Mountain Madness - an accurate description of the Krakauer-Boukreev controversy

This afternoon, in a break from some ongoing research, I took a dive into the Internet to look again at some of the things that have been said about Anatoli. I wandered across your Blog and your description of the Krakauer-Boukreev controversy. It is the clearest exposition of the debate that I have ever seen. Thanks for remembering a consummate climber and one of the finest men whose company I have ever had the opportunity to share. Best wishes for the Holidays and the New Year
- Weston deWalt (author of The Climb, the story of Anatoli Boukreev)

Mountain Madness

12 years after the Mount Everest disaster, few know what really happened. How did 9 climbers, from 4 expeditions die on a single day on Mount Everest? Why were there so many people choking up the only path up the mountain, and were the leaders (Fischer and Hall), pressured by the presence of journalists climbing on their opposing teams? Were they locked in a deadly rivalry, or did they just run out of oxygen and time? Was it the weather or human error?
Story by Nick van der Leek

“A lot of people are up here who shouldn’t be.” – Ed Viesturs, 1996 IMAX Expedition

By the end of May, that most lethal month in the mountain’s history, the toll stood at 12. Ironically the 13th casualty was the mountain’s first victim. The sherpa that fell ill with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, began coughing blood and sputum on April 22, and lapsed into a 2 month coma. He finally died, becoming the last to die from that season, but only in June.

A media frenzy ensued. Newspapers around the world, including the Sunday Times in South Africa, put the story on their front page. 5 weeks after the fact a 17 000 word article (that proved inaccurate) appeared in Outside magazine, written by a journalist, and client, on the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition. Then a socialite/journalist** from Mountain Madness wrote a self-aggrandizing article in TIME. Something was wrong. More books appeared, some seeming to be self indulgent and attention seeking.

Finally† in 1997, The Climb was published. It was not embroidered, nor overstated. It did not attempt to lay blame. It soon emerged in bitter clarity, that the nightmare was not the mountain, but leaders and clientele who were very competitive, and had paid a cash price for the opportunity to gain glory, but who were reluctant to pay the price of physical preparedness. The mountain stood unmoved as the various characters wished themselves up the mountain. So it was left to an incredibly strong, unassuming and inarticulate but hard as nails Russian climber, Anatoli Boukreev, to save the weak and irrational. He emerged as a hero that day on the mountain, but not through the words or thanks of the people he saved. Mountaineer and writer Galen Rowell describes Boukreev’s efforts as ‘one of the most amazing rescues in mountaineering history.’ When we go back to the mountain in 1996, we ought to start with the one man who knew best that day and most days, how hard the mountain can be.

I admire the authority of being on one’s knees in front of the event
- Harold Brodkey, “Manipulations”
Circus

In the spring of 1996, the circus that Mount Everest was fast becoming, unraveled. At least 16 expeditions participated, among them the Johannesburg Sunday Times Expedition, the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition, the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX/IWERKS Expedition and Mountain Madness. Over a hundred people, and a star ‘that didn’t belong’* were running around the colossal flanks of the Mountain. Imagine a hundred astronauts on the moon and you have an idea how festive but bizarre it was at Base Camp.

Mountain Madness Guided Expedition
Scott Fischer – leader/USA
Anatoli Boukreev – head guide/Russia
Neal Beidleman – guide/USA

Lene Gammelgaard – client/Denmark
Sandy Hill Pittman – client/journalist/USA
Charlotte Fox – client/USA
Tim Madsen – client/USA
Martin Adams – client/USA
Pete Schoening – client/USA
Klev Schoening – client/USA
Dr Dale Kruse – client/USA

Dr. Ingrid Hunt – Team Doctor/Base Camp Manager/USA
The Cast and Crew

Boukreev belonged to the Mountain Madness Expedition. He was the head guide, and in his care were 7 American clients, a 34 year old Danish woman, and 11 Sherpas. Lopsang Jangbu was their climbing sirdar from Nepal. He was only 23, and this worried Boukreev.

Gammelgaard, the Danish woman, and Boukreev developed a strong friendship. She had a lot of respect for him because she had heard about Boukreev from Michael Joergensen, and they had other things in common; neither were from the USA or particularly wealthy. Lene Gammelgaard, would try, under his charge to become the first Danish woman1 to make the summit of Everest. Gammelgaard and Sandy Hill Pittman, a multimillionairess and socialite, initially got on well, but soon became competitive and were constantly butting heads. Pittman, as onboard journalist, was not the first choice for the team.

The head of Mountain Madness, Scott Fischer, had first attempted to sign up Jon Krakauer, working for Outside magazine, intending to generate international publicity for his company. At the 11th hour, Outside went to a rival expedition (led by Rob Hall), asking them to beat Fischer’s price, which they did, by a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars. Fischer was very upset about this, but by signing on Sandy Hill Pittman, and successfully getting her to the summit, he felt he had the means to the same end.

Sandy Hill Pittman, according to one of Fischer’s confidants, turned out to be ‘a big piece of work’. Fischer soon realized that she was very self-important, and failure to get her to the top would cost him dearly, and even if he got her to the top she wouldn’t mention him.
If Pittman was a questionable choice (as client climber), Dale Kruse, the ‘seed client’, who had paid 18 months in advance was even more so. The first to sign on, he couldn’t cope with altitude – something Gammelgaard had experienced firsthand on a 1995 expedition to Broad Peak, with Fischer. She wondered: Why had Fischer signed him on? It is the first client’s money that gets the expedition rolling, and Scott Fischer possibly wanted to have the money and, being a nice guy, wanted to give his friend of 20 years what he wanted.

From the word go, Kruse began to have difficulties on Everest. He became very, very quiet, and distanced himself from the other clients.
Pete Schoening from Washington was 68. If he could make the summit he would be the oldest person ever to do so. (A Japanese woman on Hall’s Adventure Consultant’s team was attempting to be the oldest woman ever to reach the summit). Pete Schoening’s nephew, Klev, was 38, and inexperienced but athletic and strong. The same could be said, more or less, for Tim Madsen from Colorado. Martin Adams (a retired Wall Street investor), and Charlotte Fox had been higher than 8 000m before.
Of the 8 clients on Mountain Madness, only Sandy Hill Pittman paid the full asking price, of $65 000.

Problems with O2

From the beginning, there were problems, but none that seemed anomalous. The porters had doubled their rates since yaks couldn’t get to Everest Base Camp. The yaks were up to their necks in snow, and had to be dug out, and so equipment was delayed. So the crew, 11 Mountain Madness sherpas, came under increasing strain early on in the season.
By late March, Mountain Madness still didn’t have any oxygen. The Poisk oxygen supply cost 33% more than they ought to have cost because a Scotsman, Henry Todd, introduced to Poisk by Boukreev during an earlier expedition, had effectively made a deal with the Russians to corner the market and distribute it. When Boukreev attempted to buy oxygen for Fischer, he was troubled by this additional outlay, and so attempted to make another deal, but with Zvesda, for a heavier product.

When Todd became aware that Boukreev was trying to get a better deal, he threatened to pull the plug. Mountain Madness gave in. They bought 55 Poisk 3 litre bottles, and 54 4 litre cylinders from Zvesda (at about $325/at least R2000 a bottle). Those numbers would become meaningful, adding up to a pile of life and survival for some, but struggle, peril and death for others who would not have enough oxygen on summit day.
Pete Schoening, the oldest man on the team, attempting to be the oldest man to ever climb Everest, started drawing on the oxygen supplies almost immediately. He was unable to sleep without breathing oxygen since his arrival at Base Camp in early April, and this uncommon circumstance continued until May 6, the day they left Base Camp for the summit.
Fischer made some private calls to his publicist, Jane Bromet, and one of the recurring messages was that their money was evaporating with every passing day.

Early Setbacks
Neal Beidleman and Sandy Hill Pittman, since arriving at Base Camp, started suffering from a dry, irritating cough. Beidleman’s was so bad he struggled to sleep at night.
On April 22, just after Mountain Madness’ 3rd (of 4) acclimatizing sorties, 23 year old Lopsang Jangbu’s uncle, Ngawang Topche, suddenly developed High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HACE) at Camp II (6500m). He was walking around like a drunk, coughing blood and confused. Fischer, attentive to those around him, had picked up on it and ordered Ngawang down, but for reasons unknown, the Sherpa had continued up and his condition rapidly worsened. Medications are still under debate, but rapid descent – about 600 – 1200 metres – is seen as the most effective measure. It became the task of the clients, Klev Schoening and Tim Madsen, to take care of the Sherpa. When his condition worsened even more, they improvised a makeshift sled and during the night, tried to maneuver him down, through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall.

Boukreev noticed that the Sherpas in Base Camp did not respond to their ailing comrade for several hours. It gave him an indication what he might be able to expect from them in an emergency.

