"Into Thin Air"

I chose the memoir "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krauker to respond too. One line that stood out to me when reading this memoir was in the very beginning his opening line he describes the struggle it was to just wake up in the morning and take a breathe and he calls the air meager. What really drew me in was the curiosity I had wondering what the title was about. Into thin air for me could have been a million different things. The thing that struck me the most was the second ti last page when Hals having a moment on the phone with his wife. The author makes it known that this will be the last phone call he ever has with his wife without being terribly dramatic and depressing the reader. It was also kind of like a twist, because the whole time he's talking about their journey and the struggles their going through, you don't expect it to have such a personal ending. The reason it was so popular with the readers I think was because it kept you on your feet the entire story, it wasn't very predictable.

This story is about 8 mountain climbers that were killed and 7 others that were left stranded. Krauker started this expedition with purely professional intentions. However once he got to the mountain his childhood reminded him of a desire he always wanted to fulfill. He had to train for a year before her was able to climb the mountain.  Krauker never expected to experience it the way he did. This journey begins in the beginning of May. A lot of the people taking part in this were having difficulty adapting to altitude, getting tired very easily, losing a lot of weight, and began to move slower and slower as the days went on. Despite all these obstacle the first death in the book doesn't occur till the very end. But once that first one occurs, it s not long before it begins to happen to almost all the climbers. For krauker he just misses the storm as he approaches camp number four. However he's more ahead then all the other men but is unclear of what has yet to come. Hall and Hansen become stranded. Hansen ends up running out of oxygen and is unable to keep going through the storm. Then another group gets lost but get assisted back to safety except for two of their men. Later we find out they died. Soon Hansen ends up dieing. An assistant actually dies on the way up to rescue Hal and Hansen. I feel like Krauker wrote this book because he had more to tell the world then just the article he wrote for the magazine. He feels someone should tell the story of these brave young men.