For Next Week: Krakauer, Into Thin Air, pp. 148-203
Answer 2 of the 4
questions that follow:
1. One of the
greatest assets to a serious climber is experience and intuition. We see this when Göran Kropp, a master
climber, decides to turn back just minutes from reaching the summit. Hall remarks, “To turn around that close to
the summit...That showed incredibly
good judgment on [his] part” (153). Even
so, why does this intuition go against the culture of extreme climbers such as
Hall, Bourkeev, and even Krakauer himself?
Where do we see climbers not following
their inner advice?
2. How does the
close-knit community of guides and climbers break down in the fateful climb to
the summit? According to Krakauer, who
is most responsible for this breakdown in communication? What causes it? Why might the very culture of Everest travel
make it impossible for so many expeditions to succeed at once?
3. Part of the true
climbing culture is the debate over bottled oxygen. Why do the most serious climbers refuse to
use it, even though at that altitude, “Brains cells [are] dying...blood [grows]
dangerously thick and sludgelike” (161)?
How does this play into the argument of who ‘deserves’ to be on
Everest? Should technology play a role
in getting to the top, or should it be truly man vs. nature?
4. In the Preface
to Chapter 14, Reinhold Messner writes “The longer I climb the less important
the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself...It is so pleasant
to sit doing nothing—and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is—like death
through freezing—a pleasant one” (193).
How does Krakauer explain the psychological toll of climbing, which is
perhaps even greater than the physical toll?
How do the battles of the mind overcome him and other travelers on the
journey in potentially disastrous ways?
Elyse Marquardt
ReplyDeleteQuestion 3: If people feel that they must climb Mt. Everest, it seems wise to take along bottled oxygen. Only a few gifted people have been able to make it all the way to the top without depending on oxygen; if you are not one of those people, you should use the resources that mankind's ingenuity has blessed you with and take oxygen. It could save your life. Maybe you don't have to start out with it, but once you start to feel that your life is in peril because of lack of oxygen, you shouldn't scoff at using the bottles. It just makes sense. You have more of a chance of reaching the summit, which is your main goal anyway!
Question 4: The psychological toll of climbing is greater than the physical toll because it is inside your own head. How you handle the situation is as important or even more so than the situation itself. Krakauer gives us many examples of his fellow climbers panicking or losing control of themselves when adverse conditions kick in. Krakauer survived the disaster because he (mostly) kept his cool and managed to maintain his composure until he reached safety. Others were not so fortunate. He recounts tales of his friends whose unstable mental states led them to think their oxygen tanks were full when they were not, who became belligerent and endangered the lives of their fellow climbers, and who wandered off the beaten path into mortally dangerous situations because they were not thinking clearly. While none of these incidents were their faults, it proves that the affects on their minds were very great.
Q1.
ReplyDeleteMost people spent 10s of thousands of dollars to get to the top of that summit, if they where to turn back when they are within viewing distance of the peak and only have a few feet to go then it seems like the money and the last few months of climbing where for nothing. Even when the danger gets worse and worse and one bad thing happens after another people are still wanting to get to the top of “their mountain” knowing that they might never come back to their families.
Q3.
Man doesn’t know how he will fair against nature. Everyone is considered different but if someone was to climb Everest multi times without oxygen then they are killing all of their brain cells and slowly killing themselves putting the people whom they are watching over in even more danger. For 1st time people it would be smart to have it and try to go as far as possible without it but when it comes down to it having it is much safer because then they have a better chance of returning to their families.
Ryan Jolly:
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1:
Serious climbers are achievers by nature. They set a goal and are intent on achieving it, to the neglect of their inner advice even. In this case, reaching the summit of Everest has been their goal for months, or even most of their lives, and they are so close that it seems ridiculous to them to turn around, being just hours away from reaching their lifetime goal.
Question 3:
It seems that, in the culture of extreme climbers, using bottled oxygen taints the experience of climbing a mountain. Not only that, but it is considered "cheating" to some extent. However, I believe that if your life is endanger due to altitude, that it is completely worth cheating the system and beating nature with technology in order to survive. Therefore, I think that if one chooses to use oxygen and still climbs to the top of Everest, they are every bit as respected as someone that refused bottled oxygen out of stubbornness and pride.
1. Most people that get that far will have the drive to finish it, even if they are staring death in the face. They choose death over life, they believe to die on that summit is an honor, whereas the greater honor is to live and tell the tale yourself. Most of the time, however, what Kropp did could be considered a great dishonor to the climbing culture. Some would see it as him "petering out" and just giving up. This also has shown us that no following your inner advice could also be fatal. (This book and also the event last October.) Kropp was smart, and survived the onslaught that was to come, others however were not as lucky
ReplyDelete3. The serious climbers want to be like their ancestors and climb the mount as they are, and not with the fancy machinery. They wish to not decimate the mount with more junk and show it respect by climbing it like the ones before them. They agree that they will lose more than they will gain, but it still shows that some people believe in the religion of the mount, rather than the glory of the summit. I myself believe it should be man vs. nature, but then again, using a bit of technology to help keep you alive is not a bad thing. Oxygen and food are two essentials to climbing the mount.