Scott Fischer, weighing the cost and necessity of a helicopter rescue, vacillated; hoping Ngawang would show a sudden improvement.
By April 24 Camp III was still not in place, and the Sherpas were virtually exhausted. While Ngawang fought for his life, the mood on the mountain darkened. The clients were becoming restless and frustrated and some muttered amongst themselves that their guides were not paying attention to details, and were often too busy to offer a helping hand.
Other expeditions noticed that Mountain Madness sent their clients off on sorties, allowing them to move through some difficult situations unattended. And Sherpas began to talk about the disrespect some clients had for the mountain. Sandy Hill Pittman had found a young male climber to share her tent with.

White squalls fell on the mountain. This meant sending a helicopter to pick up Ngawang was out of the question now. Ngawang had to be carried in a basket on the backs of Sherpas down to Pheriche. For over forty hours, amongst blood and vomit, a medical team that included Base camp manager and team doctor Ingrid Hunt tried to keep Ngawang’s lungs working. His heart stopped for ten minutes and they restarted it. His lungs became blocked with fluid and Dr.Hunt sucked it out with a plastic tube. By April 26 the weather had improved and he was airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu (at a cost of about $10 000). Despite the use of precious oxygen during attempts to revive him, he continued to suffer in hospital, dying in June.

It was April 29 and a deep line began to cut into Scott Fischer’s usually carefree forehead. The Sherpas of Mountain Madness had still not prepared Camp IV, or taken oxygen there.
On April 30, at Base Camp, Boukreev worried about him, their team leader. Boukreev was a strong proponent of self-reliance in the mountains. Now, because he’d needed to hold the hands of the weaker clients, especially Dale Kruse, Scott Fisher’s acclimatization routine had been broken time and time again.

Strategy

Boukreev, at that stage one of the world’s most accomplished mountaineers, was focused and disciplined. He often told his charges, “Save yourself,” because the idea, once arriving at Base Camp, was not only to acclimatize. Since Boukreev spoke only passable English, climbers like Klev Schoening initially misunderstood what he meant. Did “Save yourself,” mean “be careful, don’t get yourself into trouble, and don’t fall down a crevasse”? No. It meant, conserve your energy.

Acclimatizing meant a combination of active rest and gradually climbing to progressively higher altitudes (sometimes well higher than some of the human bodies around him had previously endured). Mountain Madness, throughout April, went on 4 sorties, each going beyond the altitude of the last, and then coming back to Base Camp to rest.
For the summit bid itself, time was all important. 13:00 had been suggested as a good turnaround time, and 14:00 as the absolute deadline. Any longer and climbers would run out of oxygen whilst still high on the mountain.

Boukreev personally did not like to use oxygen, because if the supply suddenly ran out, the brain instantly fogged up and the body struggled to adjust under these conditions of severe hypoxia.
Boukreev believed in preparation, and was meticulous with his own regimen. He held the opinion that while one acclimatized, the body couldn’t rest at Base Camp, because it was too cold, and too high (5300m – just 600m lower than Kilimanjaro), and his recommendation was after the 4th sortie, at the end of April and just days prior to the final push towards the summit, climbers must go down to the forest region, to about 3800m.

Boukreev suggested this on several occasions, and few were receptive to the idea. It meant going a long way down and then having to make up a lot of territory, including vertical height. Boukreev insisted it was a great way to revive the system, and generate muscle tone.

Martin Adams was the only client who went to the effort of walking as far down as Pheriche (4280m) while Boukreev had gone even lower, to the Garden Lodge of Deboche
(3770m). Adams was the first Mountain Madness client to summit on May 10.

Yak Steak

"The reader senses that the presence of an Outside journalist as a client on the most fatal commercial Everest venture was no coincidence." - Galen Rowell
While everyone else had remained at Base Camp, Sandy Hill Pittman had gone down to meet friends, including Martha Stewart. She later reported via satellite phone that she’d eaten yak steak and french fries at her ‘favorite restaurant’, before walking back to Base Camp overnight.

The next morning, May 6, was the day identified for them to begin the final push for the summit. While her team gathered around for breakfast, Pittman logged on and related the finer points of the previous days to an NBC Interactive audience (the archives for the site www.nbc.com/everest have since been removed).
Meanwhile Beidleman’s cough had improved, but Scott had not been feeling too good, and was on antibiotics.
Later, on May 6, after the clients had left, Boukreev had some time to think about what lay in store for them. Shortly after that almost the entire Mountain Madness camp (at Base Camp) was abandoned.

A Beer

“I have to learn to be humble, because I don’t want to die in the mountains.”
– Scott Fischer

May 6. When Boukreev reached Camp II at the end of that day, Fischer had gone back down with Dale Kruse to Base Camp. That evening Scott was having a beer with Dale Kruse and Pete Schoening – both had finally given up on their attempt.
The next day Fischer had to climb from Base Camp to his clients at Camp II, who were resting so that they could get to Camp III. On his way he struggled to pass Scotsman Henry Todd, an older climber from Himalayan Guides. When they spoke to one another, Todd said that Scott Fischer struggled to speak, but coughed and coughed.
Finally Scott confided: “I’m worried about these people. I’m worried about the situation.”
By that evening Fischer had burned up precious reserves to get back up to Camp II.

Ed Viesturs

On May 7th, the IMAX team, encountering high winds, and intending to make their bid on the 9th, a day before the other expeditions (with the intention of getting clean shots and not being slowed down) changed their minds and went down. When they encountered Boukreev and the Mountain Madness group, Ed Viesturs, also a very accomplished climber remembers feeling somewhat embarrassed. They wondered whether they were making the right decision. He said, standing amongst the other climbers in reasonable weather, he felt quite ‘sheepish’ going down. Viesturs also said he remembered a lot of smiling faces heading up the mountain.

May 10, 1996
In the darkness of the mountain, the machine gunfire that had battered their tents suddenly drifted down. It became eerily quiet. This happened at about 10pm, on May 9.
Boukreev woke up in a tent he was sharing with Schoening (who was behaving strangely), Martin Adams and the Danish woman, Lene Gammelgaard. They were at Camp IV, at 7900m. After some tea, the climbers set off, most of them leaving by about midnight. Charlotte Fox, who was celebrating her birthday on May 10, walked up the white veil that swooped under a sky dripping with stars.

All were meant to have 18 hours of oxygen, or 3 canisters each, but each person could only carry one at a time. It had been the Sherpa’s job to stash a supply of 11 oxygen canisters on the South Summit (at 8748m), and fix ropes on the dangerous exposed sections above this level. Boukreev packed oxygen but was unsure whether he would need any (and in fact didn’t use any).

Lopsang fastened a length of rope to Sandy Hill Pittman and headed up with her.

But this year on summit day I am tired and sick because [the day before] I am carrying 80 pounds, maybe 75 pounds, from Camp III to Camp IV, I am carrying Sandy's telephone. I am also very tired because [on summit day] I take up Sandy together on rope above Camp IV. I am too tired, I vomit, so I tell to Ang Dorje [Hall's sirdar], you fix line. He says OK. I tell to Neal [Beidleman], you take ropes from me." - Lopsang (in an interview with Jon Krakauer)

Scott Fischer was very slow to leave Camp IV. He left last just after Gammelgaard.
She turned back to check how he was, but after that, hurried to stick with the group in order to not climb alone on summit day.

Boukreev summitted first at 13:07, followed by Jon Krakauer at 13:12 (from Adventure Consultants, Rob Hall’s team) and Beidleman and Adams 13 minutes later. Klev Schoening arrived at 13:45, and Boukreev took his photograph. After Schoening, the flow stopped. 14:00 came and went, and Boukreev, who by then had been on the summit for almost an hour (and without oxygen) began to feel cold and tired.

Time Out

Of all the coverage, Anatoli Boukreev's book The Climb got the story best. Of course, it was written from the point of view inside his climbing boots, but at least I recognized what he wrote as being the same trip I was on. - Sandy Hill Pittman

A star was spotted in the middle of the day above the south summit. It was not the comet, it had long since disappeared. The Sherpas who saw this much lower down the slopes of Everest, became agitated.

Jon Krakauer (from Adventure Consultants) said that on his way down (and he was at the front, just behind Boukreev) he counted ‘at least 6’ canisters – nowhere near enough for either Expedition.

Gammelgaard, Fox, Madsen and Pittman (with the help of Lopsang) made the summit by or just before 14:30. They had gotten mixed up in another, much slower moving group which included a Taiwanese Expedition and Halls’ Adventure Consultants. They spent 40 minutes celebrating on the summit. Each minute, would cost them dearly.

Lopsang did express mild surprise, however, that he received "no money, no thank you, nothing" from Pittman after the expedition for the help he provided her. - Jon Krakauer

By now, all the Mountain Madness clients who had started had made the summit. Fischer had not sent anyone back (13:00 had been suggested as a good turnaround time, and 14:00 as the absolute deadline, but no plan appeared to be in place) because after Gammelgaard had left him, he’d not had any contact with his clients – they were all above him on the mountain. Also, Fischer and Lopsang were using a pair of old 10 channel radios to communicate.
Fischer arrived on the summit at about 15:45. Dr. Hunt made radio contact. Fischer said, “I am so tired.”

