Where Heaven Meets Hell -- Jon Krakauer Recounts His Personal Experience Of A Tragic Everest Expedition In His New Book, `Into Thin Air' -- Special To The Seattle Times

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer Villard, $24.95 -----------------------------------------------------------------

It was just a year ago yesterday _ May 10, 1996 _ that tragedy struck the upper slopes of the highest mountain in the world. Four teams of climbers on Mount Everest were caught near the summit by an unexpected storm.

Seven men and one woman died, including professional guides and expedition leaders Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, both of whom had earned reputations as experienced, smart, nearly invincible high-altitude mountaineers. In all, 12 climbers died on the mountain last spring, the worst single season in Everest history.

Seattle writer Jon Krakauer was a client of Hall's guided Everest expedition, sent by his editors at Outside magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain. He barely escaped with his life.

"Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster" is the harrowing tale of Krakauer's experience, told with all the considerable power and authority of his years as a journalist and climber. It is a tale that is hard to put down _ and one that will not soon be forgotten.

Like Krakauer's acclaimed 1996 bestseller, "Into the Wild" _ the story of a young man's alienation from his family, his disappearance, cross-country odyssey and ultimate death by

starvation in the Alaska wilderness _ the heart of "Into Thin Air' is a mixture of tragedy and hubris.

Central also is the author's own obsessiveness: Krakauer latches on to the Everest story with the tenacity of a bull terrier and doesn't let go. After the tragedy, he conducted countless interviews, weighed multiple contradictory accounts and combed through base-camp radio logs in a quest for the objective truth.

But what ultimately gives the book its power is the way Krakauer ransacks his own tortured conscience to "tell what happened on the mountain as honestly and accurately as possible." Such gut-level integrity, combined with high-caliber reporting, is a rare and haunting combination.

Fischer, a renowned Seattle climber who operated his own expedition firm, Mountain Madness, and Hall, a New Zealander, were rivals in the burgeoning commercial guiding business, which charges clients as much as $65,000 for the chance to climb Everest. These enterprises continue to be at the heart of controversy.

Critics contend that many of the guided clients endanger other more experienced climbers who supposedly have a more valid claim to the mountain's upper reaches. Yet supporters point out that guided climbing has been the norm in the Alps for decades, and that the commercial expeditions on Everest deserved much of the credit for removing tons of accumulated trash on the mountain's slopes.

Krakauer suggests that competition between the two leaders might have clouded their judgment as each tried to seek an advantage. And both, he asserts, may have become overconfident: Fischer had earlier described the route to the summit as a "yellow brick road"; Hall had successfully guided 39 clients to the top and back in the previous six years.

Krakauer makes many judgments about that fateful day, and many other climbers come under his scrutiny. Potential causes for the tragedy include ego, greed, inexperience, preferential treatment given to certain clients, organizational breakdowns, personality conflicts _ the stuff of human interaction _ all combining on that day with sheer bad luck to take the lives of eight strong climbers.

Such judgments notwithstanding, "Into Thin Air" is not about placing blame _ though Krakauer implies none too delicately that there is plenty to go around, and he places an undeservedly hefty share on his own shoulders. The sad, terrible fact is that things went wrong, as things will always go wrong.

People will continue to die on Mount Everest, whether they pay $65,000 for the privilege or not. In addition, the psychological makeup necessary to successfully scale the world's tallest mountains just compounds the problem: If one is driven enough to force through the pain and fear of high-altitude climbing _ limits which most of us will never encounter, and which Krakauer evokes masterfully _ one runs the risk of pushing too far.

"Above 26,000 feet," writes Krakauer of the so-called "death zone" on the highest peaks, ". . . the line between appropriate zeal and reckless summit fever becomes grievously thin. Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses."

Krakauer evokes the personalities of the guides and their clients, as well as other personalities encountered on the mountain, with economy and precision. Likewise, his evocations of the physical surroundings are superb.

But it is Krakauer's own dogged obsessions that provide the oxygen that propel "Into Thin Air" to the commanding summit of mountaineering literature.

S.A. Stolnack is a Seattle freelance writer.