Into Thin Air vs The Climb
I recently finished reading both Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, and
The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt. Both books are
accounts of the disastrous May 10, 1996 summit attempt on Mount
Everest. A combination of a rogue storm and poor judgment by several
parties resulted in the deaths of several climbers.
Of the two books, Into Thin Air was definitely a more compelling read.
Jon Krakauer is a better writer, and it seems he did try to interview
most of the parties involved to get a better picture of what happened.
Perhaps, it is unfortunate that the Russian guide, Anatoli Boukreev,
was painted as the villian of the piece. While Krakauer acknowledges
Broukreev's heroism in his successful solo efforts to rescue three of
the climbers in the raging storm, he points fingers at Boukreev's
decision to climb without oxygen and descent quickly to the camp
before the guided clients.
The Climb is essentially Boukreev's response to Krakauer's book. It
almost seems that this book was written and published in a rush, and
does not seem as solidly researched as Into Thin Air. And it perhaps
suffers from taking only Boukreev's point of view. Nevertheless, this
book shows Boukreev's motivations and thoughts, and his general
philosophy with regards to high altitude climbing. I can also see why
that he can be misunderstood because his English is not perfect, and
his attitude and personality is probably not what guided clients, who
paid $65,000 to make it up the summit of Mount Everest, expect.
It seems like in these kinds of tragedies/ accidents, there is a
strong desire to assign blame or speculate the what ifs. Yes, maybe
if Boukreev had waited for the clients higher up in the mountain the
situation may not have deteriorated. But perhaps he would then not
have been rested enough to save the stranded climbers. The tragedy
happened because a series of bad decisions, judgments, and events,
including the bad storm, lined up in a row. It was like watching a
train wreck taking place in slow motion as each poor decision was
made.
It is undeniable, however, that Boukreev was an extremely strong high
altitude climber. And a less talented and strong climber or less
heroic person wouldn't have rescued those three client climbers.
Sadly, Boukreev was killed in an avalanche while climbing the
extremely dangerous and difficult Annapurna in the winter of 1997.
