Jon Krakauer (b. 1954) is an American non-fiction author and mountaineer, well known in outdoor and mountain-climbing writing, and as of 2003 entering the field of investigative writing .
Life and work
Krakauer was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, but raised in Corvallis, Oregon from the age of 2 years, along with two older sisters. He visited Mount Hood at age four, and at the age of 8 began mountain climbing with his father, including on the dormant volcano South Sister (the third highest peak in Oregon); he remembers his first technical climbing as being the last 50 feet to the summit of Three Fingered Jack, at age 9.
He competed in tennis at Corvallis High School, and graduated from there in 1972. In 1974, he was part of a party of 7 friends pioneering peaks in the Arrigetch Peaks of the Brooks Range of Alaska and was invited by American Alpine Journal to write about those experiences; though he neither expected nor received a fee, he was excited by having his article published. He graduated from Hampshire College in January of 1976, and pioneered climbing the Devils Thumb in the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska in 1977, an experience he described in an essay included in his collection Eiger Dreams . Also in 1977, he met Linda Moore, a former climber, and married her in 1980. He began writing for Outside magazine, and she began a sewing business, around 1980; he was able to abandon part-time work as a fisherman and a carpenter for full-time writing in November of 1983. His freelance writing involved great variety; for instance, he wrote a monthly column on fitness for Playboy magazine.
He is noted for climbing, in 1992 on its west face, Cerro Torre in the Andes of Argentine Patagonia.
In May 1996, on assignment from Outside, Krakauer was in one of four Mount Everest summit-assault parties that collectively sustained fatalities when caught in what he calls "the death zone" by an exceptional storm. His writing focuses on two parties, the one he was in and the one lead by Scott Fischer, both of which got members to the summit but had members die during the descent. The storm, and in his estimation irresponsible choices by professional guides, led to a number of deaths, including the head guides of both of those parties. In 1997, he published the expansion of his September 1996 Outside article into his best known work, Into Thin Air, describing those parties' experiences and the general state of Everest mountaineering; it reached first place on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list , and was among the final three books considered for the "general non-fiction" Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
Selected Bibliography
As of 2004, he also edits the Exploration series of the Modern Library.
Last updated: 02-07-2005 05:40:15
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55
