My class is up to page 190. Krakauer has climbed to the summit and he has just made it down to Camp 4 before the storm hits.
I have a question that might be best answered when we've finished the book, but I'll ask it anyway.
Have you ever had any interest in climbing Mt. Everest? If you have, is your interest increased or decreased as a result of reading the book.
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5 comments:
I have always wanted to do something extreme and climbing Everest wouold be the perfect way to do that. I do think though that I would have to think about my decison to go on the mountain or to stay home. It is something I would love to do, but am afraid to do because of the dangers.
I really have had never an interest in climbing Mt. Everest just because I would never want to do anything that dangerous that could coast my life. There is also so many perils when you are up there like avalanches, hypothermia, HACE, HAPE, falling off the Hillary Step or anywhere else, amputation and many more. There is one upside to this, if you do make it, key word (if) and you make it to the top than you have a sense of pride to do something that hardly no one has ever done before which is cool. But it all depends on getting up there first. Reading this book just made me not want to go up there even more just because of all the things these men had to go through, I just couldn’t do it.
I have never wanted to climb Mt. Everest because #1, the chances of dying are very high. You could fall off the Mountain or the Hillary Step, die of many different kinds of diseases, avalanches, hypothermia and snow blindness and many more. I would not like to risk lives of others by employing them or having them work with me. Reading this book made me realize what sort of things people do to get their dreams.
I really have never even considered climbing Mount Everest. One reason may be that I am afraid of heights. I disagree with Conor because climbing Everest is not really extremely dangerous. 95% of people who climb Mount Everest live to tell the story. But, I do agree with Conor that when you make it to the top the feeling may be like no other. If I was not afraid of heights the only thing that would stop me from climbing Mount Everest would be the chance of avalanches. But there is still the factor of the temperature and how hard it is to breathe up that high. Those would be the two hardest factors while I was climbing Mount Everest, but I still would encourage someone to climb Everest if they had a dream to climb Everest because once again, the risks are not as high as you have heard or would think.
In life I find myself to be a very goal oriented person. Through Into Thin Air, one realizes that to reach the summit you have to be extremely driven and want it more than anything. The concept of being on “the rooftop of the world” as it is put in the book is endlessly cool. Though as Jon writes how commercialized it is getting, it is no vacation on the beach, its enduring freezing temperatures, endangering your life, leaving your loved ones, pushing yourself to your bodies physical limitations, for what? To look down at the world for a few minutes? The main turn-off of climbing Everest from the book is not the physical hardship, or the mental one, but the emotional one. In the beginning Krakauer describes disastrous Everest trips with huge amounts of casualties and bodies being found years later, then there is also his own account of the death of his comrades. Not only does he have to deal with seeing these people die, but probably the worst part would be the survivors guilt, knowing that those people could have very well been yourself, wondering why they died instead of you, what you did to not reach the same fate. Wishing that it could have been you instead of them because then you wouldn’t have to see the faces of their loved ones. For this reason I don’t think that I would be able to climb Everest even if I did want to.
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