This is such a carefully worded memoir that allows such gorgeous and vivid images to recreated in the readers mind. "Cinders, course gravel, and granite boulders covered much of the ice, but every now and then the trail would cross a patch of bare glacier-a translucent,frozen medium that glistened like polished onyx." I loved this line because of its ability to give such a clear image as to what the writer was seeing and experiencing in these periods of time during the hike. The words are displayed in such a way that let you build layers of detail slowly building the image giving the details time to set in and give the reader a full and vivid image.
There is a aspect about this book and I don't know if any other reader as picked up on this but I feel there is this morbid underlying tone to this story. I am not sure if any other people looked into the introduction with detail but in it says "Among my five teammates who reached the top, four, including Hall, perished in a rouge storm that blew in without warning while we were still high on the peak." I kept thinking about this part while i'm reading the portions where he is introducing the climbing party. When he does this he not only gives incite about the personality but also things like their wives, husbands, and children. These details add such a humanizing affect to those people in the party and me personally can't help but think about the fact that these people with families and other things waiting for them back home are going to die. It just casts this shadow that is haunting threw out the story.
You're right this memoir is very nicely written that it gives the reader a nice picture of what is going on. I am also reading Into thin Air and I didn't pay much attention to the introduction and how he foreshadows the deaths of some of his teammates leaving a senses of mystery.
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