1) He throws the match into a bag of trash, which lights, and before he can put the fire out the inner wall of his tent is damaged, and the temperature inside is now thirty degrees colder. Even more than that, though, he is bothered by the fact that it is his father’s tent, which had been loaned to him reluctantly.
3) His father wants him to be a doctor. We've met the adventurer and author.
4) When the weather clears, Krakauer decides to try to climb the Thumb again. This time he only makes it a hundred feet up before the weather forces him to stop, and his decent is terrifying and almost fatal. When he finally makes it back to his camp, he realizes that he is not going to be able to succeed, and he has to give up on climbing the north face of the Thumb. There is still an easier route, which he originally thought was beneath him, but which he now realizes is the only path he’ll be able to succeed on, and so he tries that way.
When he wakes up the next morning, it is clear that the weather is not going to hold for very long, so he climbs as fast as he can with almost no gear, intending to go up and back before the storm hits. He reaches the summit after a quick and dangerous climb, takes a few pictures, and heads back down. He makes it back, and not too much later is back in Colorado, working the same construction job that he’d been at before he left.
5) Yes, he makes it to the top.
6)
7) I think they were both stirred by the mystery of mortality. These men both enjoyed living on the edge where they stared death in the face from one moment to the next. It had to have been beyond thrilling to take those chances. They were tempting fate and looking into the face of their own mortality.
