At the top of the Hillary Step, Krakauer produced a coil of rope that he’d gotten from Ang Dorje at the South Summit, and it was discussed how to proceed. Above the Hillary Step the angle of the Southeast Ridge takes climbers over a gently undulating run of snow, and, because the wind had continued to rise as the climbers had moved up the mountain, the decision was made to fix one more rope. Seeing plenty of hands to do the job, Boukreev decided, as he had earlier, to lead and advance the route breaking trail.
As Boukreev led off, Krakauer, who had become increasingly worried about his oxygen supply, explained his “concern” to Beidleman and asked if it would be a problem if he “hurried ahead” to the summit and left the fixing of the rope to him. Beidleman agreed. “I said fine. I uncoiled the rope… . Martin [Adams] was below me. I asked Martin if he would help me pay out the rope and tie the end to [an] anchor, which he did. I started up. I made it maybe twenty or thirty feet, until the rope caught in the rocks… . Martin finally helped me untangle the rope from the rock. I continued up to a snow stake, tied off the rope. There, the remaining forty or fifty meters, I walked up further to fix. I didn’t find another anchor.”
Beidleman couldn’t find an anchor to tie into. Not wanting to leave the unanchored length of rope on the surface of the snow because a climber might clip on thinking it was anchored above him, Beidleman tossed the rope toward Tibet. Less than half of the intended route to be fixed had been covered.
At 1:07 P.M., Boukreev reached the summit of Mount Everest, more with a sense of relief than of celebration. The goal had been to summit as early as possible so as to get the clients back to Camp IV under oxygen, and while 1:07 was considerably later than he would liked to have arrived, he understood that if the clients followed quickly, they would be able to make it. The margin was close, but they could do it. And, even if some of them ran out of oxygen just above Camp IV, that wouldn’t necessarily foretell a disaster, because on the descent you can make some distance without oxygen. But it’s a crapshoot as to how far you can go.
At 1:12 P.M., having followed Boukreev’s trail, Krakauer reached the summit, and Harris followed shortly thereafter. Beidleman, climbing behind Harris, “was moving a little slow,” according to Adams. “He asked me to turn up his oxygen bottle, so I turned it up, and we headed for the summit. When we were almost to the summit, he asked me to turn it up again, so I turned it up all the way.”
At about 1:25, Beidleman and Adams made the summit after passing Krakauer and Harris on their descent. Concerned about his oxygen supply, Krakauer had decided to descend quickly. Unlike Beidleman, he was still on his second bottle, and his supply and his luck were being stretched.
At about 1:45, Klev Schoening came up over the last rise leading to the summit of Everest, and Boukreev took his photograph. His hands raised over his head in celebration, he approached the aluminum tripod that marks the true summit and was soon in tears.
After Schoening’s summit the traffic to the top stopped. By 2:00 P.M., no more heads had bobbed over the last ridge on the summit approach, and Boukreev was becoming concerned.
Every one of our team that I saw on the summit looked good, in no danger, and I had little concern about them, but I began to wonder, “Where are the other clients?” More than fifteen minutes had passed since Klev had summited, and no one was coming.
But, they were coming, and down the mountain in Camp II where various expeditions were staging for their own assault bids in the days to come, there was a rising concern. Ed Viesturs of the IMAX/IWERKS expedition and some others had been monitoring the climbers’ progress through a telescope, scanning the climbing route from the South Summit to the Hillary Step, and they could see climbers still going up at 2:00 P.M. “We just saw them standing there and moving very slow… . And we could see streamer clouds going over the top, and I’m going, ‘God, it’s way too late… . They’re really pushing it.’ Not only was it late in the day, but I mean you … only have eighteen hours of oxygen. You have to assume that you get to the summit in twelve hours; that gives you six hours to get back down. So, kind of in my mind, I was thinking they’re going to run out of oxygen—not only daylight, but they’re going to run out of oxygen.”
