The decision by Rob and Scott to go for the summit on 10 May had been made some time in advance, because Rob had reached the top on four previous occasions around this date (10 May 1990, 12 May 1992, 10 May 1993 and 9 May 1994) and he had assumed that the weather would again be suitable during this period. They had also asked other teams to stay clear of the route on that day.
There was little science involved in making the decision so far in advance. It had more to do with luck. It was also in conflict with Rob Hall’s advice to others on the mountain that they should wait for the right conditions, whenever that might be. He was fond of saying that death on Everest was often a result of ‘summit fever’, the disease which results from climbers becoming impatient and going for the summit before they are ready, or when the weather is not suitable, or both. It is a ‘disease’ which has resulted in many deaths over the years.
Rob and Scott’s teams left Camp 2 on 8 May to make the climb up the steep Lhotse Face to Camp 3, which was located in a crevassed area in the centre of the face. The face was steep and ice-covered, but by early May a series of footsteps had formed, made by the passage of climbers up to camps 3 and 4.
Behind the two guided teams came the South Africans and the Taiwanese. It is unclear whether or not the Taiwanese were simply reneging on an agreement made with Hall not to climb that day, but Woodall, the South African team leader, had always had a difficult relationship with Hall and it is unlikely, in my opinion, that he had agreed not to move according to the wishes of the New Zealander.
Woodall was inexperienced as a high-altitude climber, having never climbed high before on a Himalayan giant. All the other teams had been asked not to make a summit attempt at the same time as Rob and Scott’s groups. It was not surprising, however, that Woodall ignored this request, given that with his lack of high altitude climbing experience it made sense for him to follow teams led by two of the most experienced leaders on Everest. It was presumably the same reason that the Taiwanese team, which also lacked Himalayan experience, decided to follow behind Rob and Scott. They all made Camp 3 safely, although guide Andy Harris was hit by a stone just before the teams reached the tents.
Nowadays most teams use oxygen on a slow flow rate at Camp 3 to give their members a better night’s sleep. What is left in the cylinders is used next day on the climb up to the South Col.
There is a misapprehension about using oxygen on mountains. Generally, climbers are described as climbing with or without oxygen. Of course, this is rubbish, everyone climbs with oxygen, as otherwise they would die. More accurately, some climbers use extra, or supplementary, oxygen. The effect on the body depends on the flow rate from the cylinder to the mask, but supplementary oxygen can help the body perform as it would if the climber was some thousand metres lower down the mountain without the supplementary oxygen. The body gets some assistance but the strain of climbing at altitude is only reduced by a relatively small amount.
It was early the following morning, on 9 May, that the Taiwanese climber Chen Yu-Nan had his accident while going to the toilet at Camp 3 where he slipped and fell some twenty metres, landing in a crevasse lower down the face.
The climb that day took the climbers further up the Lhotse Face, past the Yellow Band, and diagonally up and across to Camp 4 at the South Col. There they would rest until almost midnight, when they would start their climb to the summit. There was already some concern, as the climbers left Camp 3, that there were too many of them moving on the route at the same time.
As the leading climbers started to reach the South Col, they could see the Yugoslavian team high on the south-east ridge, attempting to become the first team that year to summit. The Yugoslavs had generally kept to themselves on the mountain. They were a large team, with seemingly endless funding. They regularly used the satellite phone owned by the Danish members of our team. The phone cost $10 per minute to use and it was not uncommon for the Yugoslavs to run up a daily bill of several hundred US dollars.
Their team leader was in his sixties and appeared to be more of an academic than a mountaineer. He had remained at Base Camp until he became seriously ill and had to be evacuated to a hospital in Kathmandu. It was never clear, after his departure, who had taken over from him as leader of the expedition.
The Yugoslavs were, without a doubt, a hard and tough bunch, and despite strong winds high on the mountain they did well that day to get as high as they did, but eventually they admitted defeat and started to descend. They did not reach the South Col until about 11 p.m. that night, having descended for much of the day in foul weather.
