Jon Krakauer's Hike to the Devil's Thumb

Jon Krakauer's Hike to the Devil's Thumb

By Lou-Isa Cadiou

GOAL!

How must have it felt, to reach the top, acomplished, complete, breathless, and amazed?

Thank you!:)

Seeking the Summit

Jon went through many challenges throughout his hike.

• Dead ends- Its one thing to escavate a mountain, but another thing to not know exactly where your going. Coming to dead ends is a product of loosing energy and motivation, which Jon needs, in order to reach the top.
• Crevasses- One wrong step, can lead to a fatal disaster, which is why Jon's "curtain rods" helped him navagate through the hesitant "false ice"which could give out if you are not careful.
• Snow bridges- "I put a foot through a snow bridge spanning a slot so deep I couldn't see the bottom of it. A little later, I broke through another bridge to my waist; the poles kept me out of the hundred-foot crevasse"(Krakauer139).

Litarary Inspirations

Jon Krakauer

• Nietzsche- "a German philosopher known for his writings on good and evil, the end of religion in modern society and the concept of a "super-man"(Biography.com Editors).
• Kerouac- "an American jounalist and poet, known for writing a famous American classic "On the Road"(Biography.com Editors).
• John Menlove Edwards- "a troubled writer and psychiatrist who took climbing as a shelter from himself. He later took his own life in 1958"(Biography.com Editors).

Chris McCandless

• Jack London- "also an American author and journalist, best known for the adventure novels White Fang and The Call of the Wild" (Biography.com Editors).

Inspired by the Possibilities

In 1977, Jon was obsessed in mountain climbing, so much as to sacrifice his time and energy to challenge himself and scout the impossible. One of his well known excursions was the climb to the Devil's thumb. Now of course, many have climbed it before, though what was never done was escalading it on the Northern face of the mountain. Climbing it on the wrong side was said to be a true challenge, but when his decision was to do it alone, people were shocked! But in Jon's eyes, difficulty was the objective.

About Devil's Thumb

• A mountain located at the Indian Peaks in Colorado, near Rollins Pass
• The largest rock face in North America
• Known for its extreem 5th class difficulty due to weather conditions and high exposer
• The peak was first climbed in 1951
• Elivation- 12,150 ft / 3,703 m

Background Info

• Jon's first inspiration for mountain climbing came when his father brought him mountineering at the age of 8.
• Received a degree in environmental studies at Hampshire college.
• Had a life changing/ tramatizing experience climbing Mt. Everest.

From One Vagabond to Another

• "If something captured my undisiplined imagination, I pursued it with a zeal bordering obsession, and from the age of seventeen until my late twenties that something was mountain climbing" (Krakauer134).
• "McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well—relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it. He had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family. He’d successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm’s length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he’d slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz’s life as well" (Krakauer 55).
• “It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale" (Krakauer155).

The lengths Chris would go to find his passion are imense. I think that some part of Jon was that kind of person; willing to give everything, to leave everything, just to find something inside him so deep that it took sacrefices and lonliness to grasp the feeling of being completely and absosutly alone...

Books and Articles

• Wrote an article for a British magazine Mountain about his experience climbing the Devil's Thumb.
• Before becoming a full-time writer, Jon wrote for various magazines: Architectural Digest, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. All of which were driven with a passion for the outdoors.
• Published 1st book, Eiger Dreams in 1990
• Wrote the article Death of an Innocent in 1993 (Chris McCandless)
• Was asked to climb Mt. Everest and write an article for the Outside magazine.
• To this day, still continues to write articles and books.

About Jon Krakauer

"His experience was nothing short of traumatizing, and after he finished his article for Outside he vowed to never write about what had happened on Mt. Everest...Although Krakauer insisted that he wouldn’t write a book about Everest,... he came across mistakes he had made in his account and felt that many people didn’t see the complexity of the Everest disaster. He published Into Thin Air in 1997" (Corba).

• Born in Brooklin Massachusettes, April 12, 1954
• Raised in Corvallis, Oregon
• Parents- Lewis Joseph Krakauer & Carol Ann Krakauer
• Third of five children
• Married Linda Mariam Moore, a former mountain climber

Starting from the beginning...