*Boukreev, in his article “The Oxygen Illusion,” published in The American Alpine Journal, 1997, talks extensively about the problems that can come to those who rely upon supplementary oxygen during high-altitude ascents.
†In an April 21, 1997, interview I conducted with Krakauer, he pooh-poohed this notion, saying, “Well, there was not an oxygen problem.” This analysis of the prevailing situation is in sharp contrast to that offered by Ed Viesturs of the IMAX expedition, who, when he observed that Mountain Madness climbers were still going to the summit after 2:00 P.M., said, “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.” (See The Climb, p. 149).
*Boukreev’s power and strength as a high-altitude climber were well-known in the Himalaya. In 1995, Henry Todd, an English organizer of Everest expeditions, hired Boukreev as a guide because “if anything went wrong, I wanted a rope bullet up that hill.” (Quoted by Paul Deegan in “Reviews,” High, September 1998.)
†We now know that Neal Beidleman and at least one of the Mountain Madness clients had at times during the climb cranked their flow rates over what had been recommended.
‡In fact, Neal Beidleman and the five client-climbers, the last of whom summited at approximately 2:30 P.M., stayed on the summit until 3:10 P.M.
*As did several climbers from both the Mountain Madness expedition and Krakauer’s own Adventure Consultants expedition.
*In an August 7, 1998, letter to Salon I mentioned that Everest veteran Reinhold Messner—reflecting upon the need to use oxygen as an Everest guide—said, “I don’t think there’s a big difference between danger and not danger, using or not using oxygen” (from a recorded speech given by Messner on January 27, 1997). In calling this to the attention of readers my intention was to point out that—on the occasion of his speech—Messner did not appear to be in agreement with Krakauer’s view that all Everest guides should use supplementary oxygen. Krakauer, in his “Postscript,” I think, came to an inappropriate conclusion as to the purpose of my comments. In no way did I mean to imply that Messner was in agreement with each and every one of the actions that Boukreev took on Everest in 1996. To this I would add that I never heard Anatoli, privately or publicly, say that Messner had “endorsed” his actions on Everest. What Boukreev did say in The Climb (p. 231) and in various public forums was that he had gotten personal “support” from Messner.
†In addition to her role as publicist for Mountain Madness, Jane Bromet was also working as a correspondent for Outside Online.
* Anatoli had dictated—for Scott Fischer’s wife, Jeannie, and her children—a personal remembrance of Scott. It had just been translated into English and Anatoli had asked that it be delivered personally to Scott’s family.
*I was not that concerned about specifying an exact date, because I felt that Fischer’s statement to Bromet would not have been any less significant or relevant if it had been made on March 25 in Kathmandu or on April 2 during the trek to the Everest Base Camp.
*This letter, dated October 8, 1997, was received after The Climb had been printed and shipped.
†Bromet explained in her letter that she had read the quote attributed to her in an advance copy of the manuscript that had somehow been obtained by a “third party.”
*There had been no suggestion in Bromet’s letter that Krakauer had been sent a copy.
†On April 4, 1997, I had faxed a copy of Bromet’s statement to Outside. Because I felt that the magazine had, before publication of Krakauer’s article, neglected to check with Anatoli certain details of his descent on summit day, I asked in my fax, “Was anyone at Outside aware, at any point before Jon’s article went to press, that there was information at hand that would have clarified the issue around Boukreev’s descent?” (I got no answer to my inquiry.) Shortly after my communication with Outside, Krakauer phoned my home office. Enraged, he said he would “draw my guns” if I went public with the Bromet statement.
*Going back to my notes, I determined that I had inferred this date by examining dispatches that Bromet had filed on Outside Online.
*Breashears, to his credit, has taken the high road in his consideration of Boukreev’s actions on Everest. When he and Boukreev were interviewed together on CNN’s Larry King Live, he said, “I’ve read most things, and it’s hard for me to second-guess a situation I wasn’t in.”
†On summit day, when climbers above Camp IV began to run into trouble, Pemba Sherpa was contacted from the Everest Base Camp and was asked to go up the mountain with oxygen to help climbers who were in trouble. Pemba declined, saying that the weather was too threatening.
