Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
I regretted my outburst immediately. After the forum concluded and the crowd dispersed I hurried outside, searched for Anatoli, and found him walking with Wylie across the grounds of the Banff Centre. I told them that I thought we needed to have a few words together in private and attempt to clear the air. Initially Anatoli balked at this suggestion, protesting that he was late to another Book Festival event. But I persisted, and eventually he agreed to grant me a few minutes. For the next half hour he and Wylie and I stood outside in the cold Canadian morning and spoke frankly but calmly about our differences.
At one point Anatoli put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I am not angry with you, Jon, but you do not understand.” By the time the discussion ended and we went our separate ways, we had come to the conclusion that both Anatoli and I needed to make an effort to moderate the tone of the debate. We concurred that there was no need for the atmosphere between us to be so emotionally charged and confrontational. We agreed to disagree about certain points—primarily the wisdom of guiding Everest without bottled oxygen, and what was said between Boukreev and Fischer during their final conversation atop the Hillary Step—but both of us came to realize that we saw eye to eye on almost everything else of importance.
Although Boukreev’s coauthor, Mr. DeWalt (who wasn’t present during the aforementioned meeting), continued to fan the flames of the dispute with gusto, I came away from my encounter with Anatoli in Banff somewhat hopeful of patching things up with him. Perhaps I was being overly optimistic, but I foresaw an end to the imbroglio. Seven weeks later, however, Anatoli was killed on Annapurna, and I realized that I’d begun my conciliatory efforts much too late.
Jon Krakauer
August 1999
* Among Boukreev’s harshest critics were several Sherpas who played key roles in the disaster. I have not mentioned this in print until now, and I do so presently only because DeWalt first raised the matter himself in the 1999 edition of The Climb.
DeWalt’s new edition reveals that in 1998 I wrote a letter to Galen Rowell, the well-known mountaineer, in which I reported that many Sherpas “blamed the entire tragedy on Boukreev.” DeWalt then pointed out that Rowell (during a trip to Everest Base Camp in 1998) had “found no Sherpa who blamed the tragedy on Boukreev, nor any Sherpa who knew of anyone who did.”
But Rowell never spoke with Lopsang Jangbu or Ang Dorje (the head climbing Sherpa on Rob Hall’s team). On separate occasions, both Lopsang and Ang Dorje told me, in very strong terms, that they (and virtually all the other Sherpas on their respective teams) did indeed blame Boukreev for the disaster. Their views are documented in notes, recorded interviews, and correspondence.
DeWalt, however, has omitted a crucial detail that renders this entire issue moot. He neglected to mention that my letter to Rowell included these two important sentences: “First of all, let me say that I think the Sherpas are absolutely wrong to blame Anatoli, which is why I didn’t mention their point of view in my book. It seemed unfair and inflammatory to even bring it up.” DeWalt’s decision to raise this issue in his book—when no mention of it had been made in mine—is therefore hard to fathom.
* Referring to this particular error in the 1999 edition of his book, DeWalt wrote, “In all paperback editions of The Climb, a photo caption was deleted to correct what had been an honest and regrettable mistake.” The spurious photo caption has indeed finally been removed. But, tellingly, neither DeWalt nor his publisher has yet bothered to correct the error where it appears in the main text of the 1999 edition, on page 228.
* DeWalt wrote in the 1999 edition of The Climb, “I was not concerned about specifying an exact date, because I felt that Fischer’s statement to Bromet would not have been any less significant or relevant if it had been made on March 25 in Kathmandu or on April 2 during the trek to the Everest Base Camp.” But DeWalt conveniently fails to consider that Fischer’s opinion of Boukreev underwent a profound and well-documented transformation over the latter weeks of the expedition.
The notorious conversation between Bromet and Fischer occurred on or around April 15, barely a week after Fischer’s team arrived at Base Camp. At that time, Fischer still had nothing but praise for his chief guide. Three weeks later, however, by the time the Mountain Madness team launched their summit assault, Fischer had grown notably disenchanted with Boukreev’s guiding methods, and was frequently angry with him (see pp. 188–90 of Into Thin Air). The actual date of Fi scher’s conversation with Bromet—and DeWalt’s attempt in The Climb to fudge that date by three weeks—is therefore extremely relevant. For many days immediately preceding his team’s summit assault, Fischer had complained bitterly and often to his closest confidants that, despite his repeated admonishments to Boukreev, he couldn’t persuade Boukreev to stay close to the clients. It therefore strains belief to suggest that on May 10, upon reaching the summit ridge, Fischer decided that he wanted Boukreev to descend alone, ahead of everybody.
