In my opinion Krakauer did make an honest attempt to accurately depict the events of the ’96 disaster. However, it is unsettling that many of his interviews with fellow climbers from the trip took place well after the expedition, and followed backlash toward Krakauer’s original article that was published in Outside Magazine (for whom Krakauer was on assignment during the Everest expedition). This article was a short, somewhat frazzled narrative of the event, printed just 54 days after the accident. It’s raw several thousand words served as a skeleton of sorts for ‘Into Thin Air’, and most notably lacked much of the directly critical tone that the book takes.

This article contained descriptions of numerous events leading up to and during the descent that were quickly drawn into question by climbers from both Hall’s and Fisher’s teams, and in response Krakauer published the full book within the year. This version was supported by exhaustive interviews, reviews of radio transcripts, and other research, but did not go unquestioned. Specifically, Krakauer’s opinion and depiction of Russian climber and guide Anatoli Boukreev (working for Mountain Madness under Scott Fisher) lead to a tense relationship between the two climbers until Boukreev’s death on Annapurna, and illicited numerous responses from prominent community members.

While Krakauer pulls no punches on his own judgement (“…my failure to see that Harris was in serious trouble was a lapse that’s likely to haunt me for the rest of my life.”), he sure rips into his fellow climbers regarding their experience, equipment, motivations, and actions. Meanwhile, his own impetus for being on the mountain is somewhat suspect. Prior to the expedition, Krakauer was to travel to base camp to report on the commercialization of high altitude climbing for Outside Magazine. However, the journalist requested a one year postponement during which he could train for a summit push. By his own admission, he “was singularly unqualified to attempt the highest mountain in the world.” due to his complete lack of high alpine mountaineering experience. And yet, a childhood dream and a free ride led him to the same conclusion as so many other climbers in his position: “What’s the worst that could happen?”.

Speaking of the worst, the subsequent Everest disaster serves as a pertinent reminder that even after all of the technological advances of the 30-odd years between the first 8,000 meter summit and the ’96 climb, human judgement is still the most influential factor in the mountains. Despite relatively good organization, planning, and execution under the circumstances, those eight climbers died because they didn’t heed a weather forecast. Even without the logistical missteps that Krakauer points out (such as Fisher’s team separating early), it is unlikely that the entire summit party could have descended in such a vicious and sudden storm. In Krakauer’s own words, “Indeed, the clock had as much to do with the tragedy as the weather, and ignoring the clock can’t be passed off as an act of God.”