| A | B |
|---|
| Jon Krakauer | author and narrator of the book |
| Ang Dorje | climbing sirdar for Rob Hall's team |
| sirdar | head Sherpa |
| Yasuko Namba | Japanese woman who dies on Everest |
| David Breashears | leader of the IMAX expedition |
| Bruce Herrod | deputy team leader under Ian Woodall |
| Anatoli Boukreev | anti-social guide on Scott Fischer's team from Kazakhstan |
| Rob Hall | esteemed head guide of Adventure Consultants |
| Doug Hansen | postal worker client with Adventure Consultants who becomes friends with Krakauer |
| Scott Fischer | renowned climber and head of Mountain Madness |
| Makalu Gau | leader of the Taiwanese climbing group |
| Sir Edmund Hilary | New Zealander who, in 1953, became the first person to climb Everest |
| Tenzing Norgay | Hilary's Nepali-Indian Sherpa |
| Andy Harris | gifted guide for Rob Hall, for whose death Krakauer blames himself |
| Beck Weathers | a doctor who is presumed dead twice but descends successfully |
| Lopsang Jangbu | Fischer's loyal Sherpa; pulls Sandy Pittman up the mountain |
| Ian Woodall | unpleasant leader of the South African expedition who refuses to loan his radio for a rescue attempt |
| Sir Andrew Waugh | gave Everest its name in honor of the mid-19th century Surveyor General of India |
| cwm | mountain valley |
| apex | highest point |
| gregarious | sociable |
| Sherpa | Indian mountain guides with technical climbing skills |
| rimpoche | head lama of all Nepal who blessed the team |
| onyx | semi-precious variety of agate |
| serac | huge blocks of glacial ice with the potential to fall |
| crampon | grid of 2" steel spikes clamped to boot sole |
| Sagarmatha | Nepalese "goddess of the sky," Everest |
| in medias res | in the middle of things, or of a story |
| hypoxia | body's oxygen deprivation at the tissue level |
| belay | to secure a climber with a fixed rope |