Also at Camp II observing the climbers above the South Summit was Henry Todd of Himalayan Guides, some of his staff, Mal Duff, and several others, probably more than twenty people, Todd has recalled. As they were watching, and like Ed Viesturs discussing the lateness of the hour, the Sherpas became excited and, according to Todd, “freaked out about the star.” Todd didn’t at first see what they were talking about, and then they pointed it out to him, a star in the middle of the day above the South Summit. “We’re not talking about me being a little nutty. I saw it.”*
“This is not good. This is not good,” the Sherpas kept repeating, and Todd agreed. Retrieving a radio, Todd called down to Rob Hall’s Base Camp and asked, “What is your turnaround time?” They responded, “The turnaround time was two o’clock.” Two o’clock had come and passed.
Todd, with his experience of running expeditions, knew something of the psychology that must have been prevailing. “You’re absolutely knackered… . You stop being logical… . You think you can hack it.”
Adams, like Krakauer, understood he was on borrowed air and didn’t hang out on the summit. “I sat on the summit, as I recollect, ten or fifteen minutes. I took some pictures with Toli’s camera, and Neal took a picture of the two of us with the national flag of Kazakhstan spread out between us. And then I said, ‘Hey, guys, I’m outta here.’ And I just got up and started down.” Shortly after Adams, Boukreev, then Schoening, followed.
I was on the summit about an hour. I had no radio, nor did Neal, so neither of us knew what was going on below. I suspected there might be trouble at the Hillary Step, and I felt I should go down. At about 2:00 P.M., maybe slightly later, I moved away from the summit, and I stooped to collect some rocks as a souvenir. As I did, something caught my eye, a five-rupee Indian coin, and I put it into my pocket, thinking, “For good luck.”
*Astronomers consulted about the appearance of this “star” say no heavenly body was in that quadrant of the sky on that day at that time. The comet Hyakutake had long ago disappeared from view.
CHAPTER 16
DECISION AND DESCENT
As Adams descended toward the top of the Hillary Step, a chain of climbers passed him, some of Hall’s clients, all the remaining Mountain Madness clients—Charlotte Fox, Lene Gammelgaard, Sandy Hill Pittman, Tim Madsen—and four of the Mountain Madness Sherpas, including Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa. Adams recalled they said little as they passed. The climbers were on automatic, minutes away from their goal.
A few minutes after I started my descent, I saw a group of climbers in close rank moving toward the summit, and somewhat separated from them were two climbers, and one of them I thought I recognized as Scott. Because I was eager to understand our situation and discuss our plan, I approached him and began to speak, then realized that I had made a mistake and that I was speaking with Rob Hall, who was going to the summit with one of his clients. I asked about how he was, if he needed any help because I was thinking to go down, and he said that everybody was doing okay, that no one needed any help, and he thanked me for my work on the fixed ropes.
After I left Rob, I saw that our climbers were coming in a dense grouping, but my relief at seeing them was shadowed by my understanding that most of them had been climbing now for fourteen hours on an eighteen-hour supply of oxygen. If they had been using it properly, they would have four more hours. Still they were about thirty minutes away from the summit, and I understood that there might not be enough “oxygen time” for them to descend to Camp IV.
About ten to fifteen feet from the top of the Hillary Step, Adams came upon Harris and Krakauer “yukking it up, just kind of laughing, celebrating, appearing not to be too concerned about anything,” but Adams didn’t stop to join in. “I didn’t feel like getting into that kind of thing, so I moved to where th
e fixed ropes began at the Hillary Step.” Adams was thinking about getting down, only about getting down. He’d had one delay after another throughout the day, slogging his way through slower climbers. Now he was in a position to lead the descent, and that was all right with him.
Clipping on to the fixed rope and preparing to rappel down the face of the Hillary Step, Adams peered over the edge, checking to see that the route was clear. “I look down,” he said, “and I see three people coming up, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, another delay!’ and then I focus in on who’s coming up: a Sherpa in the lead, then Makalu Gau, and then Scott Fischer, and, I’ll tell you, I was amazed. I hadn’t thought about Scott all day or where he was, and now he’s here, and I can’t believe it. I’m thinking this is a problem. He shouldn’t be here.”