Lopsang who had gotten sick from using oxygen, was there with him, so was Rob Hall, who was impatiently waiting for one more client to summit. Hansen and Hall were on the summit just after 16:00, and not long after that, Hansen collapsed. Hall refused to leave him for several hours, and finally was so weakened that he was unable to move. Andy Harris, a guide with Adventure Consultants, asked Lopsang, who was helping Scott down, to take oxygen to Hall and Hansen for $500. Lopsang said that he had to take care of his group. In the end, Harris went up to help Hall and Hansen himself. Despite these efforts, neither rescuer nor the other two survived.

Meanwhile, Boukreev had hurried down the mountain ahead of everyone else, to prepare tea, to warm himself, and to be ready for the clients reaching Camp IV. Krakauer called this a critical error – having the head guide, and such a strong climber uselessly sitting in a tent at Camp 4, while climbers higher up struggled. Ironically, this is exactly what Krakauer himself did – rushed down the mountain as fast as possible without offering others any assistance, but unlike Boukreev, once he reached his tent he slept for the rest of the night while one climber after another from his team died on the mountain. In all four of Krakauer’s five teammates perished that night, including team leader, Rob Hall.

Drowning

Boukreev arrived at Camp 4 at 17:00. Pemba Sherpa made him some tea. Boukreev thought Pemba had turned around on the way to the summit, but in fact, Pemba had been waiting in Camp IV all day, and had an old black radio with him. Dr Hunt was struggling to make contact with him all day. Boukreev understood that the Mountain Madness clients would run out of oxygen, so he left the camp at 18:30 in deteriorating weather. In his pack were three oxygen canisters, which he’d offer to clients as they needed them.

But freight trains pounded the mountain, and Boukreev couldn’t see anything or anyone in the whiteout. Lopsang and Scott had strong short range yellow radios and the only black radios (as far as Boukreev was aware) and they were still much higher on the mountain, climbing down together. He went back to his tent at 21:00, and waited for news. With no radio, no way of knowing what was happening, he could only gather his strength and make himself ready. The leaders, Hall and Fischer, were weak, still high on the mountain, and in trouble. Leaders and clients, one by one, started to run out of oxygen. Lopsang spent five hours with Fischer, before leaving him to descend on his own and find help.

Then Martin Adams, who had summitted only a few minutes after Boukreev, stumbled into camp, on his own, at about 10:15pm. Boukreev was ‘very glad’ to see him. Adams said he didn’t see anyone.
Meanwhile 8 clients from two expeditions (6 were Mountain Madness clients) and three Sherpas found their way down the mountain, but weren’t able to find Camp IV in the storm, and so huddled together. Their position was 400 metres from Camp IV (15 minutes walk under normal conditions), but just 20 metres from the edge of the deadly Kangshung Face.

Now a number of climbers were in trouble, and there were in fact a number of climbers at Camp IV who had not yet made a summit attempt and were thus well rested. These included Ian Woodall, Cathy ‘O Dowd and Bruce Herrod (from the South African/UK team) and 5 more climbers from Henry Todd’s team.
Boukreev had to locate the huddle of bodies on his own, but could do so only once Neal Beidleman, Mike Groom (from Adventure Consultants)Lene Gammelgaard and Klev Schoening told him, at about 00:45 that people needed his help, and where he would find them.
Acting on their instructions, he went out with no assistance (no other climbers would help). Even the Sherpas who had remained at Camp IV, were all suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, from cooking with a gas stove inside a sealed tent. Boukreev’s first foray in the storm was unsuccessful – he had climbed upwards along the route, instead of walking along the flatter section of the mountain around Camp IV. Boukreev finally found Pittman with Madsen and Fox, and gave them each some tea. He was only strong enough to bring them in one by one, and he brought the birthday girl, Fox, in first. Next he got Pittman, and Madsen struggled to stay with them, leaving behind a 47 year old Japanese woman (Yasuko Namba) and Beck Weathers. Weathers had become irrational and walked off into the storm.

Finally, by 04:30 all of the Mountain Madness team were safe in their tents on the South Col. All but their leader were safe. The Japanese woman, who had attached herself to the Mountain Madness group now found herself alone, less than 20 minutes walk from shelter, while her teammates were either too frightened or exhausted to save her. When Neal Beidleman from Mountain Madness – who had helped her for much of the way down – heard that she died, he broke into tears. Krakauer writes that he cried for 40 minutes.

Bad Blood

At about 07:00 on May 11, the radio batteries of Hall’s Expedition gave out, and David Breashears, the IMAX leader, called Ian Woodall (from the South African Expedition) who was also on the South Col, and asked him to allow Jon Krakauer to use their powerful radio so Hall’s team could coordinate a rescue. Woodall said no even though he was well aware of the stakes.
At 16:00 that same day Boukreev climbed back up the mountain to Scott, who was at 8 350 meters. Boukreev reached Fischer at 19:00 while a vicious storm blew around him. He found Fischer with his down suit’s zipper open and one hand, without a glove, was frozen solid. His face behind the oxygen mask resembled a bruise. Fischer must have died sometime earlier in the day. Seeing this, Boukreev said he was “very sad”.

Boukreev climbed alone and in the dark, in a storm as severe as the previous night, and intuitively found his way back to his tent in the dark. He found a man2 alone in a tent beside his, from Hall’s expedition, screaming.

On the 25th of May, Bruce Herrod, who was climbing on his own way behind Woodall and O’ Dowd (as part of the Johannesburg Sunday Times Expedition), walked over the bodies of first Fischer and then Hall before reaching the summit of Everest at 17:00 or later. It had taken him all of 17 hours to get there. He too, would never return, and Boukreev would find him still tangled in the ropes at the Hillary Step, the following year.

The Mountain Is Unmoved

"Everest is no smaller than it ever was, but the motives for climbing seem to have steadily diminished." - New York Times
Having climbed Kilimanjaro myself, I know how quickly a strong climber can become miserably sick and dim-witted at high altitude. It is not the place for writers, or even climbers present, or not, to make authoritative claims about what cause men on mountains to do what they do in the face of death, and danger. Worse, is the tendency to worship the God of blame. When exploring the adventures of men who died far from the comforts of home, we do their lives justice by simply acknowledging them, and the astonishing confluence of events that come together in the world’s wildest and highest places. We ought to, at the very least, imagine the vivid and stupendous scenes that swept beyond their gas masks and took them so far into the world.

When Gammelgaard, the stoic Danish woman, first stood upon the Khumbu Glacier, she was overtaken by its magnificent beauty. She stood apart from the others and quietly wept. The mountain stands unmoved as men, the wise and the foolish, the tall and the small, journey through the immense chasms and cathedrals of the great Outside. For some, when facing an objective like Everest for the first time, in the present moment, being there brings about a sinking feeling. For others, like Boukreev, their hearts are made to soar, and indeed, Boukreev liked to sing when he was camping in the mountains.

Avalanche
“There is not enough luck in the world. . . I got somebody’s share.”
– Anatoli Boukreev after cheating death in 1995 on Manaslu

The following year Boukreev guided the first Indonesians up the summit of Everest. They also arrived late, at 15:30.
On his way down the lower slopes (below Base Camp) Boukreev met a Japanese man, Yasuko Namba’s husband. They talked over a pot of tea.
On December 6, 1997 Boukreev was awarded the American Alpine Club’s David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his heroism and courage on Mount Everest in 1996. Boukreev was not in the USA to accept the award; he was in Nepal, attempting to climb Annapurna (8078m), in winter, by a difficult route. During his adventures in the mountains, Boukreev had had some lucky escapes. But this time, he and his climbing friend were struck down by an avalanche on Christmas Day. Only Moro, the Italian who was climbing with them lived to tell the tale.
Boukreev is known to have said: “Do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from the summits.”


†The Climb was in response to, and challenges and in part refutes, Krakauer’s slickly written Into Thin Air.
*G. Weston DeWalt describes this star, in his book, The Climb, as the comet Hyakutake which he says was “…considered an ominous sign by the Sherpas…”
**Sandy Hill Pittman
Boukreev had earlier guided the first Welshman, the first Dane and the first Brazilian, and after 1996 would guide the first Indonesian to the summit.
Beck Weathers

More:
Why does Jon Krakauer dislike Anatoli Boukreev so much?
Everest Revelation: A Clarification
Pitons are served
Return to Thin Air — Without Jon Krakauer?
Everest debate, Part Two: Weston DeWalt
Sandy Hill, 51
Join The Debate

Mountain Madness

“A lot of people are up here who shouldn’t be.” – Ed Viesturs, 1996 IMAX Expedition

10 years after the Mount Everest disaster, no one knows what really happened. How did 9 climbers, from 4 expeditions die on a single day on Mount Everest? Why were there so many people choking up the only path up the mountain, and were the leaders (Fischer and Hall), pressured by the presence of journalists climbing on their opposing teams? Were they locked in a deadly rivalry, or did they just run out of oxygen and time? Was it the weather or human error?

Story by Nick van der Leek

By the end of May, that most lethal month in the mountain’s history, the toll stood at 12. Ironically the 13th casualty was the mountain’s first victim. The sherpa that fell ill with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, began coughing blood and sputum on April 22, and lapsed into a 2 month coma. He finally died, becoming the last to die from that season, but only in June.

