I wanted to read this book for a long time and finally I managed to complete it now. The book is related to the tragedy that happened on Mount Everest in the year 1996 in which twelve people lost their lives in a single season. There is a Harvard Business Review case also on this subject and the case was discussed in length in our course on Strategic Thinking and Decision Making. I should say that Professor V N did a good analysis of this case. This book was also referred to in that discussion. There is also a movie that is made based on this book. So, considering all these things, this book was on my to-read list for a long time and nearly after 6 months, I could manage to read it. In between, I was in the middle of reading some other books and from the time, I picked up the book, I completed the book pretty soon. The book is quite fast paced and it gives a good description of the guided expeditions to Mount Everest, kind of terrain to reach the world's highest point, weather and many other facts about the expedition and Himalayas in particular.
What a coincidence that my reading of this book also happened to be around the same time when people were commemorating the 60 years of the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest (and safe descent also!) of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. There was a considerable coverage in media on that and I would like to share some of the links that I came across on this subject in Forbes India and LiveMint over the last one week:
http://forbesindia.com/aperture/slideshow/a-photo-essay-on-mount-everest/35293/1
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/j9Wp9OVDjecheK8y10NdrN/Route-to-the-top.html
http://forbesindia.com/article/recliner/atop-mount-everest-a-climbers-account-of-scaling-the-highest-peak/35303/1
All said and done, the question that people often ask is why do people take such big risks in trying to summit Mt. Everest? There may be many answers like the famous answer given by George Leigh Mallory in early 1920s that is because "it is there". Other reasons may be a ticket to the fame, sense of machismo, pride of being at the highest point on the planet. But true alpinists do so perhaps because it gives them the purpose to their lives, the challenges that Mt. Everest gives them the feeling of overcoming of human spirit on challenges and difficulties. Another point of discussion is regarding the guided expeditions to Mt. Everest where people with limited high altitude climbing experience can maximize their chances of getting to the top as a paid client on guided expeditions. The purists say that high altitude climbing is a matter of skill, tenacity and the ability to survive under the unimaginable hostile conditions at the high altitude and so such adventures should not be encouraged to be taken by people who are less qualified to do so. But there are expeditions that charge around $40,000-$60,000 to be taken to to the top of the mountain in the tutelage of an accomplished mountaineer with solid high altitude credentials.This book is a personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mt. Everest and the author Jon Krakauer was also one of the clients in one such team that year as a journalist.
The book takes the readers through the time when the expeditions land in Nepal to the aftermath of the tragedy. Mount Everest stands at 29,028 feet height; the height at which typically airliners fly. Making an attempt to summit that height is itself a pursuit of great audacity. The book gives a good description on what happened on that ill-fated day. As it folded out that there were considerable number of people attempting to summit that day and so there was a delay at natural bottlenecks like Hillary Step that happens to be a 40 feet vertical climb some 100 feet below the summit. High altitudes are not particularly conducive to the rational decision making where the air is so thin that the oxygen in it is almost third of what we get here (By the way, the elevation of Bangalore is 3000 ft). The hostile conditions are made worse by windy and sub-zero temperature conditions that give rise to problems like hypoxia, hypothermia, pulmonary and cerebral edema. The book takes the readers through some of the actions and decisions taken by different people that day on the mountain and how the catastrophe panned out. I finished the last half of the book in little more than a day. It was such a gripping writing. The author also takes the readers through various events and the interactions with the people during that season during the three weeks of acclimatization and summit push. The book described the journey from Lukla airbase in Nepal by trek to the Base Camp (17,600 feet) through places like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Pheriche and Lobuje. The book gives a good description of the Khumbu glaciers in that region. The author being a part of the expedition himself gave a good description of events and people around him at various places like Camp-1 at 19,500 feet, Camp-2 at 21,300 feet, Camp-3 at 24,000 feet and Camp-4 at around 26,000 feet. I felt that there should have been more photographs in the book. I made up for it by watching the movie based on this book. The book is more exhaustive than what was covered in the movie, but the cinematography gives the viewers an idea of conditions at the top.
Whether the clients after shelling out so much of money taking that extra risk of going up on the mountain even after the turn-around time imposed by their guides (unless their condition gets debilitated largely); or guides tending to maximize their success rate in terms of getting as many clients as possible to the top, there can be potential errors in judgements in both these cases. And these decisions happen above 25,000 feet where the hostile weather conditions along with the paucity of oxygen clouds one's decision making.
The concluding points that we discussed in our case discussion also was that as human beings, we are all victims of our cognitive biases. So when we take a decision, these biases creep in our decisions unknowingly. So, it is important that we become cognizant of such cognitive biases and tend to be cautious about it in our own decisions and the decisions taken by others on which we have to act on. In the context of situations as risky as trying to summit Mt. Everest, the difference between success and failure is often a thin line separating life and death.
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