Down on the Lhotse Face the first death of the season had already occurred. Chen Yu-Nan’s condition had deteriorated and he died shortly afterwards. His partner, Makalu Gau, was by this time in his wind-blown tent at the South Col. On hearing the shocking news about Chen’s death, which was radioed to him by IMAX team leader David Breashears, Makalu concluded that his summit attempt was now over – a decision which he later changed, almost costing him his life.
The weather on the South Col was bleak. The wind was blowing hard and conditions worsened as the day progressed. It is tough to imagine what it was like higher up, as the Yugoslavs made their way down after failing in their bid to reach the top.
It is surprising, given the worsening weather conditions, that there were no major problems with any of the teams that day as they made their way to the South Col. The South African team in particular became split up and arrived at the col much later than the others.
The weather was fickle that night. If the storm had continued, it is likely that everyone would have retreated down the mountain the following day to safety. However, at about 7 p.m. the weather suddenly cleared and a window of opportunity appeared. Rob and Scott then made the ultimately fateful decision to go for the summit that night. If only the wind had kept blowing for a little bit longer, things may have turned out differently.
Just before midnight, most teams, including the remaining Taiwanese climber Makalu Gau, who had by then decided, despite the death of his climbing partner, to attempt to reach the summit, assembled outside their tents to start the final push to the top. Fortunately, the South Africans had such a hard time just getting to the South Col that they decided not to try to get to the summit, one of the few things that went right that night. The weather was fairly clear and calm, but it didn’t take long before some climbers started to have doubts and returned to the South Col.
One of Rob Hall’s team members, Doug Hansen, who had been high on Everest the previous year, also wanted to turn around, but Rob Hall had a discussion with him and Doug kept going.
As the climbers ascended they inevitably began to spread out. Those at the front had to regularly stop to allow those at the back to catch up. This does seem to have been an odd tactic, given the fact that there were six guides between the two main groups. Some of the stops were as long as ninety minutes and this appears to have caused a degree of frustration amongst the fitter, faster climbers.
Guiding large commercial groups at altitude was still in its relative infancy in 1996. There were two options open to the teams on the mountain that day. One was to use the guides to ‘herd’ their clients up to the summit, and the other was to allocate guides to smaller groups of similarly fit climbers, who could have then moved at their own speed. The leaders decided on the herding option.
If the fitter climbers had been able to move at their own speed that day there would probably have been a process of natural selection. The front runners could have summited early, within an acceptable time frame, and it would have become obvious that those who were at the back of the line were not going to get safely to the top and back. What, in fact, happened was that the climbers, particularly in Rob Hall’s team, were forced to stay together, which held back the faster climbers. Everyone was now moving at a slow, dangerous pace. It inevitably meant there would be bunching at the choke points.
Dawn came at 5.30 a.m. as some climbers waited for ninety minutes at a feature called the Balcony for the slower climbers to catch up. Inevitably, the control and the resultant slow pace caused clients, guides and Sherpas to become increasingly frustrated. A further problem was caused by the lack of fixed rope. It is unclear what the plan actually was that day for the fixing of rope, but whatever it was, it wasn’t working, and further hold-ups occurred as new plans were debated.
The Spanish pair and Göran Kropp had been high, but they had not used any fixed ropes. The only other team who had been high enough that year to fix ropes had been the Yugoslavs, but they had over-fixed the route closer to the South Col and there were still long sections higher up which had not been fixed, because the Yugoslavs had run out of rope.
By late morning, some of the clients had worked out that they would not reach the summit within the safe time frame that had been discussed lower on the mountain. Sensibly, three of Rob’s team, Stuart Hutchison, John Taske and Lou Kasischke, turned round and, accompanied by two Sherpas, returned to the South Col.
Oddly that day there were guides and Sherpas who were not using supplementary oxygen. These two types of professional climbers were being employed to take clients to the summit and were not there for their own benefit, but for the benefit of those who had paid, in this case, large sums of money to use their services. They should have taken all precautions to make sure that they could perform as well as possible, as would be expected by the clients, particularly, if things went wrong. Climbing without supplementary oxygen meant that there was a limited amount of time that they could spend above the South Col and, given the speed that the groups were moving at, for those without supplementary oxygen, time was quickly running out.