A media frenzy ensued. Newspapers around the world, including the Sunday Times in South Africa, put the story on their front page. 5 weeks after the fact a 17 000 word article (that proved inaccurate) appeared in Outside magazine, written by a journalist, and client, on the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition. Then a socialite/journalist** wrote a self-aggrandizing article in TIME. Something was wrong. More books appeared, some seeming to be self indulgent and attention seeking.

Finally† in 1997, The Climb was published. It was not embroidered, nor overstated. It did not attempt to lay blame. It soon emerged in bitter clarity, that the nightmare was not the mountain, but leaders and clientele who were very competitive, and had paid a cash price for the opportunity to gain glory, but who were reluctant to pay the price of physical preparedness. The mountain stood unmoved as the various characters wished themselves up the mountain. So it was left to an incredibly strong, unassuming and inarticulate but hard as nails Russian climber, Anatoli Boukreev, to save the weak and irrational. He emerged as a hero that day on the mountain, but not through the words or thanks of the people he saved.

Mountaineer and writer Galen Rowell describes Boukreev’s efforts as ‘one of the most amazing rescues in mountaineering history.’ When we go back to the mountain in 1996, we ought to start with the one man who knew best that day and most days, how hard the mountain can be.

I admire the authority of being on one’s knees in front of the event
- Harold Brodkey, “Manipulations”

Circus

In the spring of 1996, the circus that Mount Everest was fast becoming, unraveled. At least 16 expeditions participated, among them the Johannesburg Sunday Times Expedition, the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition, the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX/IWERKS Expedition and Mountain Madness. Over a hundred people, and a star ‘that didn’t belong’* were running around the colossal flanks of the Mountain. Imagine a hundred astronauts on the moon and you have an idea how festive but bizarre it was at Base Camp.

The Cast and Crew

Boukreev belonged to the Mountain Madness Expedition. He was the head guide, and in his care were 7 American clients, a 34 year old Danish woman, and 11 Sherpas. Lopsang Jangbu was their climbing sirdar from Nepal. He was only 23, and this worried Boukreev.

Gammelgaard, the Danish woman, and Boukreev developed a strong friendship. She had a lot of respect for him because she had heard about Boukreev from Michael Joergensen, and they had other things in common; neither were from the USA or particularly wealthy. Lene Gammelgaard, would try, under his charge to become the first Danish woman1 to make the summit of Everest. Gammelgaard and Sandy Hill Pittman, a multimillionairess and socialite, initially got on well, but soon became competitive and were constantly butting heads. Pittman, as onboard journalist, was not the first choice for the team.

The head of Mountain Madness, Scott Fischer, had first attempted to sign up Jon Krakauer, working for Outside magazine, intending to generate international publicity for his company. At the 11th hour, Outside went to a rival expedition (led by Rob Hall), asking them to beat Fischer’s price, which they did, by a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars. Fischer was very upset about this, but by signing on Sandy Hill Pittman, and successfully getting her to the summit, he felt he had the means to the same end. Sandy Hill Pittman, according to one of Fischer’s confidants, turned out to be ‘a big piece of work’. Fischer soon realized that she was very self-important, and failure to get her to the top would cost him dearly, and if he got her to the top she wouldn’t mention him.

If Pittman was a questionable choice (as client climber), Dale Kruse, the ‘seed client’, who had paid 18 months in advance was even more so. The first to sign on, he couldn’t cope with altitude – something Gammelgaard had experienced firsthand on a 1995 expedition to Broad Peak, with Fischer. She wondered: Why had Fischer signed him on? It is the first client’s money that gets the expedition rolling, and Scott Fischer possibly wanted to have the money and, being a nice guy, wanted to give his friend of 20 years what he wanted.

From the word go, Kruse began to have difficulties on Everest. He became very, very quiet, and distanced himself from the other clients.
Pete Schoening from Washington was 68. If he could make the summit he would be the oldest person ever to do so. (A Japanese woman on Hall’s Adventure Consultant’s team was attempting to be the oldest woman ever to reach the summit). Pete Schoening’s nephew, Klev, was 38, and inexperienced but athletic and strong. The same could be said, more or less, for Tim Madsen from Colorado. Martin Adams (a retired Wall Street investor), and Charlotte Fox had been higher than 8 000m before.

Of the 8 clients on Mountain Madness, only Sandy Hill Pittman paid the full asking price, of $65 000.

Problems with O2

From the beginning, there were problems, but none that seemed anomalous. The porters had doubled their rates since yaks couldn’t get to Everest Base Camp. The yaks were up to their necks in snow, and had to be dug out, and so equipment was delayed. So the crew, 11 Mountain Madness sherpas, came under increasing strain early on in the season.

By late March, Mountain Madness still didn’t have any oxygen. The Poisk oxygen supply cost 33% more than they ought to have cost because a Scotsman, Henry Todd, introduced to Poisk by Boukreev during an earlier expedition, had effectively made a deal with the Russians to corner the market and distribute it. When Boukreev attempted to buy oxygen for Fischer, he was troubled by this additional outlay, and so attempted to make another deal, but with Zvesda, for a heavier product. When Todd became aware that Boukreev was trying to get a better deal, he threatened to pull the plug. Mountain Madness gave in. They bought 55 Poisk 3 litre bottles, and 54 4 litre cylinders from Zvesda (at about $325/at least R2000 a bottle). Those numbers would become meaningful, adding up to a pile of life and survival for some, but struggle, peril and death for others who would not have enough oxygen on summit day.

Pete Schoening, the oldest man on the team, attempting to be the oldest man to ever climb Everest, started drawing on the oxygen supplies almost immediately. He was unable to sleep without breathing oxygen since his arrival at Base Camp in early April, and this uncommon circumstance continued until May 6, the day they left Base Camp for the summit.
Fischer made some private calls to his publicist, Jane Bromet, and one of the recurring messages was that their money was evaporating with every passing day.

Early Setbacks

Neal Beidleman and Sandy Hill Pittman, since arriving at Base Camp, started suffering from a dry, irritating cough. Beidleman’s was so bad he struggled to sleep at night.

On April 22, just after Mountain Madness’ 3rd (of 4) acclimatizing sorties, 23 year old Lopsang Jangbu’s uncle, Ngawang Topche, suddenly developed High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HACE) at Camp II (6500m). He was walking around like a drunk, coughing blood and confused. Fischer, attentive to those around him, had picked up on it and ordered Ngawang down, but for reasons unknown, the Sherpa had continued up and his condition rapidly worsened. Medications are still under debate, but rapid descent – about 600 – 1200 metres – is seen as the most effective measure. It became the task of the clients, Klev Schoening and Tim Madsen, to take care of the Sherpa. When his condition worsened even more, they improvised a makeshift sled and during the night, tried to maneuver him down, through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall.
Boukreev noticed that the Sherpas in Base Camp did not respond to their ailing comrade for several hours. It gave him an indication what he might be able to expect from them in an emergency.

Scott Fischer, weighing the cost and necessity of a helicopter rescue, vacillated; hoping Ngawang would show a sudden improvement.
By April 24 Camp III was still not in place, and the Sherpas were virtually exhausted. While Ngawang fought for his life, the mood on the mountain darkened. The clients were becoming restless and frustrated and some muttered amongst themselves that their guides were not paying attention to details, and were often too busy to offer a helping hand.

Other expeditions noticed that Mountain Madness sent their clients off on sorties, allowing them to move through some difficult situations unattended. And Sherpas began to talk about the disrespect some clients had for the mountain. Sandy Hill Pittman had found a young male climber to share her tent with.

White squalls fell on the mountain. This meant sending a helicopter to pick up Ngawang was out of the question now. Ngawang had to be carried in a basket on the backs of Sherpas down to Pheriche. For over forty hours, amongst blood and vomit, a medical team that included Base camp managed and team doctor Ingrid Hunt tried to keep Ngawang’s lungs working. His heart stopped for ten minutes and they restarted it. His lungs became blocked with fluid and Dr.Hunt sucked it out with a plastic tube. By April 26 the weather had improved and he was airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu (at a cost of about $10 000). Despite the use of precious oxygen during attempts to revive him, he continued to suffer in hospital, dying in June.
It was April 29 and a deep line began to cut into Scott Fischer’s usually carefree forehead. The Sherpas of Mountain Madness had still not prepared Camp IV, or taken oxygen there.

On April 30, at Base Camp, Boukreev worried about him, their team leader. Boukreev was a strong proponent of self-reliance in the mountains. Now, because he’d needed to hold the hands of the weaker clients, especially Dale Kruse, Scott Fisher’s acclimatization routine had been broken time and time again.

Strategy

Boukreev, at that stage one of the world’s most accomplished mountaineers, was focused and disciplined. He often told his charges, “Save yourself,” because the idea, once arriving at Base Camp, was not only to acclimatize. Since Boukreev spoke only passable English, climbers like Klev Schoening initially misunderstood what he meant. Did “Save yourself,” mean “be careful, don’t get yourself into trouble, and don’t fall down a crevasse”? No. It meant, conserve your energy.