*The construction of this scene—the placement of characters and the timing of its action—virtually precluded the possibility that Boukreev could have had the conversation with Fischer during which his descent ahead of clients had been authorized, the conversation that, as in his Outside article, Krakauer failed to mention to his readers.
*Despite the fact that more than a year earlier Krakauer had said that he’d reported what Martin Adams had told him, he wrote a letter to Salon (August 14, 1998) and said, “… this is what I know to be true about the conversation between Fischer and Boukreev atop the Hillary Step: Andy Harris, Martin Adams, Boukreev, and I were waiting together above the [Hillary] step when Fischer arrived on his way to the summit. Both Adams and I—the only witnesses to that conversation who are still alive—recalled the conversation in exactly the same way …”
*Boukreev has never said that he knew of Fischer’s plan in advance of summit day. In fact, on p. 138 of The Climb he explains that just above the Balcony he waited on the fixed ropes for Fischer to appear: “I was unsure about many details. About the general plan, yes, I understood, but things were changing.” Boukreev, seeing that the expedition’s progress was slower than had been projected, wanted to know what Fischer had in mind. It wasn’t until just above the Hillary Step that he connected with Fischer and found out.
A REVIEW FROM THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL
After all that has been written about the 1996 Everest tragedy, why should we care to read yet another account? The media avalanched us with an unprecedented depth of raw facts, yet left us with the escalating controversy that drew head guide Anatoli Boukreev of Kazakhstan to publish his side of the story with a co-writer, G. Weston DeWalt. In The Climb, Boukreev describes how he single-handedly performed one of the most amazing rescues in Himalayan history a few hours after climbing Everest without oxygen.
Depending on your source, Boukreev was either the villain or the hero of the unfortunate events on Everest. Just a month after The Climb was published in November 1997, he died in an avalanche on a winter ascent of the South Face of Annapurna. When DeWalt was called for a national news quote, he learned that they planned to say Boukreev would be best remembered as the villain of Jon Krakauer’s bestseller, Into Thin Air. DeWalt cautioned that the American Alpine Club had just given Boukreev a major award for heroism and would be remembered by his peers as one of the greatest Himalayan mountaineers of all time.
When Boukreev disappeared on Annapurna, his newly published book and AAC award were fanning the flames of controversy to new heights. The New York Times included the following in a report of Boukreev’s death: “Krakauer accuses Boukreev … of compromising his clients’ safety to achieve his own ambitions … and endangered them by making the exhausting climb without the aid of bottled oxygen… . However, Krakauer credits Boukreev with bravely saving the lives of two [sic] climbers.” Here is the controversy reduced to a sound bite.
The Climb presents a much-needed breath of fresh air, written from a guide’s point of view, that dissipates some of the intriguing thin air surrounding the media-created search for blame. We learn, for example, that every one of Boukreev’s clients survived the tragedy without major injuries, while those who did die or incurred major injuries were members of Krakauer’s party. The leaders of both teams, Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, al
so did not live to tell their story.
The question of why these two competing leaders stayed so high so long, pushing clients toward the summit beyond a reasonable turnaround time, is never directly answered. Between the lines, however, the spotlight shines on those who have asked for it most forcefully. The extreme pressure Fischer and Hall felt to get the most positive free ink in Outside that would lure more high-dollar clients comes across as clearly as if the words were penned in blood. The reader senses that the presence of an Outside journalist as a client on the most fatal commercial Everest venture was no coincidence.
Far from trying “to achieve his own ambitions” that day, Boukreev fixed the Hillary Step for clients after Sherpas failed to do so, foresaw problems with clients nearing camp too late, noted five other guides on the peak, and descended to the South Col to be rested and hydrated enough to respond to an emergency. Boukreev now had climbed Everest three times without oxygen. His high-altitude performance, often alone and in extreme conditions, was unparalleled. He had climbed Manaslu in winter, Dhaulagiri in 17 hours, Makalu in 46 hours, and had traversed all four 8,000-meter summits of Kanchenjunga in a single push, to select just a few here. When he learned that climbers were lost in a blizzard in the dark, he made several solo forays late into the night to rescue three people near death. No other client, guide or Sherpa could muster the necessary strength and courage to accompany Boukreev as he went from tent to tent, asking for help.