Jose Chavez
ReplyDelete1. I think Hall, Boukreev, and Krakauer are all hard headed in way. They have all set a goal to climb Everest at all cost and they wont let anything stop them. Even as some of the other experienced climbers are turning back they continue to climb up the mountain in hopes of reaching the top. These climbers know of the storm but they continue to climb, fortunately for Krakauer, he reaches the top and gets back to camp four without serious injury but we don't know of the other two or the rest of the expedition yet. We also see this ignorance of inner advice in Beck when his vision had gotten so bad to the pint that he could not see but only a few feet in front of him but he decides to continue by literally following in peoples foot steps.
3.I don't really think the use of bottled oxygen should play a role into who deserves to be on Everest. We see devout climbers who have spent their whole lives doing this use bottled oxygen while climbing Everest. Even Boukreev who is deadest against using this oxygen takes a bottle of it with him just in case. Technology such as computers and other things that the climber Sandy Pittman has with her though, should play a role in this. She is merely going for the fame and to post things on a blog as she climbs and she makes one of the sherpas carry all of her things for her. This is putting the sherpas life at risk with the risk of taking others with him.
3. The climbers that don’t use bottled oxygen believe that it gives them more of a genuine experience than if they did use bottled oxygen because of the fact that it is more dangerous if you do not use it. Those people believe that the ones who are using the bottled oxygen don’t deserve to be on Everest because the oxygen is just another unneeded accessory being used. I believe that technology that will actually help us survive Everest such as bottled oxygen should be used but other technology such as television only makes the climb more dangerous, but technology should be used because it is manmade therefore it is still man versus nature.
ReplyDelete4. The psychological toll is greater because we know some things while we are ignorant to others. It is like what he wrote on page 193-194: “ later he told me that he recognized these innocent-looking puffs of water vapor to be the crowns of robust thunderheads immediately after reaching the top. ‘When you see a thunderhead in an airplane,’ he explained, ‘your first reaction is to get the fuck out of there. So that’s what I did.” Krakauer did not know much about what Adams was talking about so he did show much concern for it. As they went up they start to out of oxygen and when the brain loses oxygen we start to hallucinate and the oxygen travelling through the rest of our body gets transferred to the brain to keep us alive and our limbs lock and cramp. The hallucinations make it hard to concentrate and harder to know what is real and what is fiction which in turn makes them want stop and when they stop they start to freeze then they die. For example Andy was looking at full canisters of bottled oxygen and kept saying they were empty so nobody was getting any oxygen and that could have ended with disaster.
Amber Simpson
ReplyDelete1.) The culture of extreme climbers is obviously reaching the top, or destination they set out to reach from the beginning. If you are willing to climb such a dangerous route and risk your life, you are more than likely not going to turn back once you realize your life is in actual danger. Climbers know before they climb that it is risky, but extreme climbers do not care and seek the experience of it all; once they start the journey, they don’t turn back.
3.) Serious climbers refuse to use bottled oxygen because they feel if you are going to hike to the top of a mountain, you shouldn’t use things to help keep you alive; you should embrace nature and become a part of it. Serious climbers accept the challenges nature throws at them. They look at people and think if you use bottled oxygen, you do not deserve to be hiking up such a mountain. It’s the same concept as someone once told me about steak, “If you can’t eat it rare, you don’t deserve to eat it.” Steak is expensive in the same way that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain; they are both seen as something you must deserve to experience.
Clarissa Martinez
ReplyDelete1. Goran Kropp’s intuition goes against the culture of extreme climbers because for extreme climbers getting to the summit comes before everything and anything. Usually when an extreme climber is climbing Everest and has the option of going all the way to the summit or saving someone’s life that is not guaranteed to survive. They’ll usually pick the summit because they’ve been waiting their whole life for it.The mountain makes them have no feelings for life and death. So they can’t seem to throw away the opportunity to help someone who might not even make it and is also on the mountain that people are known not always to come back.
3. Most serious climbers refuse to use it because anyone can climb Everest. To climb Everst you can be anybody that has enough money to pay guides and use bottles of oxygen. The serious climbers need to find a way to stand out from everyone else. So they go all natural. This helps separate the people who deserve to be on the mountain and the people who don’t, the tourist. It helps separate because if you use oxygen bottles and guides you’re relying on others to get you to the summit and not yourself, and in a way it’s cheating. I believe it should be truly man vs. nature to help get more of a unique and your own experience while relying just on yourself.
Faith Armstrong
ReplyDelete1. This shows great judgment on his part because he didn't take the chance of risking his life just to get to the summit just so he could reach the top and get the fame from it. Other climbers would risk their lives no matter what the cost, just so they could say they made it to the top. We see most climbers not being able to follow their intuition and turn around because they feel as though they would be a failure.