Acclimatizing meant a combination of active rest and gradually climbing to progressively higher altitudes (sometimes well higher than some of the human bodies around him had previously endured). Mountain Madness, throughout April, went on 4 sorties, each going beyond the altitude of the last, and then coming back to Base Camp to rest.
For the summit bid itself, time was all important. 13:00 had been suggested as a good turnaround time, and 14:00 as the absolute deadline. Any longer and climbers would run out of oxygen whilst still high on the mountain.

Boukreev personally did not like to use oxygen, because if the supply suddenly ran out, the brain instantly fogged up and the body struggled to adjust under these conditions of severe hypoxia.

Boukreev believed in preparation, and was meticulous with his own regimen. He held the opinion that while one acclimatized, the body couldn’t rest at Base Camp, because it was too cold, and too high (5300m – just 600m below Kilimanjaro), and his recommendation was after the 4th sortie, at the end of April and just days prior to the final push towards the summit, climbers must go down to the forest region, to about 3800m.

Boukreev suggested this on several occasions, and few were receptive to the idea. It meant going a long way down and then having to make up a lot of territory, including vertical height. Boukreev insisted it was a great way to revive the system, and generate muscle tone.

Martin Adams was the only client who went to the effort of walking as far down as Pheriche (4280m) while Boukreev had gone even lower, to the Garden Lodge of Deboche
(3770m). Adams was the first Mountain Madness client to summit on May 10.

Yak Steak

While everyone else had remained at Base Camp, Sandy Hill Pittman had gone down to meet friends, including Martha Stewart. She later reported via satellite phone that she’d eaten yak steak and french fries at her ‘favorite restaurant’, before walking back to Base Camp overnight.

The next morning, May 6, was the day identified for them to begin the final push for the summit. While her team gathered around for breakfast, Pittman logged on and related the finer points of the previous days to an NBC Interactive audience (the archives for the site www.nbc.com/everest have since been removed).
Meanwhile Beidleman’s cough had improved, but Scott had not been feeling too good, and was on antibiotics.

Later, on May 6, after the clients had left, Boukreev had some time to think about what lay in store for them. Shortly after that almost the entire Mountain Madness camp (at Base Camp) was abandoned.

A Beer

May 6. When Boukreev reached Camp II at the end of that day, Fischer had gone back down with Dale Kruse to Base Camp. That evening Scott was having a beer with Dale Kruse and Pete Schoening – both had finally given up on their attempt.

The next day Fischer had to climb from Base Camp to his clients at Camp II, who were resting so that they could get to Camp III. On his way he struggled to pass Henry Todd, an older climber from Himalayan Guides. When they spoke to one another, Todd said that Scott Fischer struggled to speak, but coughed and coughed.
Finally Scott confided: “I’m worried about these people. I’m worried about the situation.”
By that evening Fischer had burned up precious reserves to get back up to Camp II.

Ed Viesturs

On May 7th, the IMAX team, encountering high winds, and intending to make their bid on the 9th, a day before the other expeditions (with the intention of getting clean shots and not being slowed down) changed their minds and went down. When they encountered Boukreev and the Mountain Madness group, Ed Viesturs, also a very accomplished climber remembers feeling somewhat embarrassed. They wondered whether they were making the right decision. He said, standing amongst the other climbers in reasonable weather, he felt quite ‘sheepish’ going down. Viesturs also said he remembered a lot of smiling faces heading up the mountain.

May 10, 1996

In the darkness of the mountain, the machine gunfire that had battered their tents suddenly drifted down. It became eerily quiet. This happened at about 10pm, on May 9.
Boukreev woke up in a tent he was sharing with Schoening (who was behaving strangely), Martin Adams and the Danish woman, Lene Gammelgaard. They were at Camp IV, at 7900m. After some tea, the climbers set off, most of them leaving by about midnight. Charlotte Fox, who was celebrating her birthday on May 10, walked up the white veil that swooped under a sky dripping with stars.

All were meant to have 18 hours of oxygen, or 3 canisters each, but each person could only carry one at a time. It had been the Sherpa’s job to stash a supply of 21 oxygen canisters on the South Summit (at 8748m), and fix ropes on the dangerous exposed sections above this level.. Boukreev packed oxygen but was unsure whether he would need any (and in fact didn’t use any).

Lopsang fastened a length of rope to Sandy Hill Pittman and headed up with her.
Scott Fischer was very slow to leave Camp IV. He left last just after Gammelgaard.
She turned back to check how he was, but after that, hurried to stick with the group in order to not climb alone on summit day.

Boukreev summitted first at 13:07, followed by Jon Krakauer at 13:12 (from Advenure Consultants, Rob Hall’s team) and Beidleman and Adams 13 minutes later. Klev Schoening arrived at 13:45, and Boukreev took his photograph. After Schoening, the flow stopped. 14:00 came and went, and Boukreev, who by then had been on the summit for almost an hour (and without oxygen) began to feel cold and tired.

Time Out

A star was spotted in the middle of the day above the south summit. It was not the comet, it had long since disappeared. The Sherpas who saw this much lower down the slopes of Everest, became agitated.

Gammelgaard, Fox, Madsen and Pittman (with the help of Lopsang) made the summit by or just before 14:30. They had gotten mixed up in another, much slower moving group which included a Taiwanese Expedition and Halls’ Adventure Consultants. They spent 40 minutes celebrating on the summit. Each minute, would cost them dearly.

By now, all the Mountain Madness clients who had started had made the summit. Fischer had not sent anyone back (13:00 had been suggested as a good turnaround time, and 14:00 as the absolute deadline, but no plan appeared to be in place) because after Gammelgaard had left him, he’d not had any contact with his clients – they were all above him on the mountain. Also, Fischer and Lopsang were using a pair of old 10 channel radios to communicate.
Fischer arrived on the summit at about 15:45. Dr. Hunt made radio contact and Fischer said, “I am so tired.”

Lopsang was there with him, so was Rob Hall, who was impatiently waiting for one more client to summit. Hansen and Hall were on the summit just after 16:00, and not long after that, Hansen collapsed. Hall refused to leave him for several hours, and finally was so weakened that he was unable to move. Andy Harris, a guide with Adventure Consultants, asked Lopsang, who was helping Scott down, to take oxygen to Hall and Hansen for $500. Lopsang said that he had to take care of his group. In the end, Harris went up to help Hall and Hansen himself. Despite these efforts, neither rescuer nor the other two survived.

Meanwhile, Boukreev had hurried down the mountain ahead of everyone else, to prepare tea, to warm himself, and to be ready for the clients reaching Camp IV. Krakauer called this a critical error – having the head guide, and such a strong climber uselessly sitting in a tent at Camp 4, while climbers higher up struggled. Ironically, this is exactly what Krakauer himself did – rushed down the mountain as fast as possible without offering others any assistance, but unlike Boukreev, once he reached his tent he slept for the rest of the night while one climber after another from his team died on the mountain. In all four of Krakauer’s five teammates perished that night, including team leader, Rob Hall.

Drowning

Boukreev arrived at Camp 4 at 17:00. He understood that that the Mountain Madness clients would run out of oxygen, so he left the camp at 18:30 in deteriorating weather. In his pack were three oxygen canisters, which he’d offer to clients as they needed them. But freight trains pounded the mountain, and Boukreev couldn’t see anything or anyone. Lopsang and Scott had the only radios and they were still much higher on the mountain, climbing down together. He went back to his tent at 21:00, and waited for news. With no radio, no way of knowing what was happening, he could only gather his strength and make himself ready. The leaders on the mountain, Hall and Fischer, were weak, still high on the mountain, and in trouble. Leaders and clients, one by one, started to run out of oxygen. Lopsang spent five hours with Fischer, before leaving him to descend on his own.

Meanwhile 8 clients from two expeditions (6 were Mountain Madness clients) and three Sherpas found their way down the mountain, but weren’t able to find Camp IV in the storm, and so huddled together. Their position was 400 metres from Camp IV (15 minutes walk under normal conditions), but just 20 metres from the edge of the deadly Kangshung Face.

Now a number of climbers were in trouble, and there were in fact a number of climbers at Camp IV who had not yet made a summit attempt and were thus well rested. These included Ian Woodall, Cathy ‘O Dowd and Bruce Herrod (from the South African/UK team) and 5 more climbers from Henry Todd’s team.
Boukreev had to locate the huddle of bodies on his own, but could do so only once Neal Beidleman, Mike Groom (from Adventure Consultants)Lene Gammelgaard and Klev Schoening told him, at about 00:45 that people needed his help, and where he would find them.

Acting on their instructions, he went out with no assistance (no other climbers would help), because even the Sherpas who had remained at Camp IV were all suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, from cooking with a gas stove inside a sealed tent. Boukreev’s first foray in the storm was unsuccessful – he had climbed upwards along the route, instead of walking along the flatter section of the mountain around Camp IV. Boukreev finally found Pittman with Madsen and Fox, and gave them each some tea. He was only strong enough to bring them in one by one, and he brought the birthday girl, Fox, in first. Next he got Pittman, and Madsen struggled to stay with them, leaving behind a 47 year old Japanese woman (Yasuko Namba) and Beck Weathers, who had become irrational and walked off into the storm.

