Just like many other mountain climbers, amateur or professional, he grew up worshipping Hillary and Norgay and dreamed of one day repeating their feat. Jon Krakauer, the author of “Into Thin Air,” was conceived merely a month later. Shortly before noon on – 101 years after Sikhdar’s discovery – Sir Edmund Hillary, a long-legged New Zealander, and Tenzing Norgay, a highly skilled and indomitable Nepalese mountaineer from the Sherpa mountain tribe, became the first humans to stand atop the world’s highest mountain. It didn’t take long after Sikhdar’s finding for Mount Everest to become “the most coveted object in the realm of terrestrial exploration.” Gunther Oskar Dyhrenfurth (DEER-eh-furth), an early Himalayan explorer and an Olympic gold medalist in alpinism, once proclaimed that getting to the top wasn’t just a matter of pride, but “a matter of universal human endeavor, a cause from which there is no withdrawal, whatever losses it may demand.” It would require the superhuman efforts of 15 expeditions and th e lives of 24 individuals before the summit of Everest would finally be reached. The Tibetans, living on the north of the great mountain, called it Jomolungma, or “Goddess, Mother of the World.” The Nepalis, residing on the south, used a name with similar connotations: Devadhunga, or “The Seat of God.” Even then, however, the peak’s native names were much more descriptive.
In 1865, nine years after Sikhdar’s computations had been confirmed, Andrew Scott Waugh, the Surveyor General of India at the time, bestowed the name Mount Everest to Peak XV, in honor of his predecessor, Sir George Everest. In 1852, using trigonometric calculations, a brilliant Indian Bengali mathematician named Radhanath Sikhdar (Rad-han-ath Seek-dur) came to the conclusion that the so-called Peak XV of the Himalayas was the highest in the world, with a calculated elevation of exactly 29,000 feet above sea level, a number slightly revised by modern surveys to the currently accepted altitude of 29,028 feet, or 8,848 meters. That’s right: get ready for a chilling firsthand account of one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing Everest.
Jon Krakauer was a member of the most infamous one, and “Into Thin Air” tells his story. In the spring of 1996, 30 distinct expeditions were on the flanks of Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
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