In 1996 it was normal practice to use three cylinders of oxygen on a summit attempt from the South Col – an arrangement which provided a sensible safety margin. Client climbers carry two cylinders, and their third cylinder is carried by their Sherpas and cached at the South Summit. Including their own oxygen cylinders, the Sherpas carry four and the clients carry two. The first cylinder carried by the climber lasts as far as the South Summit, the second lasts from there to the summit and back, and the third cylinder, the one carried by the Sherpas and cached at the South Summit, should enable the climber to make it safely back to the South Col. However, at the speed the climbers were moving, the safety margin provided by using three cylinders was fast disappearing.
The first climbers reached the summit at about 1 p.m., and shortly after the early signs appeared that the weather was deteriorating. The remaining climbers who reached the summit that day arrived over the next three hours. The early arrivals now started to make their way back down, but the initial problem facing them was the bottleneck caused by the main group, still climbing upwards.
Oxygen was fast running out and any safety margins were fast disappearing. Irrespective of the deteriorating weather, there was already a high probability, given how late it already was, that something was going to go horribly wrong.
The weather itself was also having an impact – as the storm moved in the air pressure became lower, which further reduced the amount of oxygen that the climbers were breathing in from the outside air. Provided their oxygen systems were still working, they were getting the same whiff of oxygen from their cylinders, but given they were getting less from outside, the overall effect meant that they were increasingly breathing in less oxygen.
It was from this point on that events high on the mountain became less clear. A phenomenon was occurring on Everest which can be compared to what is so aptly called in the army ‘the fog of war’. Even the apparently fastest and fittest climbers who had reached the summit at the head of the ascending climbers were now starting to have problems, and before some of them arrived back at the South Summit to collect their third cylinders, the oxygen in their second cylinders had started to run out.
Of the two leaders, Rob reached the summit shortly after 2 p.m., where he waited for two hours until Doug Hansen arrived. Scott was obviously ill and unable to lead as he normally did. He was coming up very slowly and arrived at the summit at about 3.40 p.m. There can be little doubt, from the various descriptions, that Scott was suffering from the complaint which he had described to me when I talked to him in the Icefall three days before.
The third senior guide that day, the Russian Anatoli Boukreev, had not used supplementary oxygen and he had already returned on his own to the South Col. In effect, half of the guides, including the two leaders, were now either not in a position to help their clients, or were quickly approaching that state.
By mid-afternoon the weather had taken a definite turn for the worst. It had started to snow heavily and the clouds were now covering the mountain causing a condition known as ‘white-out’. Quite simply, white-out describes the situation where, in thick cloud, wherever you look everything appears white. It is impossible to know what exists a metre in front of you; it could be anything, including of course on Everest, a sheer drop.
In 1976 I had been climbing a new route in the Canadian Rockies. During the descent off the mountain, the weather deteriorated and my partner and I were caught in a white-out in an area with sheer drops all around us. It was getting cold and dark and without being able to find any shelter we were forced to keep moving. We made large snowballs, which we rolled a few inches in front of us; if one disappeared we changed direction. It had been extremely touch and go and we gradually found our way out of danger. But we had been at relatively low altitude and it was nothing compared to the dangers being faced high on Everest as the afternoon of 10 May 1996 wore on.
Whatever the rights and wrongs, Rob Hall had told one of his climbers, Beck Weathers, to wait at the Balcony until Rob returned from the summit to escort Beck back down to the South Col. Beck remained there for over ten hours, during which time at least three fellow team members, two Sherpas, and one guide passed him on their way back down the mountain before he accompanied one of the Adventure Consultants guides back to Camp 4. Even if Rob had got to the summit and back in a reasonable time, Beck would still have spent some hours sitting and waiting at over 8,000 metres.