As Adams was looking down, Fischer was looking up and advancing his jumar on the fixed rope. When he saw Adams, he yelled out to him, “Hey, Martin, you think you can climb Everest?” Adams said that he got the impression that Fischer thought he’d yet to get to the summit, that “he was encouraging me, trying to get my spirits up, like, ‘Hey, bro, let’s go do this together.’ ” Adams responded, “I already did!”
Seeing that the Sherpa and Makalu Gau above Fischer were moving slowly, Adams encouraged Fischer to try to move around them, to move onto a rocky rib that paralleled the fixed rope and free climb. “It would have been a bit technical, but I thought he could do it and pick up some time.”
Fischer moved toward the rib, feeling out the alternative that Adams was trying to coax him to take, but, according to Adams, Fischer fell back into line. “Maybe he thought it was too exposed. I don’t know. For whatever the reason, he stayed where he was. He probably made the right decision.”
While Adams was trying to encourage Fischer to speed up his ascent, Boukreev descended past Harris and Krakauer and sat down on a rock immediately above Adams, and as he waited, he surveyed the sky, looking for some indication of where the weather was going. He noticed that some clouds had gathered, and a cold wind had picked up, but nothing indicated anything threatening.
On the summit, as Boukreev and Adams waited for Fischer at the Hillary Step, Beidleman was “very nervous and very anxious,” he said. “I actually wanted to leave the summit much earlier with maybe Martin or Klev, but every time I got ready to stand up and go, it seemed like another person or another wave of people would come over the ridge, some including our members. I was very surprised that people kept coming. I thought they would have either turned around on their own or by somebody else. I didn’t feel it was right for me to leave at that time until everybody had reached the summit. They were so close.”
Between two-fifteen and two-thirty, the four Mountain Madness clients Adams and Boukreev had passed on their descent—Madsen, Fox, Gammelgaard, and Pittman—and Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa had made the summit. For Pittman the last several yards were among the most challenging of the day. Steering toward the aluminum tripod that marks the summit, the last of her oxygen drained from the third bottle she had collected at the South Summit. Presumably, she had been consuming at a higher than recommended flow rate. Fortunately, Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa saw her distress, retrieved the extra bottle he had carried in his pack from Camp IV, and tapped her into a new bottle.
Fischer had not swept any clients back to Camp IV during the day because he’d never made contact with any of them after Gammelgaard had parted from him early in the climb. By two-thirty, all the clients who had started the climb had made the top of the world. There were no more climbers to sweep, no place for the clients to go but down. But nobody moved off the summit until three-ten. There were forty minutes of celebration, picture-taking, tears, congratulations, and backslapping—and forty minutes less oxygen, forty minutes less daylight.
When, finally, Fischer cleared the top of the Hillary Step, Adams recalled, he wanted nothing more than to clip on and head down. But since Harris and Krakauer had arrived at the Hillary Step before he had, he asked them if they wanted to go down first. “With gratitude,” Adams said, “they clipped on and went over the edge.”
As Adams followed Harris’s and Krakauer’s progress down the Hillary Step, eager for them to clear the bottom so he could clip on, Boukreev, a little after two-thirty, had a conversation with Fischer.
I spoke with Scott while he was resting after climbing the Hillary Step. When I asked how he was feeling, he said he was tired, that the ascent had been difficult for him.
When I met Scott, my intuition was telling me that the most logical thing for me to do was to descend to Camp IV as quickly as possible, to stand by in case our descending climbers needed to be resupplied with oxygen, and also, to prepare hot tea and warm drinks.* Again, I felt confident of my strength and knew that if I descended rapidly, I could do this if necessary. From Camp IV I would have a clear view of the climbing route to the South Col and could observe developing problems.
This intuition I expressed to Scott, and he listened to my ideas. He saw our situation in the same way and we agreed that I should go down. Again, I surveyed the weather, and I saw no immediate cause for concern.
