Aclimitizing is a lot of work. You repeatedly have to climb up from base camp to camp one and then up to camp two and then back down and back up. Some groups are real organized in their approach to this. Other folks are kinda loosely goosey. One example of the loosey goosey approach ended up with a Sherpa suffering from altitude sickness up at base two without any professionals. The amateur climbers up there did their best to help and got him back down to base camp. At base camp there was a bit of an oddly similar situation and there was a lack of urgency to treat the Sherpa. The result was his tragic death.
This chapter also talks a lot about a rich lady.
CH 9 pg 125
In this chapter they were supposed to go up to camp 3, but a storm rolled in and they went back to camp 2.
There'a a lot of talk about how the Sherpas believe that premarital sex on the mountain, especially at higher altitudes makes the gods angry and then people die as punishment.
CH 10 pg 137
Going from camp two to camp 3 is hard. Lots of virticle ice climbing. Camp 3 itself is a narrow ice shelf with some tents. Up at that altitude there's lots of worry about the different high altitude sicknesses. But they did it and acclimatization appears to have been accomplished as narrator is able to breathe easy going back down to base camp. Every climbing team seems to be ready and they're talking turkey about who is gonna go when. Except for the dick from south Africa. He says hell go whenever he damn well pleases. This pisses narrator's guide Hall right off.
Also the dipshit from Texas isn't that bad I guess.
CH 11 pg 149
Camp 3 is cold and ice and the air is to thin to support life, so you breath canned air. At least you should. But narrator gets claustrophobic and sleeps without it. Camp 3 is really icey. So much so that I'd you aren't careful when you go out to do your business you can slide down the mountain and into a crevasse and they find you and they pull you out, but your condition worsens and you die.
CH 12 pg 165
Going from camp 4 to the col is serious business. Guide tells narrator he needs to stick with the group. Narrator is not a team player. He's all pissed off that he has to wait for people. There's a famous lady being led by the group with the guide from seattle that narrator knows from toher climbs and he's real dedicated to getting her to the top. So much that he has a sherpa short line her (this involvles tying her to himself with a 3 foot rope, basically dragging her along) and it kinda sucks cause as narator is being a dick and trying to stomp to the head of the pack to get to the south ridge that they'll then climb to get to the summit, said sherpa is puking his guts out.
Ch 13 pg 179
This chapter is all about rope. Or rather, the lack there of. Usually before any paying guest gets anywhere near the summit, sherpas or guides or someone decides to be in charge and lays out rope so that everyone has something to hook onto so that when they're trying to breath the super thin air at 29,000 feet and they take a bad step, they don't plunge 7,000 feet to their doom. But due to confusion or whatever narrator gets to that spot near the top where you really need rope and there isn't any. So he volunteers to help a couple other guides set up the ropes. Then when he's close enough he's like "hey, is it cool if I just go to the top" and the guide is like "sure, I'll finish up the ropes" and so he makes it to the top of Mount Everest. In theory one should be overjoyed at this accomplishment. But narrator has been listening to his guide and also has a bit of experience submitting mountains to know that making it to the top isn't really getting to the end. It's getting to the half way point cause you gotta get back down. The Southeast ridge of Everest is littered with the bodies of people that made it to the top but couldn't make it back down to camp 4.
ch 14 pg 191
On the way down narrator runs into a traffic jam he talks about at the beginning of the book. He helps someone with their oxygen tank, which has frozen over and he asks them to close up his tank a bit so he can conserve his oxygen for later when the traffic jam has cleared up and he can get on the move. But instead of closing it, this other person opens it up and then after 10 minutes of standing around, narrator's oxygen is out.
Narrator is looking forward to going back down after the traffic jam and getting a fresh bottle of oxygen. One of the guides has kinda lost it and tells him that there isn't any. That there's just a pile of empty bottles. But narrator gets down there and hooks up a bottle and it's sure full of breathable oxygen. Hindsight being 20/20 narrator feels like he should have raised some sort of alarm at that point so the guide knew there was something wrong with his breathing regulator or his brain or whatever it was that made him think all those tanks were empty.
narrator runs into a guy on the team that basically can't see anymore and at that point he should have insisted he bring him down to the south col with him. But narrator's not really a team player so he's like, there's a guide coming down with another person on our team and so the guy that can't see will just wait for them. Narrator, being a selfish dick is psyched to go down alone. And this is where the storm starts to get bad. Narrator once again runs out of oxygen. But he's able to clip onto a rope that takes him most of the way to the south col. He runs into the guide the has already lost it but they keep moving and both of them make it safely into their tents on the south col. Which is great for them, but not so great for the 19 people still trying to make their way down with the storm getting worse every second.
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