It was probably an oversight by Rob that he didn’t ask his three clients and two Sherpas to collect Beck on their way down. But why didn’t Anatoli take Beck down when he had returned earlier from the summit? He may not have been in the same team, but he was a guide who knew that it would be some time before Rob returned to escort Beck to safety.
The weather continued to deteriorate and by early evening a fully developed storm was hitting the mountain. The majority of climbers were still high on the mountain, still hours from the safety of the South Col.
Those below at Camp 2 and Base Camp, who had been monitoring the progress of Rob and Scott’s teams, were by now starting to become alarmed. It was, however, difficult for the watchers to gain an accurate picture of events on the mountain, a problem that would get worse as the night progressed. Communications were breaking down as radios started to malfunction and batteries ran out. Another ‘fog of war’ factor.
From below at Camp 2, the weather on the south-east ridge looked horrific and it was easy to imagine what was happening to anyone who was stuck in such ferocious conditions. Modern climbing clothes can only give a certain amount of protection and, from what we could see from the Western Cwm, taking into account the ferocity of the weather and the position of the climbers who were still high on the mountain, the design limitations of their clothing was going to be severely tested.
The conditions were so bad that when the survivors reached the South Col they were still not out of danger. In the near zero visibility, it was becoming extremely difficult to find the tents. The South Col measures about 400 by 200 metres. It is a flat, virtually featureless area, which even in normal conditions is subject to high winds being forced through the gap in which the col sits, between Everest on one side, and the world’s fourth highest mountain, Lhotse, on the other. Some climbers, after arriving at the col, spent over four hours searching for their tents in the fierce conditions.
During the day, while the teams were moving up to the summit, several other climbers arrived at the South Col. These teams had intended to climb to the summit one day after Rob and Scott’s teams and hoped to benefit from the tracks through the deep snow which the two teams would have carved.
As well as the South Africans and the lone French climber Thierry Renard, members of Henry Todd’s Himalayan Guides commercial expedition had arrived, although Henry had remained at Camp 2. Conditions were so bad on the South Col that it was a battle for survival for everyone, inside and outside the tents.
On the other side of the mountain, conditions were just as bad. During the pre-monsoon season from the end of March into May, and the post monsoon season from August to October, teams attempt to climb Everest from both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides of the mountain. Permits for the Chinese side were cheaper at the time, and cost $3,000 per team with no limit on the number of climbers who could be put on the permit. An increasing number of climbers are attracted to the lower costs of climbing on the Tibetan side, even though the success rate is traditionally higher on the Nepalese side of the mountain.
Late in the afternoon of 10 May, three Indian climbers had reached, from the northern side of the mountain, what they thought was the summit. They were actually still a significant distance from the top, but they were unaware of this. The news of their apparent success was relayed from their Base Camp to Delhi. The three climbers never made it back to their top camp.
Just after 1.30 p.m. on 11 May, three Japanese climbers left their top camp to climb to the summit. Given the weather conditions prevailing at the time, this would appear to have been a suicidal attempt to reach the top of the world. Certainly on the Nepalese side the storm was raging with all its fury. Perhaps conditions were not quite so bad on the northern side, but in relative terms the weather must still have been extreme.
What happened during the Japanese climbers’ summit push is not absolutely clear and it has been the subject of a great deal of subsequent debate. The most accusatory view suggests that the Japanese passed by the Indians, who were still alive, without offering any help whatsoever, even though at least one of the Indians was lying frozen in the snow begging for assistance.
Amazingly, the Japanese climbers reached the summit despite the horrendous weather conditions. On their return, they again encountered the Indians, who were dead by this stage.
Back in the raging storm on the Nepalese side of Everest there were attempts by some climbers on the South Col that night to go out into the teeth of the storm to search for those who were still missing, or to make noises which hopefully would lead the missing climbers to the relative safety of the tents. Most notable among those who left their tents that night were the guide Anatoli Boukreev, to whom several climbers owe their lives, and the Canadian doctor Stuart Hutchison.
