"There's no way to defend it," he continues, "even to yourself, once you've been involved in something like this disaster. And yet I've continued to climb. I don't know what that says about me or the sport other than the potential power it has. What makes climbing great for me, strangely enough, is this life and death aspect. It sounds trite to say, I know, but climbing isn't just another game. It isn't just another sport. It's life itself."
Climbing and other risk-taking activities became a part of Krakauer's life at a young age. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1954, Krakauer was only two when he moved with his family to Corvallis, Oregon, experiencing his first climb a few years later at the age of eight. Krakauer's father, who led his son up Oregon's 10,000-foot South Sister, was acquainted with Willi Unsoeld, a member of the first American expedition to Everest in 1963. Thus Krakauer's heroes became Unsoeld and his fellow-climber Tom Hornbein, and his dream became the Everest Summit. "I'd had this secret desire to climb Everest that never left me from the time I was nine and Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, a friend of my father's, made it in '63," Krakauer admits to Bryant.
This is a free page. This page contains 198 words. This
biography contains 3,882 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Jon Krakauer Access Pass.
