Into Thin Air

Jon Krakauer and his team arrived at Everest Base Camp. This camp was 17,600 feet above sea level.

Rob Hall, the head guide of Jon's team, told the group they would be leaving at 4:45 am to climb from Camp Two to Camp Three. The whole team was about to spend the night at 24,000 feet.

Rob Hall and another expedition leader named Scott Fischer planned that each expedition would send two Sherpas to fix lines ahead of the two groups. For some reason, no Sherpas left on the night of May 9th to fix the ropes.

Leaving Camp 4, Hall's team included three guides, eight clients, and four Sherpas. Fischer's team left half of an hour after Hall's team including three guides, six Sherpas, and six clients.

Jon and his friend, Andy Harris, made it to the top of Everest.

By 6:00 pm, the storm escalated into a full-scale blizzard with wind gusts of 60 knots.

Neal Beidleman, Michael Groom, seven clients, and two Sherpas from Fischer's team coalesced into a single group. With visibility being dropped down to less than 20 feet, Beidleman and his team descended 200 feet of Camp Four.

Beidleman, Groom, Schoening, and Gammelgaard made it to Camp Four. They then tell Boukreev that Charlotte, Sandy, and Tim were still on the mountain and needed help fast.

After coming off the mountain, Jon heard a radio call from Base Camp and Rob Hall saying that Hall was on the summit ridge calling for help. He also heard that Beck and Yasuko were dead and that Scott Fischer was missing somewhere on the peak.

Hall got on the radio saying that he and Hansen were high on the summit and needed oxygen urgently. Andy Harris kept interrupting the radio calls and told Hall that the two bottles on South Summit were empty, but little did he know both bottles were completely full.