Finally, by 04:30 all of the Mountain Madness team were safe in their tents on the South Col, all except their leader. The Japanese woman, who had attached herself to the Mountain Madness group now found herself alone, less than 20 minutes walk from shelter, while her teammates were either too frightened or exhausted to save her. When Neal Beidleman from Mountain Madness, who had helped her for much of the way down, heard that she died he broke into tears.

Bad Blood

At about 07:00 on May 11, the radio batteries of Hall’s Expedition gave out, and David Breashears, the IMAX leader, called Ian Woodall (from the South African Expedition) who was also on the South Col, and asked him to allow Krakauer to use their powerful radio so Hall’s team could coordinate a rescue. Woodall said no even though he was well aware of the stakes.

At 16:00 that same day Boukreev climbed back up the mountain to Scott, who was at 8 350 meters. Boukreev reached Fischer at 19:00 while a vicious storm blew around him. He found Fischer with his down suit’s zipper open and one hand, without a glove, was frozen solid. His face behind the oxygen mask resembled a bruise. Fischer must have died sometime earlier in the day. Boukreev was “very sad”.
Boukreev climbed alone and in the dark, in a storm as severe as the previous night, and found his way back to his tent. He found a man2 alone in a tent beside his, from Hall’s expedition, screaming.

On the 25th of May, Bruce Herrod, who was climbing on his own way behind Woodall and O’ Dowd (as part of the Johannesburg Sunday Times Expedition), walked over the bodies of first Fischer and then Hall before reaching the summit of Everest at 17:00 or later. It had taken him all of 17 hours to get there. He too, would never return, and Boukreev would find him, still tangled in the ropes at the Hillary Step, the following year.

The Mountain Is Unmoved

Having climbed Kilimanjaro myself, I know how quickly a strong climber can become miserably sick and dim-witted at high altitude. It is not the place for writers, or even climbers present, or not, to make authoritative claims about what cause men on mountains to do what they do in the face of death, and danger. Worse, is the tendency to worship the God of blame. When exploring the adventures of men who died far from the comforts of home, we do their lives justice by simply acknowledging them, and the astonishing confluence of events that come together in the world’s wildest and highest places. We ought to, at the very least, imagine the vivid and stupendous scenes that swept beyond their gas masks and took them so far into the world.

When Gammelgaard, the stoic Danish woman, first stood upon the Khumbu Glacier, she was overtaken by its magnificent beauty. She stood apart from the others and quietly wept. The mountain stands unmoved as men, the wise and the foolish, the tall and the small, find their own meaning on their inward journeys through the great Outside. For some, when facing an objective like Everest for the first time, in the present moment, being there brings about a sinking feeling. For others, like Boukreev, their hearts are made to soar.

Avalanche

The following year Boukreev guided the first Indonesians up the summit of Everest. They also arrived late, at 15:30.
On his way down the lower slopes Boukreev met a Japanese man, who turned out to be Yasuko Namba’s husband. They talked over a pot of tea.

On December 6, 1997 Boukreev was awarded the American Alpine Club’s David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his heroism and courage on Mount Everest in 1996. Boukreev was not in the USA to accept the award; he was in Nepal, attempting to climb Annapurna (8078m), in winter, by a difficult route. During his adventures in the mountains, Boukreev had had some lucky escapes. But this time, he and his climbing friend, were struck down by an avalanche on Christmas Day. Only the Italian climber who was climbing with them, Moro, lived to tell the tale.
Boukreev is known to have said: “Do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from the summits.”

Words: 4 417

<†The Climb was in response to, and challenges and in part refutes, Krakauer’s slickly written Into Thin Air. *G. Weston DeWalt describes this star, in his book, The Climb, as the comet Hyakutake which he says was “…considered an ominous sign by the Sherpas…” **Sandy Hill Pittman 1. Boukreev had earlier guided the first Welshman, the first Dane and the first Brazilian, and after 1996 would guide the first Indonesian to the summit. 2. Beck Waethers

The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Mount Everest

We've chosen Mountains as our theme (for the next magazine)and so I have recently been studying the various accounts of the 1996 disaster, especially Into Thin Air and The Climb. I might produce an article soon that roughly summarises the epic adventures that happened in that fateful year.

By ANATOLI BOUKREEV and G. WESTON DeWALT
St. Martin's Press

MOUNTAIN MADNESS

A star, one that didn't belong, appeared in the night sky over the Himalaya in March 1996. For several consecutive days the star had been moving over the mountains, its trailing tail fanning into the darkness. The "star" was the comet Hyakutake. It was the beginning of the spring season on Mount Everest (8,848 m), that interval of time between the decline of winter and the coming of the summer monsoons when, historically, expeditions to Everest have been most successful, and Hyakutake's stellar trespass was considered an ominous sign by the Sherpas in whose villages the cosmic smear was a matter of concern and conversation.

The Sherpas, an ethnic group indigenous to Tibet, many of whom now live primarily in the highland valleys of Nepal, derive a substantial part of their family incomes from the mountaineering expeditions that come to the Himalaya. Some work as porters, cooks, and yak drivers; others take on the more dangerous and more lucrative roles as high-altitude support personnel, joining foreign expeditions in their ultimate wager: skill and endurance pitted against a physical environment that precludes prolonged human existence.

By 1996, in the seventy-five years that had passed since the first attempt was made on its summit in 1921, more than 140 climbers had died on Mount Everest. Almost 40 percent of those fatalities had been Sherpas. So, when the natural orders were disturbed, the Sherpas took notice.

Kami Noru Sherpa is in his midthirties, married, and the father of three children. He is one of the new generation of Sherpas who have, since the 1950s, exchanged their traditional dress for Gore-Tex parkas and embraced the cash economy of mountaineering. In 1996, as he had been for the past several years, Kami Noru Sherpa was hired by Himalayan Guides, a commercial adventure company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, to serve as a sirdar (manager) for an Everest expedition.

Headed by the bearded and burly Englishman Henry Todd a fifty-one-year-old former rugby player turned expedition packager, Himalayan Guides had the distinction of never having lost a client. Todd's practicality and good luck in the mountains and his cooperative relationship with Kami Noru Sherpa had brought them both a measure of success in the Himalaya.

In the spring of 1995, Todd had offered a commercial expedition to Mount Everest, taking his client climbers to the mountain from the north side, from Tibet. The expedition had been an unqualified success. Eight climbers from his expedition had made it to the top on a single day. After such success, Todd and Kami Noru Sherpa were riding high, but not to the point of overconfidence. In fact, in March 1996, they were both anxious about the season ahead.

Kami Noru Sherpa had pointed out the errant "star" to Todd, and Todd recalls that Kami was disturbed by its presence. When Todd asked Kami Noru Sherpa what it meant to him and the other Sherpas, Kami said simply, "We don't know. We're not liking it."

"It [the comet] had been there for some time," said Todd, "and for the Sherpas it presaged things not going terribly well." A superstition, yes, thought Todd, but a matter of serious concern, because the people who knew the mountain best said it mattered.

To the uncertain meaning of the stellar disruption Todd could add his own problem. As of late March the winter snows had yet to melt to the point where his yak caravan could safely travel the trekking trail that led to the Mount Everest Base Camp (5,300 m). Some Sherpa porters were getting through on a narrow snow-packed trail, but hardly anyone else. Since the quantity of supplies required by expeditions requires the carrying power and capacity of yak teams, the pace of his supply effort had been slowed considerably. It was a headache, not yet a nightmare, but a problem that could grow to that proportion if the trails remained impassable for much longer. The weather window for attempts on the Everest summit stays open only for a brief period and closes abruptly with the coming of the monsoon season. If expeditions are not adequately provisioned when the time for their summit bid arrives, they might as well have never traveled to the mountain.

As almost everyone does in the face of an uncertainty, Todd and Kami Noru Sherpa took actions that might forestall or minimize the problems that each of them faced. In Kathmandu, Nepal (1,400 m), where he was addressing an accumulation of logistical problems and waiting for snows north of him to further melt, Todd took delivery of several cases of J & B Scotch, a gift from one of his climbers who had been sponsored, in part, by the distillery. Giving careful packing instructions to his Sherpas who would be freighting the spirits to his Base Camp, Todd more than half-anticipated some nights when the libation might serve to take off the edge. Kami Noru Sherpa, not a Scotch drinker, prepared for what was ahead in his own way.

On March 29, in his slate-roofed stone house in Pangboche (4,000 m), a village niched into a series of terraces overlooking the trekking trail that winds to the base of Mount Everest, Kami Noru Sherpa held a puja, a ritual thanks to the mountains and a prayer of blessing. At sunrise, in a large, second-floor room above a grain storage area, five Buddhist monks in maroon and saffron robes seated themselves in a circle. Encircling them were Kami Noru Sherpa and several other of the Sherpas from Pangboche who had been hired to work on Everest. A wavering, pale yellow glow from yak-butter lamps and a few stray beams of morning sun offered the only light, nicking here and there the weave of reds and blues in the Tibetan rugs on the handsawn plank floors. Spirals of smoke drifted from a cooking fire, and the rich, sweet smell of juniper branches escaped as they were burnt in offering.

