Overall, a fantastic, gut-wrenching book that makes you question these people common sense while marvelling at how much duller our regular lives are in comparison. I really had goosebumps at several points throughout the audiobook. You can really feel the emotional weight certain scenes carry as he recounts the events. In my constant search for good audiobooks I found that Into thin Air is narrated by Jon Krakauer himself. As he had recorded conversations and kept a diary of their journey, it was natural he'd be the one to write about the experience but I can't imagine the responsibility of it. Knowing Krakauer wrote this account only weeks after surviving the Everest disaster, it truly made me feel for him. As he writes Krakauer beats himself up for that, admitting that had that man been a friend he usually climbed with, he would have never left him alone there. However, being himself in a poor state, he doesn't question the man reassurance he's fine and doesn't insisist offering help. Later in the book, as Krakauer's climbing down the summit he recalls meeting one of the guides seemingly weak and in distress. At one point, he wonders if having a journalist, himself, along for the expedition would have caused everybody else to push themselves harder than needed, knowing that everything they did or didn't do would be carefully recorded. Everest blames himself in several occasions. One thing that really struck me is how Krakauer, one of the few that mostly out of luck survived the ordeal on Mt. And while scaling the everest would never have made my bucket list, and even more so now, the book made me yearn for those untouched landscapes and wilderness. Krakauer's prose and style make you feel right there with the people he writes about. Another group gets lost in the blizzard and later, an assistant guide rescues all but two of them.

This truly felt like a novel and yet the knowing this disaster was all too real made it an even more compelling read. Hansen runs out of supplemental oxygen and cannot continue. I knew it'd be good but oh boy, did it exceed my expectations. I had been meaning to read this ever since devouring Into the Wild last year during quarantine.

Doug hansen into thin air