[troutman]

I select in the travel category, INTO THIN AIR: A Personal Account Of The Mt. Everest Disaster, by JON KRAKAUER (1996):



This is a chilling and troubling book. I can't understand the psychology of people that risk their lives for adventure. It seems to me that this is a very selfish pursuit, doubly so for those with wives and children. Krakauer cannot explain why people risk their lives this way, a theme in much of his writing:

http://outside.away.com/peaks/features/transcript.html

How do climbers square the risk with the reward when embarking on these expeditions?

In fact, statistically the risk is closer to one in 33 [risk of dying]. And I don't square the risk. I mean, climbing is an irrational act. It makes no sense. It defies logic. It's something I'm compelled to do. I'm not sure why. I'm at a loss to explain it in any way that makes any sense.

I've written two books--Eiger Dreams and Into the Wild--that deal with this question of risk and why people do it. And I'm sure I've failed to explain it in both those books. I've devoted many months, years, in those books to try to explain this question and I haven't succeeded. I don't think I ever will.


http://www.amazon.ca/Into-Thin-Air-P...e=UTF8&s=books

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a bestsellingnon-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer.[1] It details the author's May 10, 1996 ascent of Mount Everest, which turned catastrophic when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a 'rogue storm'. The author's expedition was led by the famed guide Rob Hall, and there were other groups trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Rob Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants[2][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Everest_Disaster

The 1996 Everest Disaster refers to a single day of the 1996 climbing season, May 11, 1996, when eight people died on Mount Everest during summit attempts. In the entire season, fifteen people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history. The disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.

Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was in one of the affected parties, and afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air[1] which related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer's book, co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb.[2] Expedition members Beck Weathers and Lene Gammelgard wrote about their experiences of the disaster in their books Left For Dead [3] and Climbing High[4]. The storm's impact on climbers on the mountain's other side, the North Ridge, where several climbers also died, was detailed in a first-hand account by British filmmaker and writer Matt Dickinson in his book The Other Side of Everest[5].

PBS Frontline Documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/everest/

Original Outside Article (Outside has excellent travel writing)
http://outside.away.com/outside/dest...hin_air_1.html

Everest deals with trespassers harshly: the dead vanish beneath the snows. While the living struggle to explain what happened. And why. A survivor of the mountain's worst disaster examines the business of Mount Everest and the steep price of ambition.