A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more --- including Krakauer's --- in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for INTO THIN AIR, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster.