3.audiobooks