Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American writer and mountaineer.

He is the author of bestselling non-fiction books—Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; Under the Banner of Heaven; and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles.

He competed in tennis at Corvallis High School, and graduated in 1972.

He went on to study at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where in 1976 he received his degree in environmental studies.

In 1977, he met former climber Linda Mariam Moore, and they married in 1980.

They lived in Seattle, Washington, but moved to Boulder, Colorado, after the release of Krakauer's book Into Thin Air.

After graduating from college in 1977, Krakauer spent three weeks alone in the wilderness of the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska and climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild.

In November 1983, he was able to give up his part-time work as a fisherman and carpenter to become a full-time writer.

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (1990) is a non-fiction collection of articles and essays by Jon Krakauer on mountaineering and rock climbing.

It concerns a variety of topics, from ascending the Eiger Nordwand in the Swiss Alps, Denali in Alaska or K2 in the Karakoram, to the well-known rock climbers Krakauer has met on his trips, such as John Gill.

The book employs a non-linear narrative that documents the travels of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family who, in 1990, after graduating from Emory University, donated all of the money ($24,000) in his bank account to the humanitarian charity Oxfam, renamed himself "Alexander Supertramp", and began a journey in the American West.

In 1992, he made his way to Cerro Torre in the Andes of Patagonia—a sheer granite peak considered to be one of the most difficult technical climbs in the world.

In addition to his work on mountain climbing, the topics he covered as a freelance writer varied greatly; his writing has also appeared in Architectural Digest, National Geographic Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian. Krakauer's 1992 book Eiger Dreams collects some of his articles written between 1982 and 1989.

On assignment for Outside, Krakauer wrote an article focusing on two parties during his ascent of Mt. Everest: the one he was in, led by Rob Hall, and the one led by Scott Fischer, both of whom successfully guided clients to the summit but experienced severe difficulty during the descent.

The storm, and, in his estimation, irresponsible choices by guides of both parties, led to a number of deaths, including both head guides.

Krakauer felt the short account did not accurately cover the event, and clarified his initial statements—especially those regarding the death of Andy Harris—in Into Thin Air, which also includes extensive interviews with fellow survivors.

McCandless' remains were found in September 1992; he had died of starvation in Alaska on the Stampede Trail at 63.86832°N, -149.769°W.

In the book, Krakauer draws parallels between McCandless' experiences and his own, and the experiences of other adventurers.

He was a member of an ill-fated expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1996, one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing Everest.

Krakauer was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, as the third of five children of Carol Ann (née Jones) and Lewis Joseph Krakauer.

His father was Jewish and his mother was a Unitarian of Scandinavian descent.

He was raised in Corvallis, Oregon.

His father introduced the young Krakauer to mountaineering at the age of eight.

His father was "relentlessly competitive and ambitious in the extreme" and placed high expectations on Krakauer, wishing for his son to attend Harvard Medical School and become a doctor.

Krakauer wrote that this was his father's view of "life's one sure path to meaningful success and lasting happiness."

In 1996, Krakauer took part in a guided ascent of Mount Everest.

His group was one of those caught in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which a violent storm trapped a number of climbers high on the slopes of the mountain.

Krakauer reached the peak and returned to camp, but four of his teammates (including group leader Rob Hall) died while making their descent in the storm.

A candid recollection of the event was published in Outside magazine and, later, in the book Into Thin Air.

By the end of the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people had died on the mountain, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point.

Into the Wild was published in 1996 and spent two years on The New York Times Best Seller List.

Hired as a journalist by the magazine, Krakauer had participated as a client of the 1996 Everest climbing team led by Rob Hall—the team which ended up suffering the greatest casualties in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

In 1997, Krakauer expanded his September 1996 Outside article into Into Thin Air.

The book describes the climbing parties' experiences and the general state of Everest mountaineering at the time.

The book reached the top of The New York Times ' non-fiction bestseller list, was honored as "Book of the Year" by Time magazine, and was among three books considered for the General Non-Fiction Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

In 1999, he received an Arts and Letters award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Into The Wild was adapted into a film of the same name, which was released on September 21, 2007.

This has since been exceeded by the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche, and the 2015 earthquake avalanche disaster in which twenty-two people were killed.

Krakauer has publicly criticized the commercialization of Mount Everest.

Much of Krakauer's popularity as a writer came from his work as a journalist for Outside.