3. There is debate over whether or not they should be able to use bottled oxygen because the "real climbers", so to speak, think that they should not be allowed to use bottled oxygen to make it to the top. They feel that that is not truly climbing Mount Everest. In my opinion, I think if you truly must climb Mount Everest, then you should be able to do it with or without oxygen, whatever you choose. It is ridiculous to risk your life for the fame of getting to the top and nearly dying in the process.
Question 1
ReplyDeleteExtreme climbers feel that they must reach the top no matter what. They think of nothing but that end goal and will do anything to achieve it. They wish for nothing but to set foot on that summit or else they feel as though the trip and all its hardships were for nothing. Kropp listens to the thing that all experienced climbers have (there is no way you climb hundreds of mountains and can not tell when a stom is coming), intuition. He decides that to have another chance to climb another day is worth more than setting two feet on the point of a big rock.
Question 3
Both bottled oxygen and not having it are extremely dangerous ways to climb Everest. Yes having the oxygen does make it easier, but I do not believe that having it does not make you an extreme climber. I mean you are still climbing miles and miles up into crazy altitudes with freezing bitter winds. I do believe that it is far more impressive to say you climbed without oxygen but I do not think that using oxygen makes one less of a climber (I mean I could never do it.) So yes I do think that if someone truly wishes to climb Everest for the aw inspiring nature or to just experience life and challenge themselves and doesn’t want to risk their lives any more than they already are then yes use the oxygen, you are still more impressive than I.
Bessie-Mei Soh
ReplyDelete1. To have experience means to have accomplished climbing feats and survived previously. They have the self-control to turn back and make tough choices to ensure survival by following their instincts. This doesn't necessarily say to me they don't care for their sport as much as those who push on bull-headedly. I can see it as a possible expression for their love for climbing, because they can survive to climb and climb again. Those that foolhardedly reach the summit and then die, or die before they summit due to rashness, seem like they are selling themselves a bit short. Once you die, guess who doesn't get to climby-climb the mountain again? Yes, idiot. You.
3. I understand that some climbers want to have a raw, pure experience of climbing Everest without oxygen. What I find ridiculous is the fact that other people climbing it differently bothers these "elitists". It's not like they are abusing the mountain any more or less, they are just balancing priorities and climbing it in the best way for them personally. When self righteous extremists point fingers at the "lesser" climbers, it makes it seem like they are in it for the glory and the cock rub more than the personal experience, which makes me want someone to point a finger and say "You are the ones who don't deserve to be on Everest".
Ashlyn Thompson
ReplyDelete1. Kropps intuition goes against the culture of extreme climbers such as Hall, Bourkeev, and Krakauer because extreme climbers, to me, don't use a lot of logic. They see the goal and they will do anything and everything to get it or get to it. They will even risk the chance of death to themselves or to others. He is thinking when turning back. He knows the danger of it and maybe wants to avoid it. We also see the ignorance of inner advice when some of these climbers are having difficulties seeing, vomiting, sickness, and even death pushing forward to achieve their goal no matter the cost. I think Kropps was smart when he turned back. He knew the risks of it and did what he thought was best for him and in the end he was one of the guys that outlived most of them who did push on.
3. I think most of the climbers that don't use oxygen don't use because of pride. They think that they aren't "true climbers" until they have climbed Everest without it. People could easily point the finger and say "Well, you climbed it, BUT you climbed with help." These climbers I don't think want to be having to rely on something to keep them alive. They want to go out and do it on their own with no help at all. I do believe that if it is a life or death situation, (which it is) is worth the help. In my opinion I think it should be man vs. nature, but not completely. Putting yourself in a position of life or death I think it is acceptable to use oxygen and technology. However, I don't think that should be the main focus of your journey.
Mikayla Sparks
ReplyDelete1. When climbers are that close to their goal, their dream, the only thing going through their mind is the summit. They don’t care about the people around them, or how close they are getting to it being a true life or death situation. They don’t think about any of that. So when Kropp decides to turn back minutes away, it showed true character. He knew he needed to get out of there. He pushed passed his funk and not many great climbers can do that. Most ignore that inner intuition and harm not only themselves, but those around them. We see that quite a bit in Into Thin Air, one where Beck Weathers, who had surgery on his eyes and could barely see, decided to go up and up, until he could no longer see and was to sit there by himself until Rob Hall could come back down and help him. When it comes to them being this close to the summit, they don’t listen to their inner advice.
3. Most serious climbers refuse to use bottled oxygen because they see it as cheating. Like what Bourkeev said earlier on, if you need help up the mountain, you probably shouldn’t be on it. In all honesty, if you need a lot of help, and it’s more like the guides are getting you up there and not yourself, Everest is too dangerous for you to climb. Many experienced climbers die on Everest, sometimes even with oxygen. Although it is just more things to carry while you are on the mountain, I think technology should play a role in getting to the top. It’s rare for someone to get to the top without some kind of help. If it was full on man vs. nature, nature is favored to win.