hall had brokered a deal with "outside" magazine for advertising space in exchange for a story about the growing popularity of commercial expeditions to everest. krakauer was originally slated to climb with scott fischer's mountain madness team, but hall landed him, at least in part, by agreeing to reduce "outside"s fee for krakauer's spot on the expedition to less than cost. as a result, hall was paying out-of-pocket to have krakauer on his team.