* A resident of Norwood, Colorado, Fran Distefano-Arsentiev met Boukreev through her husband, the noted Russian climber Serguei Arsentiev. In May 1998, Fran and Serguei reached the summit of Everest together via the Northeast Ridge, without supplemental oxygen. Fran thus became the first American woman to climb Everest without relying on gas. Prior to topping out, however, the couple had spent three nights above 27,000 feet without supplemental oxygen, and they were forced to spend a fourth night even higher on the peak during the descent—this time completely exposed to the elements, without gas, tent, or sleeping bags. Terribly, both climbers perished before they could reach the safety of the lower camps.
* Herrod was found upside down, suspended from the rope. He appeared to have flipped over while rappelling down the Hillary Step on the evening of May 25, 1996, and had been unable to right himself—perhaps because he was too exhausted, or perhaps because he had been knocked unconscious. In any case, Boukreev and the Indonesians left his body undisturbed. A month later, on May 23, 1997, Pete Athans removed Herrod from the rope while ascending to the summit as part of an expedition making a film for the PBS television program, NOVA. Before cutting him free, Athans recovered Herrod’s camera, which contained his final photograph: a self-portrait atop Everest.
* After meeting Boukreev in 1997, Moro became one of his closest friends. “I loved and love (like a friend, of course) Anatoli Boukreev so much,” Moro told me, “that after I met him I changed my life, my projects, my dreams. Probably only his mother and his girlfriend, Linda, loved him more.” Moro, as it happens, disagrees strongly with my portrayal of Boukreev in this book. “You didn’t understand who Anatoli really was,” Moro explained. “You are American; he was Russian. You were new to 8,000-meter peaks; he was the best of all time at these altitudes (nobody else had climbed 21 times to a summit over 8,000 meters). You are a normal alpinist; he was a fantastic athlete and survival’s animal. You are economically sure; he knew hunger.… In my opinion you are like a man who, after reading a book about medicine, pretends to teach one of the world’s most famous and capable surgeons how to be a doctor.… When judging the decisions made by Anatoli in 1996 you must remember this: no clients on his team died.”
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armington, Stan. Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya. Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet, 1994.
Bass, Dick, and Frank Wells with Rick Ridgeway. Seven Summits. New York: Warner Books, 1986.
Baume, Louis C. Sivalaya: Explorations of the 8, 000-Metre Peaks of the Himalaya. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1979.
Cherry-Garrard, Apsley. The Worst Journey in the World. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.
Dyrenfurth, G. O. To the Third Pole. London: Werner Laurie, 1955.
Fisher, James F. Sherpas: Reflections on Change in Himalayan Nepal. Berkeley: University of California, 1990.
Holzel, Tom, and Audrey Salkeld. The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine. New York: Henry Holt, 1986.
Hornbein, Thomas F. Everest: The West Ridge. San Francisco: The Sierra Club, 1966.
Hunt, John. The Ascent
Long, Jeff. The Ascent. New York: William Morrow, 1992.
Messner, Reinhold. The Crystal Horizon: Everest—the First Solo Ascent. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1989.
Morris, Jan. Coronation Everest: The First Ascent and the Scoop That Crowned the Queen. London: Boxtree, 1993.
Roberts, David. Moments of Doubt. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1986.
Shipton, Eric. The Six Mountain-Travel Books. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1985.
Unsworth, Walt. Everest. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
BTON WICKS PUBLICATIONS: Excerpts from Upon That Mountain by Eric Shipton (Hodder, London, 1943). This title is now collected in the omnibus Eric Shipton—The Six Mountain Travel Books (Diadem, London, and the Mountaineers, Seattle, 1995). Reprinted by permission of Nick Shipton and Bâton Wicks Publications, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England.
HAYNES PUBLISHING: Excerpts from Everest by Walt Unsworth. Published by Oxford Illustrated Press, an imprint of Haynes Publishing, Sparkford, Nr Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7JJ. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
SIMON AND SCHUSTER AND A. P. WATT LTD: Six lines from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, from The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems, revised and edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company. Copyright renewed 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster and A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
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