Late the next day, Boukreev climbed alone back up to 8,350 meters on the slim chance he could save Scott Fischer, last seen by Sherpas lying comatose in the snow. Meanwhile, Time magazine was preparing a sensational three-page story about the tragedy, based on satellite phone and fax reports from the mountain, that failed even to mention Boukreev’s name.
On May 16, after just two days’ rest in the Western Cwm, as helicopters, Sherpas and other expeditions helped evacuate the survivors, Boukreev set off to solo Lhotse in the record time of 21 hours, climbing on a permit Fischer had obtained to guide the peak after Everest. Had Fischer survived unscathed, he almost certainly would have passed on Lhotse and accompanied his clients back to Kathmandu.
In The Climb, Boukreev reveals his thoughts as a professional guide, but holds the iron curtain over his own persona. With classic Russian reticence, he doesn’t brag, mention his degree in physics, or apologize for actions on the mountain that others judged to be self-centered and uncaring. He counters a strong rebuke from Scott Fischer by saying that it had not been made clear to him that “chatting and keeping the clients pleased by focusing on their personal happiness” was equally important to focusing on the details that would bring safety and success. Unlike Krakauer, he is afraid to admit human failings that could help endear him to his audience and his climbing companions. He lets down his armor only far enough to admit to sometimes being a difficult person.
Even with DeWalt’s impassioned prose and editing of Boukreev’s transcribed interviews, The Climb fails to sustain the superb narrative quality that brought Into Thin Air to the pinnacle of literary success atop the New York Times bestseller list. But while it lacks the carefully choreographed structure and characterizations that make Into Thin Air impossible to put down, it forces the reader to think, rather than to accept armchair answers passively.
Boukreev avoids Krakauer’s penchant for focusing on the idiosyncrasies of his companions by simply accepting fellow climbers at face value for who they are on the mountain. He succeeds without more complete characterizations because most readers already are very familiar with the players and the basic setting from Into Thin Air and a plethora of media stories.
Writing about a person invariably honors them or devalues them. Both Boukreev and DeWalt err on the side of honoring those attempting Everest, while Krakauer draws his reader toward tabloid-style assumptions that erase heroism from the Himalaya as surely as modern journalism erases greatness from the presidency.
A vastly experienced guide told me over dinner that he loved Into Thin Air and felt somewhat chagrined never to have paused to question its conclusions until he read Boukreev speaking his own language, thinking his own thoughts. He strongly related to the behind-the-scenes guide talk and the dilemma of being a nice guy attending to a client’s every need versus nursing that person up into the Death Zone, where their survival would be dependent on their ability to keep going under their own power. DeWalt includes an especially fascinating three-page, first-person account of client Lou Kasischke’s inner thoughts as he made an agonizing personal decision to turn around on the summit day.
The media circus surrounding the Everest tragedy appears to be a postmodern American phenomena. Single tragedies have claimed the lives of more climbers in the Himalaya many times before, but not Americans, not clients paying up to $65,000 each, not with daily reports on the Internet, not with a journalist climbing on assignment, and not with a broadcast phone call from a dying man to his wife. Thus the regrettable deaths of five climbers on Everest on May 10 degenerated from a real-live tragedy involving heroism and compassion into a veritable O.J. trial in which no participant is left unscathed. With Outside indirectly pulling media strings (as live television influenced Judge Ito’s court), it is little wonder that justice and dignity took a backseat to the entertainment value of the sufferings of well-intentioned climbers. To much of the public, high-altitude mountaineering itself has been on trial. It is to this end that The Climb may have its most lasting significance.
