Krakauer explores the mysterious force of human ambition, which drives individuals to want to achieve the seemingly unachievable. Before documenting the specifics of the 1996 Everest disaster, Krakauer explores the history of Everest’s summit attempts. Gunther O. Dyrenfurth, an early Himalayan mountaineer, felt that summiting Everest was “a matter of universal human endeavor, a cause from which there is no withdrawal, whatever losses it may demand” (17). In a similar vein, George Leigh Mallory responds to a journalist's query of why Everest should be climbed—“because it is there” (18). Krakauer draws parallels between these intrepid mountaineers of the early 20th century and his own expedition members, including himself, all of whom are mysteriously drawn to conquer the highest peak in the world. This drive in the human psyche motivates people to endure enormous amounts of discomfort, risk, fear, and pain.

Krakauer admires his fellow climbers, many of whom he had been dubious about due to their mountaineering inexperience, as he watches them persevere through considerable pain: “Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I’d been on” (140).