On the summit, too, as the Mountain Madness climbers lingered, there was little concern about the weather. Klev Schoening recalled, “When I was at the summit, there was a strong wind. I didn’t feel it intensify, but I didn’t see any evidence personally of snow or deteriorating weather.” Sandy Hill Pittman, likewise, was not concerned about the weather, but she was concerned about the hour. “I didn’t sense any deteriorating weather. I felt the sense that we were late on the summit, not because I was told that we had a deadline on the summit, but because I was aware … from previous climbers’ stories about when you should be off and on. And if I felt any anxiety up there, it was because we were late, but not because I saw any weather.”
Lene Gammelgaard, however, saw something that had disturbed her. “Before I decided to go up over the Hillary Step, I noticed a whiteout coming from the valleys, and I saw the wind pick up over the summit.” Gammelgaard had witnessed the formative stages of a storm system that within a few hours would catch her and her climbing partners, vulnerable and exposed, at the most dangerous part of an Everest assault, the descent.
At the base of the Hillary Step, Adams resumed his descent along the cornice of the Southeast Ridge and, just before arriving at the South Summit, noticed someone slumped in the snow. “I’m on the traverse … and here’s Krakauer laid out, hanging on to his ice ax, something of a self-belay. He’s got the handle of his ax driven into the snow and he’s holding on to the head, and I’m wondering what I’m going to do here, because neither one of us is clipped on to a fixed rope.”*
Krakauer, like Pittman above him, had gone to the bottom of his canister. He was out of oxygen.
Immediately behind Adams was Boukreev. As Boukreev approached, he hustled Adams on, telling him, “Go, go, go.” Boukreev didn’t want Adams to delay. Klev Schoening, approaching a few moments later, recalled, “When I came across from the [Hillary] Step to the South Summit, Jon Krakauer was in distress there, and that kind of slowed me up. There was nothing I really could do to help him. I don’t think I had the wherewithal to do that, but I wanted to stay there until I saw some action was being taken, because they [the Hall team] did have two guides on either side of him.”
Fortunately for Krakauer, as with Pittman, someone from his expedition stepped in to address the problem. Mike Groom, who had summited at about the same time as the four Mountain Madness clients who had come up after Adams, Beidleman, and Klev Schoening, selflessly surrendered his canister to Krakauer. Because Krakauer observed that Groom “wasn’t overly concerned about going without,” he accepted the offer and in a matter of minutes made it to the South Summit where Hall’s climbing Sherpas, as had Fischer’s, had stashed a supply of oxygen. There, Krakauer “grabbed a new oxygen canister, screwed it onto my regulator, and headed down the mountain.”†
While Krakauer was stuffing his third bottle of oxygen into his pack
, Beidleman and the clients in his charge had begun their descent, and Beidleman recalled that already one of the clients was beginning to show signs of distress. “We got to the Hillary Step, and I was right behind Sandy. She seemed to be the one most out of it at the time. Behind me were Charlotte, Tim, and then Lene. When we got to the Hillary Step, it’s a real jungle of old ropes and pieces of tattered cord. Sandy was having [a] very difficult time even deciphering which cord was the one to hook into and how to negotiate the footsteps. I walked down to her. We tried to rappel her down, but the cords were too tangled by the wind, so we had to undo that and she hand ‘rap’d’ down with some assistance. She got down to the rest of the ridge, and I looked behind and it seemed as if the other people were making pretty good progress, so I wasn’t too worried about them.”
As Beidleman, Fox, Madsen, Pittman, and Gammelgaard approached the South Summit, they found Klev Schoening “sitting there.” Schoening, who had been testing discarded oxygen canisters to see if there was any extra to be had, remembered that Beidleman looked at him and said, “What the heck are you doing here? Get out of here.”
“It was at that time,” Schoening said, “that Neal … recognized the urgency of the hour and maybe the storm, and it was at that time that the fire was lit under me. And I think I left just about the time [Neal] got there.”
Ten canisters of oxygen had been taken by the Sherpas onto the South Summit for Fischer’s team. One each had been allocated for six clients, and one each for Beidleman and Fischer to be picked up on their descent. The remaining two, presumably, had been carried onto the mountain as the backup Boukreev had requested and that Fischer had agreed would be placed there for him.
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