When the first edition of Into Thin Air was published not long after the 1996 Mount Everest calamity, during which eight climbers died in a violent storm, I assumed that the disturbing events I described in my book would convince amateur climbers that paying a lot of money to be guided up the highest mountain on Earth was a bad idea. I was wrong. The deadly hazards I wrote about attracted novice climbers to Everest like gamblers to a slot machine. The owner of one of the prominent guiding