The chants of the monks played off the walls and echoed back into their repetition, and with every redoubling came a calm and peace, an assurance that, if the Sherpas honored it, the mountain would protect them and deliver them home. As the puja ended, the monks gave each of the Sherpas a protective amulet, a knotted loop of red string. With quiet reverence and a bow of thanks, each of them accepted the gift and placed the string around their necks.

Over the next few days, as the snows continued to melt, Kami Noru Sherpa and the Sherpas would leave their homes and trek to the Everest Base Camp, where they would join the expeditions that had hired them. Working for anywhere from $2.50 to $50 a day, they would help establish camps, carry loads up the mountain, and cook for and serve the climbers who were coming to Everest in ever greater numbers.

In the early 1980s the number of climbers and expedition support personnel who would gather in the Everest Base Camp during the spring season could have fit into one Paris metro car. In 1996, more than four hundred people would eventually come up the trail and pitch their tents, giving the camp the appearance of a rock concert encampment. One climber described the 1996 Everest Base Camp as having all the appearances of "a circus, except there were more clowns in our tents." By many accounts, there were some real "punters" on the mountain in 1996.

A Taiwanese expedition headed by Makalu Gau was the source of endless jokes, which thinly veiled serious concerns about his team's qualifications and their ability to get off the mountain alive. One climber said, "I'd as soon have been on the mountain with the Jamaican bobsled team." And then there was the Johannesburg Sunday Times Expedition, which had publicly been embraced by Nelson Mandela. Stories about the relative inexperience of many of their climbers and questions about the veracity of their wiry and short-tempered leader, Ian Woodall, were roundly exchanged over Henry Todd's Scotch.

American climber and Everest veteran Ed Viesturs was heard to say, "A lot of people are up here who shouldn't be." Viesturs, thirty-seven, was working as a guide and doubling as an on-camera talent for the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX/IWERKS Expedition, headed by the American climber and filmmaker David Breashears. The film production, with one of the largest budgets ever committed to a documentary about Everest, was to result in a large-format film to be released in 1998. Designed to be projected in theaters outfitted with wraparound screens and state-of-the-art sound systems, the film would offer virtual, armchair Everest.

Breashears, in his early forties, was something of a legend in the Himalaya. More than any other climber, except for perhaps Sir Edmund Hillary, who with Tenzing Norgay summited Mount Everest for the first time in 1953, Breashears had been successful in making Everest a cash cow, deriving over the years a substantial portion of his income from his activities on the mountain. In 1985, he had the distinction of having guided Texas businessman and millionaire Dick Bass to the summit. Bass, at fifty-five, became the oldest climber to date to make the top. This accomplishment is seen by many as the pivotal point in the history of attempts to climb Everest. The adventuresome and the well-to-do took notice. If a fifty-five-year-old with motivation and discretionary income could do it, anybody could! Commercial expedition companies were spawned to address the demand that was stimulated and to service customers who could pay big dollars for big mountains.

As Breashears and his IMAX/IWERKS expeditionary force trekked toward the Everest Base Camp, they made an impression. Not far from Kami Noru Sherpa's house in Pangboche, several members of the expedition had stopped at a teahouse and occupied some of its tables. They ordered tea, but refused the offer of local food, preferring instead home-bought goodies pulled from expedition bags. One veteran at the Everest Base Camp who found the team a little too coiffed and cool referred to them as the "Gucci guys."

Tenting nearby the IMAX/IWERKS Expedition at the Everest Base Camp were Henry Todd's Himalayan Guides expedition and several other commercial expeditions that, like Todd's, had brought paying clients to the mountain. Among the "dollar dogs," as one Everest chronicler has privately labeled commercial expedition members, was the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition, headed by New Zealander Rob Hall.

Hall, black bearded and imposing with a "Lincolnesque" appearance, had an intensity and quiet reserve that made many think he was much older than his thirty-five years. Since 1990, when his company began taking expeditions to Everest, Hall had taken a record thirty-nine climbers (clients and expedition personnel combined) to the top of Everest. His company's "adverts" that ran in international climbing magazines were large, alluring, and not immodest. One that appeared in early 1995 read: "100% Success! Send for Our Free Color Brochure." One hundred percent that is until May 1995, when he turned all of his clients back from their bid to the summit as deep snows at higher elevations had slowed their progress. Nobody had made the summit.

In 1996, Rob Hall was back, ready to go again, determined, if he could, to get back into the win column. The pressure was on. Success, not turnarounds, brought in new business, and there was an additional challenge in 1996: a new competitor in the game.

Scott Fischer from West Seattle, Washington, was coming to the mountain. Six foot four with a chiseled, symmetrical face and long, flowing blond hair, he ran his West Seattle, Washington-based adventure company, Mountain Madness, as an extension of his personal ambition: to climb mountains around the world and to have a hell of a time doing it.

With his talent, good looks, and charm, he was a prime candidate for mountaineering's poster boy. He had a charismatic personality with the drawing power of an industrial magnet. He could attract clients, motivate them, get them to commit, to write their checks and pack their rucksacks. He was a contender, but new to the business of guiding a commercial expedition to Mount Everest.

His motivation for becoming an Everest "dollar dog," one of his business associates has said, was fairly simple: "I think that he looked at Rob Hall's success and thought ... 'If he can do it, I can do it.' And not in a competitive macho way, but just saying, 'Hey, I'm a really great climber. Why can't I do it, too? ... I'll get clients and I'll go, too.'" Go, too, and make the money, too.

Mountain Madness's former general manager, Karen Dickinson, described the company's decision to package expeditions to Everest as "kind of the ultimate in high-altitude mountaineering. There was a demand from our clients that we wanted to service or else lose them to the competition. If it goes well, it could be very lucrative, so there was a financial motivation. Of course, I can't stress enough that you're equally as likely to lose your shirt.... It's just a high-stakes game financially."

Fischer was focused on the potential of the big rewards that could come from running a successful expedition. He had been thinking about changing his life. Karen Dickinson said, "He had turned forty the year before; his business had finally gotten to where he wanted.... He'd climbed K2 [8,611 m]; he'd climbed Everest; he was established as a successful guide.... He was talking about maybe he wouldn't go back to the summit of Everest again, that he would hire people to do that."

The plan had been loosely sketched, little more than casual conversations between Fischer and Dickinson, but those who knew him best said Fischer was giving more consideration to shaking things up. His personal life, his role in the company, his public persona, everything was up for midlife review.

Fischer had worked at developing the Mountain Madness business since the early 1980s, but it had never consistently provided him a good, steady income. Climbing had been his thing; the business had enabled that, but he'd never been a headliner, had never played in the big tent. A commercial success on Everest, he knew, could considerably alter the picture. If he could draw enough clients at $65,000 apiece (Hall's asking price), and if he could build a successful big-mountain expedition schedule, he could solve a lot of problems, finance a lot of change.

Part of the challenge in his birthing a new direction was his lack of international visibility. He didn't have the reputation of many of the other players in high-altitude mountaineering who graced the covers and pages of climbing magazines and equipment catalogs. As his efforts as an expedition leader had progressed, his personal climbing career had taken a back seat. He had come to feel, as one friend put it, "that he wasn't getting his due in the media ... the press didn't treat him fairly, that he wasn't respected; his name wasn't really brought up much; he wanted to be recognized."

His difficulty, as some of those around him saw it, was his image: accomplished climber, instructor, guide, and photographer, yes, but also swashbuckling, devil-may-care, good-time guy. These characterizations made for a certain kind of notoriety, but it wasn't the kind of image that made the big-dollar clients comfortable or drew the lucrative Fortune 500 sponsorships. He was, for that league, perhaps too "dicey." A successful Everest expedition, one with a lot of visibility, could "skew the do."

Working the phones from their West Seattle office, Dickinson, Fischer, and their staff massaged the client list to promote their expedition, and they mailed out hundreds of promotional brochures, two-color productions that had the graphic allure of a lawn-mower operator's manual. They didn't have the luster or panache of Rob Hall's advertising, but they were on the street with the word: "Climbers on the 1996 team will get a crack at the highest mountain in the world.... We'll build a pyramid of camps, each stocked from the one below. The guides and high-altitude Sherpa staff will fix rope, establish and stock camps, and provide leadership for all summit attempts. Climbers will carry light loads, saving their strength for the summit."

For Fischer's competitors in the Everest game, it was not good news to hear that he'd decided to move into the market. Fischer's easygoing style and his efforts in packaging expeditions to the remotest destinations in Africa, South America, and Asia had attracted a lot of customers from around the world, and his success, if it came, would be especially problematic for Rob Hall, who had been incredibly successful in recruiting American clients for his Everest expeditions.



In an effort to generate more press for both Mountain Madness and himself, Fischer and his staff trolled for media attention as aggressively as they did for client climbers, and early on in their efforts they had a bite, one that promised a serious opportunity.