Motivations are all important. If, as Krakauer suggests, the people who now climb Everest (graciously including himself) do it for questionable reasons, then our avocation is indeed in trouble. As Eric Shipton wrote in 1938 after several attempts on the mountain, “The ascent of Everest, like any other human endeavor, is only to be judged by the spirit in which it is attempted… . Let us climb peaks … not because others have failed, nor because the summits stand 28,000 feet above the sea, nor in patriotic fervor for the honor of a nation, nor for cheap publicity… . Let us not attack them with an army, announcing on the wireless to a sensation-loving world the news of our departure and the progress of our subsequent advance.”
The mass appeal of the 1996 Everest story relates to the clear violation of every one of Shipton’s tenets of more than a half-century ago in a new era in which blame is God.
—Galen Rowell, copyright © 1998
MOUNTAIN MADNESS EVEREST DEBRIEFING: A TRANSCRIPT
A NOTE TO READERS
The following is a partial transcript of the Mountain Madness debriefing that was tape-recorded on May 15, 1996, five days after the tragic events that claimed the life of their expedition leader, Scott Fischer, and the lives of Rob Hall, Doug Hansen, Andy Harris, and Yasuko Namba of the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition. Included in this transcript are comments and discussions relating to the tragedy and its aftermath. Other commentary—relating to interests in the tape-recording of the debriefing and to the disposition of that recording—have been excluded to protect the privacy of the participants in the debriefing.
Those who participated in the debriefing were Neal Beidleman, expedition guide; Anatoli Boukreev, head climbing guide; Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, climbing sirdar; Dr. Ingrid Hunt, Everest Base Camp manager and expedition doctor; and six of the expedition’s eight climber-clients: Martin Adams, Lene Gammelgaard, Tim Madsen, Sandy Hill (Pittman), Klev Schoening, and Pete Schoening. Absent were Dale Kruse, who had not made a summit attempt and had departed Everest Base Camp, and Charlotte Fox. Fox had been airlifted from Everest Base Camp and taken to Kathmandu to get medical attention for frostbite.
SANDY: All right, the tape is rolling. We’ve got plenty of tape, so …
INGRID: Am I supposed to go first?
SANDY: I don’t think so.
KLEV: We’re just going to ramble, up and down, forward and back …
NEAL: Yeah, but we do need to find a starting place that makes sense.
KLEV: Sure.
TIM: One question that Ingrid wanted to tr
y to establish was when Scott left camp [Camp IV], so why don’t we start there?
SANDY: I think, actually, Camp IV, leaving in the morning, and the scene leaving that morning, might be a logical place to start. Camp III doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant—or is it?
NEAL: Well, to me, there’s a couple of facts that would make sense, and those can be added quickly in terms of, you know, my—again, as a perception but somewhat fact about Scott [Fischer]. It’s my perception, but I believe it’s a fact, that he was very tired walking.
SANDY: From Camp III to Camp IV?
NEAL: Yeah, and that establishes something.
KLEV: Why do you think he was tired?
TIM: He did not walk from Camp III to Camp IV with oxygen.
KLEV: Why’d he do that? Anybody know? Was it a conservation thing or a personal challenge?
NEAL: I think it was bullheadedness, myself. But, see again, now we’re kind of in the gray area. Do we put information like that on the tape or not?
MARTIN: No, I think it should simply be facts.
SANDY Well, it’s a fact.
MARTIN: Scott went from [Camp] III to [Camp] IV without oxygen, period. Whatever else transpired, let somebody else interpret it—if it becomes a question.
NEAL: Well, Martin, you have a pretty good feel for this. Why don’t we start with you simply because you’re probably the most directed and you’ll give us a really good pattern or a pro forma on how to do it. Is that okay?
MARTIN: Personally, I don’t mind discussing it. On the recorder, I have reservations about that. I am perfectly willing to sit here. If I disagree with something and I know that I’m correct, I’ll disagree. But I do not want to give my interpretation on the tape as to what transpired, for legal reasons. I’ve got too much to lose. Sorry. I would like to hear you discuss it. If I think something is out of line or wrong and I know it’s wrong, I’d like to have the opportunity to correct it, for the record, but I don’t want to be the record.
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