Jon Krakauer Defends ‘Into Thin Air’ Against Internet Troll

Watch several of Jon Krakauer's videos about the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest below

Gripped February 8, 2025

Award-winning author Jon Krakauer is releasing several YouTube videos defending his book Into Thin Air, which was published in 1997. The book, considered a classic in mountaineering, documents a disaster on Mount Everest on May 10 and 11, 1996, that left eight people dead. Over several YouTube videos, somebody who was not on Everest in 1996 has sought to discredit Krakauer in such a defamatory way that Krakauer is releasing several of his own videos in response.

Earlier this week, Krakauer posted this on Instagram: “In August 2024 I learned from comments in my Instagram feed that a YouTuber named Michael Tracy had been aggressively maligning my book, Into Thin Air, on his YouTube channel, which has more than 130,000 subscribers. In April 2024, Tracy posted the first of at least sixteen videos (thus far) claiming to have identified numerous errors in my book about the 1996 Everest disaster, most of which he insists are lies intended to promote a deliberately false narrative. Almost all of Tracy’s allegations are demonstrably untrue. Given the damage Tracy is attempting to inflict on my reputation, and his flagrant misrepresentations of what happened on Everest in 1996, I feel the need to debunk as many of his dishonest claims as possible. I have therefore written a detailed refutation of some of Tracy’s most egregious allegations, which I will present in eight separate chapters, starting today, with a new chapter posted every day or so going forward.” You can find everything from Krakauer here.

According to his website, Krakauer was raised in Oregon, graduated from Hampshire College in 1976 and then worked as a carpenter and a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska. Into the Wild, his first bestselling book, was published in January 1996. Four months later Krakauer climbed Everest, but four of the five teammates who reached the summit with him perished in a storm. This tragedy was the subject of his next book, Into Thin Air. In 1999 he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to the award citation, “Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.”

We’ve included the first few videos that Krakauer has posted below along with a synopsis of Into Thin Air. Consider supporting Krakauer by subscribing and following his YouTube and Instagram pages.

Into Thin Air

When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn’t slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn’t made it back to their camp and were desperately struggling for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.

Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall’s team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.

Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people — including himself — to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer’s eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.