Into Thin Air 10-14

Chapter ten is about the accent from camp two up to camp three. The obstacle to climb between the two camps is the Lhotse Face.  Once Krakauer gets to camp 3 he comes to the realization that climbing Everest is all about enduring extreme amounts of pain. "And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like the state of grace." HACE also known as High Altitude Cerebral Edema was also a topic in chapter ten because Dale Kruse came down with it and the disease is extremely deadly. Kruse was a part of Fishers expedition but it made everyone nervous fearing they were also vulnerable. Now that the acclimation period was over Krakauer has lost almost twenty pounds and had a bad hack in his cough which was very painful to him. I still don't understand how in this amount of pain Krakauer still managed to keep on trekking up the mountain. The order that the teams would follow in going to the summit is also revealed to us in the chapter. Goran Kropp would make a lone attempt on May 3rd and then the team from Montenegro. On May 8th or 9th the IMAX team would go and then followed by Hall and Fischers team on the 10th. The South African team also started another issue when they decided they would summit whenever they pleased most likely on the 10th as well. Chapter 11 starts with the summit push beginning. They left base camp at 4:30 AM and went to camp 2 which they got to at 10 :30 AM. Once they left camp two a boulder the size of a Television came down and hit guide Andy Harris in the chest. He got knocked off his feet but because he was attached to the ropes he didn't tumble down the mountain and it saved his life. At camp three the Sherpas couldn't stay there with the expedition clients because it wasn't big enough which meant the clients had to prepare there own food and water. At 24,000 feet Krakauer was hacking at the ice with his axe and putting the chunks into garbage bags which he gave to the people in the tents to use for drinking water. The scariest part of this chapter is when Chen Yunan woke up in the morning to go to the bathroom and didn't put his crampons on. This made him lose his footing and fall 70 feet into a crevasse but he managed to survive. They got him out but a few hours later he stopped breathing and died. This was the first death on the mountain so far that anybody in this expedition had been present for and it sent a chilling vibe to everyone. Chapter twelve is when they leave camp three to go to camp four. Krakauer talks about how he is fearful of another ice block hitting him like what happened to Harris. The biggest debate in the chapter is how a sherpa had short roped himself to Pittman and carried her up the mountain for about 5 hours. Pittman claims he forcefully did this to her but the Sherpa says 2 different stories. It is come to an understanding that Fischer most likely told his sherpa to make sure Pittman got to the top because she was a reporting and famous as well and he wanted the publicity as a guide that he gets his clients to the summit. Krakauer also has to climb over the Hillary Step which is right beneath the summit and is a 40 foot vertical step of rock and ice that you have to climb. Krakauer then reached the summit but talks about how it wasn't that fun at all because of how difficult the conditions were. He says he had the sensation of being underwater and that he realized the top was only halfway because they still had to make it down alive. Next in Chapter 14 Krakauer has to climb back down the Hillary Step and there is bottle neck of traffic which makes him nervous. Then a guy named Adams says how he notices that the sky is forming into storm clouds but nobody really notices this probably due to the lack of oxygen leading to minimal brain functioning. At 4:45 Krakauer reaches the balcony at 27,600 feet on the Southeast ridge where Beck Weathers is standing there shivering. We learn that Beck underwent a surgery for his eyes and that as a result of the extremely high altitude he can no longer see. Krakauer leaves him there because he wants to wait  for Ron whom he promised to wait for earlier. This probably would be the last time Krakauer sees Weathers if i had to guess.  Right before Krakaur gets to back down to camp four Harris falls almost 70 feet down the ledge but gets up alright. Krakauer then methodically goes down the ice and makes it to camp four in one piece. Little does he know though that 19 people were stuck on the mountain about to endure a awful storm. The anticipation to read the next chapters are almost too much to handle because Krakauer set up this chapter in a brilliant way. We know now the disaster is about to play out and i feel bad wanting to know who dies and who lives.

-Sam