Outside, the leading outdoor-recreation magazine in the United States, wanted to sponsor a climber-writer, Jon Krakauer, a Seattle-based journalist and best-selling author whom they were commissioning to write a feature article on the boom in commercial expeditions to Mount Everest. They wanted to buy a slot on Fischer's team for Krakauer, but they wanted a deal, a good deal.

Keen to the opportunity that having such an accomplished journalist on their roster could bring, Mountain Madness aggressively worked the executives of Outside. They explored a variety of trades and exchanges that would work to each organization's advantage and kept the heat turned up. A business associate of Fischer's recalled, "Karen [Dickinson] was just lighting a fire right and left underneath Outside, saying, 'Yeah!'"

Negotiations went well, and Fischer was excited about the potential relationship. In exchange for a discounted price to Outside, Mountain Madness was lobbying for advertising space and a feature story, replete with color photos, that they hoped would contain precious promotional prose. Krakauer was enthusiastic, too, telling one of Fischer's associates that he wanted to climb with Scott's team because Scott's team actually had better climbers and that Scott was a local guy and an interesting character.

This, Fischer thought, could be the press he was looking for, coverage in a major, mass-market magazine whose demographics had the clusters of "Beemers" and backpackers who could afford big-mountain prices. Dickinson remembered, "There was a long period where we really thought that Jon was going to be on our trip.... And we sort of held open a slot for him, thinking that was his, and we were negotiating heavily with Outside about how the payment might look ... a combination of advertising and just writing us a check."

But, a Mountain Madness associate recalled, "They were nickel-and-diming her [Dickinson] and basically wanted, I think, Mountain Madness to pick up the whole tab, not just have him go for cost, but less than cost, so Mountain Madness would be going out-of-pocket to have somebody on the climb. You know, come on, get real! ... So, at a certain point, Outside went to Rob [Hall] and said, 'Okay, what will you give it to us for?' and Rob said, 'Less than that.' Bingo!" At the eleventh hour Outside bought Krakauer's ticket from Adventure Consultants.

A spokesperson for Outside, recalling the magazine's decision to take Hall's offer, said they did not select Adventure Consultants "solely for financial reasons" but had also taken into consideration that Rob Hall had "consistently more experience guiding on Everest, more of a track record in terms of safety, and according to Jon Krakauer, a better oxygen system."

Fischer was enraged by Outside's decision, saying, "God, it's typical of the media. Typical bullshit." A friend of his remembered Fischer's "paint-peeling" response: "He just thought it was really screwed of Outside to take this idea and run with it, and ... getting all this information from Karen [Dickinson] and then just for a difference of maybe a thousand bucks--I don't know what it was, but it probably wasn't a huge amount--and going with Rob."

Exit one opportunity, enter another, perhaps a better one. Mountain Madness was able to sign on Sandy Hill Pittman, forty, a Contributing Editor to Allure and to Conde Nast Traveler. Already Pittman had climbed the highest mountain on six of seven continents, but Everest had eluded her. On two previous climbs, one of them guided by David Breashears of the IMAX/IWERKS team, she had turned back before the summit.

Pittman was a prize. She had more high-altitude experience than Krakauer, and she had an agreement with NBC Interactive Media to do a daily feed to a World Wide Web site (www.nbc.com/everest), and if Fischer could get her to the top, he would have publicity that a Pope in the pulpit couldn't buy. But, he had to get her to the top, and Fischer knew that.

"I think that first Scott saw her as somebody, kind of a plum," said a friend of Fischer's. "If he gets her to the top, whew! ... She'll write about him; she'll talk about him; she'll carry him on the wave of good fortune she's had." But, if he didn't, he could have a publicity fiasco. An associate has said she could imagine Pittman saying, "It was Scott Fischer; it was Scott Fischer. He wouldn't let me climb; I could have climbed."

To get his clients to the top, Fischer had secured the services of three guides and promoted their commitment to his potential clients. In his promotional literature he identified the expedition guides as Nazir Sabir of Pakistan, a veteran guide and expedition packager who had climbed several 8,000-meter peaks; Neal Beidleman, an aerospace engineer, a climber, and ultra-marathon runner from Aspen, Colorado; and Anatoli Boukreev.

Boukreev, thirty-eight, a Russian citizen and resident of Almaty, Kazakhstan, was considered one of the world's foremost high-altitude mountain climbers. By spring 1996 he had climbed seven of the most challenging of the globe's 8,000ers (some of them more than once), and all of those he had climbed without the use of supplementary oxygen.

For more insights [updated October 19, 2015] read NEVEREST. 

Signs of Strength

When I read about Krakauer's accounts of Man Vs Nature...I cannot help wondering how would I fare.

What a name! Krakauer. The phonetics of ice and wind and the wild are all there. Is it a coincidence that one of the world's most magnificent mountain ranges sound the same: The Karakorum Himalayas. When you read about his 23 days alone in Alaska, trying to make the summit of Devil's Thumb, he seems to have a quality few men have today: to succeed or die trying. It's the first part that has all the emphasis of course. Who can honestly claim to be this driven?

I find I compare myself to these deeds and find myself coming short, but then I wonder if he would have the same endurance, in say a swimming pool, or on a bicycle. The point is, it is about the same thing, endurance. What is different though, is that on a mountain, much more than on a bicycle, a lapse of concentration can prove fatal. On a mountain everything you do really matters. Perhaps the lesson we learn from the mountain is that this is true everywhere, not just on mountains. The mountains are there for those who neeed a reference check on what is important in life, perhaps they have forgotten who and what really matters to them.

This constant theme of derring-do, especially in the mountains...it lifts me up. Krakauers account of his dogged assault of Devil's Thumb (he managed to set his tent on fire halfway through the trip)...despite facing death on a few occasions, being overwhelmed by loneliness, fear, and setbacks, he remained until he succeeded...this is especially inspiring as an achievement of exceptional strength, bravery and skill.
I put myself in a similar position and wonder what I would have done. I wonder how I will do attempting something like Mount Everest? Is it about sheer determination, sheer will? Is it about resisting and enduring prolonged misery and suffering? Could I do that? Should I? Would I be doing it as a direct comparison, as an experiment, or for the unadulterated thrill?

I think there is some value, sometimes, in comparing ourselves to others. It helps forge an identity which may not be fully realised. We find our place in the world, we find who and what we are, and also what we are not.

The other way, is the inward journey. This is usually a lonely road, which brings us to the other side, more appreciative of others, less guarded, perhaps, of ourselves.

I also look at McCandless and see that while he had an intellectual superiority (his father was a rocket scientist after all) the fatal weakness that led to tragedy in Alaska was his fear of the water. There are two reasons he died in the wild, and the one is that the waters of the Teklanika River scared him enough to turn back and wait for them to subside. I don't know if I could have survived as long as he had, or as well, but I do know I would have found a way across the raging river. I've swum in icy streams, and icy seas, played in the monstrous rapids of the Zambezi, in the floodwaters of our farm...It may have been difficult, but not too difficult to be done.

One could also argue that McCandless saw no reason to make the crossing, as the whole point of his adventure was communing with nature for an extended length of time, and of course once the river sent him back, he triumphantly celebrated the fact that he'd been in the wilderness for 100 days. He was not complaining, waiting, hoping to cross. I do think, as pointless as this point is, had I come up upon the river, I would have found a way to cross it there and then.
Maybe you get washed away, but as you do, you slowly cross over to the other side. It's strange to see such an admirable fellow whose one weakness is one of my strengths. It's an irony, but possibly a useless one.

I doubt whether I will ever climb Devil's Thumb, or any far less tricky cathedral peak. Being competitive is useful where we ask more of ourselves, where we believe we can be better. It falls flat when we search for something in ourselves that isn't there, or where all that we do is simply to prove others are inferior. If it is for ourselves, and our companions, to have a big heart, to see how far we can all go together, then it may have a useful place in our experience.

I think it was on the slopes of Kilimanjaro that my infatuation for high mountain life, fizzled. I was perched almost 6km in the air, and I didn't care. I didn't need, after that, to go any higher to find that I cared even less! Still, I am intrigued by these desolate places, and it seems the highest places are the most remote. Each landmass has its barren tower. I would like to visit McKinley in Alaska.

It's interesting how most, if not all, of the great adventurers go to great pains to record their experiences (I've recorded my Ironman experience in this blog). It shows a real need to leave a simple life...a temporary abandonment of home comforts for a higher experience, bringing back something from the lonely travails and then the sharing of the experience. Is this to and froe motion, from selfish adventurer, to humble storyteller, an ongoing process of purging the weakness, the selfishness, and the pursuit of knowing our own strenth, place, power and connectedness to those we love?

Instead of comparing ourselves to others, we can take pleasure in our own talents, our own interests, and still enjoy the pursuits of others. Share in the adventures of others when they grab us, go off on our own when they don't. Strength, it seems to me, lies in having an identity, and not needing to hold it up for proof or comparison. It is simply what it is, who we are, and we are loved or not because of this.