Jon Krakauer · 1997 · survival

Jon Krakauer's 1997 account of the 1996 Everest disaster, which he was on the mountain to report and ended up surviving. Two commercial expeditions were caught above the South Col when a storm came in on the afternoon of 10 May, and eight people died over the following day. He wrote it in a few months and has been arguing about it ever since.

1. 1
   Kathmandu

   Krakauer arrives to write a magazine piece on the commercialisation of Everest, and ends up signed on as a paying client of Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants - which turns out to be part of the story he is reporting.

2. 2
   Lukla

   A short flight onto a sloping strip cut into a hillside at 2,860 metres, and then the walk in - the trek up the Khumbu being the last part of the expedition anyone would describe as pleasant.

3. 3
   Namche Bazaar

   The Sherpa town on the terraced hillside where every expedition stops to acclimatise - and where Krakauer starts noticing how many of the clients around him have very little climbing behind them.

4. 4
   Tengboche

   The monastery above the Dudh Kosi with Ama Dablam behind it, and the last green before the moraine - a rest day, a blessing from the lama, and Everest itself finally in view up the valley.

5. 5
   Base Camp

   A city of tents on the glacier at 5,364 metres, below the Khumbu Icefall - six weeks of rotations up and down through moving seracs, and rival outfits sharing a mountain and not much else.

6. 6
   The South Col

   Camp Four at just under 8,000 metres, in the death zone, where you cannot recover and can only lose ground - and the teams leave for the summit at midnight on 10 May with a turnaround time nobody enforces.

7. 7
   The summit

   Krakauer tops out at 8,849 metres just after one in the afternoon, spends a few minutes there and starts down - and behind him the queues at the Hillary Step are putting climbers hours past any safe turnaround.

8. 8
   The South Col

   The storm hits on the descent. Rob Hall dies below the summit talking to his wife by radio, Doug Hansen and Andy Harris are lost, and a group is left out on the Col all night in a whiteout thirty metres from camp.