普华永道项目管理培训讲义(ppt、doc多个)
PRE-COURSE READING
EXTRACTS FROM INTO THIN AIR – JON KRAKAUER (1997)
Background to the 1996 Everest Expedition
In the early 1990's Rob Hall made a considerable name for himself in the mountaineering fraternity by summitting the highest mountains on each of the seven continents in only seven months.
In an attempt to capitalise on this and generate long term prospects in professional climbing, he and a partner established a company called Adventure Consultants. This company would specialise in high altitude guiding – taking paying clients up and back down the 'seven-summits'. Convinced that there would be enough potential clients with 'ample cash,' but insufficient experience, Adventure Consultants was born.
About the same time, a nu`mber of other climbers had similar ideas. Several companies specialising in high altitude guiding were launched. Amongst these was Mountain Madness, headed by Scott Fischer. In 1994 Fischer ascended Everest without supplemental oxygen, and a couple of years later he led a high profile ascent of Kilimanjaro that netted half a million dollars for the charity CARE.
Most of the companies in the high-altitude guiding market were only barely making a profit. In 1995 Fischer took home only about $12,000. Future profitability depended on the ability to attract high profile clients, who would spend large amounts to join an expedition, and then to get them safely up and down the mountain.
With both Hall and Fischer mounting expeditions to Everest in the spring of 1996, the scene was set for some friendly competition between the two. Jon Krakauer, a journalist and experienced mountain climber approached both organisations to discuss joining their teams as a client. In return for a discount, he would write a number of high profile articles in 'Outside Magazine' – a publication widely read by climbing enthusiasts in North America. He eventually decided to climb with Rob Hall and Adventure Consultants.
On May 9th 1996, five expeditions launched an assault on the summit of Mount Everest. The conditions seemed perfect. Twenty-four hours later one climber had died and 23 other men and women were caught in a desperate struggle for their lives as they battled against a ferocious storm that threatened to tear them from the mountain. In all eight climbers died that day in the worst tragedy Everest has ever seen.
Jon Krakauer, an accomplished climber, joined a commercial expenditure run by guides for paying clients, many of whom had little or no climbing experience. In Into Thin Air he gives a thorough and chilling account of the ill-fated climb and reveals the complex web of decisions and circumstances that left a group of amateurs fighting for their lives in the thin air and sub-zero cold above 26,000 feet – a place climbers call 'The Death Zone'. Into Thin Air reveals the hard realities of mountaineering and echoes with the frantic calls of climbers lost high on the mountain and way beyond help.
The following extracts are taken from the book Krakauer eventually wrote about the expedition, entitled Into thin Air.

Team
On the morning of March 31, two days after arriving in Kathmandu the assembled members of the 1996 Adventure Consultants Everest Expedition crossed the tarmac of Tribhuvan International Airport and climbed aboard a Russian-built Mi-17 helicopter operated by Asian Airlines. A dented relic of the Afghan war, it was as big as a school bus, seated twenty-six passengers, and looked like it had been riveted together in somebody's backyard. The flight engineer latched the door and handed out wads of cotton to stuff in our ears, and the behemoth chopper lumbered into the air with a head-splitting roar. The floor was piled high with duffels, backpacks, and cardboard boxes. Jammed into jump seats around the perimeter of the aircraft was the human cargo, facing inward, knees wedged against chests . The deafening whine of the turbines made conversation out of the question. It wasn'ta comfortable ride, but nobody complained.
Glancing around the helicopter's capacious interior, I tried to fix the names of my team-mates in my memory. In addition to guides Rob Hall and Andy Harris there was Helen Wilton, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of four, who was returning for her third season as Base Camp Manager. Caroline Mackenzie – an accomplished climber and physician in her late twenties – was the expedition doctor and, like Helen, would be going no higher than Base Camp. Lou Kasischke, a gentlemanly lawyer I'd met at the airport, had climbed six of the Seven Summits – as had Yasuko Namba, forty-seven, a taciturn personnel director who worked at the Tokyo branch of Federal Express. Beck Weathers, forty-nine, was a garrulous pathologist from Dallas. Stuart Hutchinson, thirty-four, attired in a Ren and Stimpy T-shirt, was a cerebral, somewhat wonkish Canadian cardiologist on leave from a research fellowship. John Taske, at fifty-six the oldest member of our group, was an anaesthesiologist from Brisbane who'd taken up climbing after retiring from the Australian army. Frank Fischbeck, fifty-three, a dapper genteel publisher from Hong Kong, had attempted Everest three times with one of Hall's competitors; in 1994 he'd gotten all the way to the South Summit, just 300 vertical feet below the top. Doug Hansen, forty-six, was an American postal worker who'd gone to Everest with Hall in 1995 and, like Fischbeck, had reached the South Summit before turning back.
I wasn't sure what to make of my fellow clients. In outlook and experience they were nothing like the hard-core climbers with whom I usually went into the mountains. But they seemed like nice, decent folks, and there wasn'ta certifiable asshole in the entire group – at least not one who was showing his true colors at this early stage of the proceedings.
For the most part I attributed my growing unease to the fact that I'd never climbed as a member of such a large group – a group of complete strangers, no less. Aside from one Alaska trip I'd done twenty-one years earlier , all my previous expeditions had been undertaken with one or two trusted friends, or alone.
In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber's actions can affect the welfare of the entire team.
The consequences of a poorly tied knot, a stumble, a dislodged rock, or some other careless deed are as likely to be felt by the perpetrator's colleagues as the perpetrator. Hence it's not surprising that climbers are typically wary of joining forces with those who bona fides are unknown to them.
But trust in one's partners is a luxury denied those who sign on as clients on a guided ascent; one must put one's faith in the guide instead. As the helicopter droned toward Lukla, I suspected that each of my teammates hoped as fervently as I that Hall had been careful to weed out clients of dubious ability, and would have the means to protect each of us from one another's shortcomings.
Once the team landed at the Nepalese village where the hike to Base Camp would begin, they met their team of Sherpas. Sherpas remain an enigma to most foreigners, who tend to regard them through a romantic screen. People unfamiliar with the demography of the Himalaya often assume that all Nepalese are Sherpas, when in fact there are no more than 20,000 Sherpas in all of Nepal, a nation the size of North Carolina that has some 20 million residents and more than fifty distinct ethnic groups. Sherpas are a mountain people, devoutly Buddhist, whose forebears migrated south from Tibet four or five centuries
普华永道项目管理培训讲义(ppt、doc多个)