Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 97

Krakauer’s Into Thin Air

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Krakauer himself has suggested that Everest is perceived as more of a myth than a
mountain; here I am suggesting that as a mythic construction, Krakauer’s narrative
of the climbing of Everest explores the concerns of the society that consumes his
story. Into Thin Air is a treatise exposing the social tensions inherent in a culture
with unequal access to leisure and prestige and of a society in which the purported
transcendence of commercial relations is a mark of extreme privilege. In this
light, the critique of the Everest disaster is a paradoxical argument for the mainte
nance of an anti-utilitarian ethos defiant of the capitalist economy that makes this
ethos possible by producing an elite pool of rich physicians and millionaires who
can afford the character-building sufferings and pleasures of high-altitude expedi
tion climbing. These particular ironies are familiar to both producers and consum
ers of climbing culture.
Indeed, the commercial success of Into Thin Air has inspired an incisive
parody from the regional heart of Krakauer’s Northwestern American climbing
culture. Gerry Riggs’s “Into the Store: A Personal Account of the REI Disaster”
appeared in The Seattle Weekly in December of 1997; it accounts for the harrowing
journey of a team of consumers assigned the not-so-difficult mission of spending
$29,000 each (one dollar for each foot of Everest’s elevation above sea level) on
climbing gear. Since they are competitive “gear-heads” (a term with currency
among climbers and climbing enthusiasts), however, their success in the new REI
megastore is assured. The team is well instructed by one of their Japanese guide’s
famous sayings: “It’s not the climbing that matters.... It’s the gear” (28). The
satire works well because it is aimed at a tension explicitly central to Krakauer’s
climbing ethos. Riggs, one of four shoppers led by their Japanese guide, a “wellknown. .. gear accumulist,” begins melodramatically with a narrative haunted by
a sense of tragedy: “In May of 1997, Gear Up! magazine sent me to the new REI
flagship store in Seattle to participate in and write about a guided attempt at a oneday credit card charge of $29,000 worth of climbing gear.... On May 23 at 8:53
p.m., I reached my goal; but it came at a terrible cost. In plain truth I knew better
than to go to REI anyway, and in doing so I was party to the financial ruin of
several good men — not to mention a blight on my own credit history that is likely
to remain for a very long time” (23). Riggs’s imaginary climbing party includes
such parodic dramatis personae as Tim Smalls, a community college student, Rick
Forthright, a Bellingham building contractor, and Tammi Trinkets, President and
founder of the Mercer Island National Association for the Advancement of Color
Coordination, Chairperson of the Eastside Climbing Gear Enthusiasts Club, and
co-sponsor of the “Hillary Step” — a women’s workout program whose name
alludes to a cliffy obstacle on the Everest route. In Riggs’s story there is opportu
nity for self-examination mimicking Krakauer’s own confessional mode: “Taking
on the REI $29,000 challenge is not a rational act, and those who attempt it are