I had got to know Stuart on the walk in. He was an extremely intelligent and capable man for whom I have the greatest respect. Next day he was to become a vital link between the rescuers below and the South Col.
The last climbers to get to their tents that night arrived at about 4.30 a.m. on the morning of 11 May. By this time they had been above the South Col for almost thirty hours, they had been without supplementary oxygen for around ten hours and they had been in the teeth of a storm for up to fourteen hours. It is surprising that more climbers did not perish that day.
At 5.30 a.m. on 11 May we were all up and dressed, standing outside our tents gazing up at the storm raging above us. It was clear to us at Camp 2 that something terrible had happened. The priority now was to find out what had happened and to then make plans to make sure that the situation didn’t get any worse.
It was only a short time later that we learned more about the full extent of the disaster. Rob was still just below the summit with Doug Hansen, who, it was thought, had already died, but this was not absolutely clear. Below Rob, a further twenty-one climbers were unaccounted for. Shortly afterwards we heard that several climbers had made it back to the South Col, but some were in a critical condition. At least three climbers were missing and, we were told, another two bodies had been found.
The situation continued to remain far from clear. Those left at Base Camp were mainly volunteers who had come to Everest not to climb but to help with administration and logistics, and they were not experienced in dealing with disaster situations. To compound the problem, they had worked under enormous pressure throughout the night and by the next morning some were close to breaking point.
Camp 2 that day was fortunately well stocked with experience. There were many professional, semi-professional and very experienced amateur climbers assembled there ready to make their summit attempts. Above were the two teams on the mountain with a large number of commercial clients, the remaining Taiwanese climber, the inexperienced South African team and members of Henry Todd’s expedition who had reached the South Col the day before, although Henry himself was still with us at Camp 2. The one thing we did have was the right people in the right place to facilitate any rescue.
The weak link was at Base Camp. It was thought that we had no one there who could give the necessary support and co-ordination which was going to be needed. An informal rescue committee was formed which included David Breashears, Mal Duff and Henry Todd, and I was asked to go down to Base Camp to co-ordinate the support that was required. I was no more experienced than many at Camp 2 that day, but I did uniquely speak Nepalese which we thought would be an important asset.
I quickly packed, but far from being buoyant and excited, as I had been the day before, I now felt depressed and mentally exhausted. I knew that by going down so quickly after I had returned from my recuperative period at Base Camp, my ambitions to climb Everest in 1996 were finished. This didn’t seem to bother me in the slightest, when saving further lives was the common mission of all of us on Everest that morning, but it had a sub-conscious effect and I felt very tired.
Mal sent me a Sherpa to help me carry my gear off the mountain, and we set off to get to Base Camp as quickly as possible. Looking back up, the weather above seemed clearer but the wind still howled across the mountain.
I have rarely felt so tired as I did descending Everest that morning. Despite knowing how important it was for me to get to Base Camp as quickly as possible, I found myself having to take frequent rests. These stops seemed to have no effect and I had to force myself onwards. Most worryingly I started to vomit, which alarmed the Sherpa who was accompanying me.
The Western Cwm passed and at last I was prevented by the western shoulder of Everest from looking back up at the South Col. I descended through the Icefall, my mind really unaware of the passing features. All I could think about was getting as far as I could before I had to collapse again and vomit in the snow. It took me twice as long to return downhill to Base Camp as it had to make the uphill journey the day before.
At last I stumbled into Base Camp. Gone was the sense of excitement which had pervaded the atmosphere only a short time before. It had been replaced everywhere by a deep gloom. It was difficult to imagine how on earth I was going to become dynamic enough to turn this sense of complete depression into an organisation that was going to be able to provide the support which I knew was desperately needed by those above.
The one light in the gloom was the arrival of Guy Cotter, a New Zealand mountain guide and employee of Adventure Consultants who had been leading a team on neighbouring Pumori. Guy knew the details of Rob’s summit attempt, which he had regularly monitored by tuning in to Rob’s radio frequency to follow his friend’s progress on the mountain. When Guy heard that things were going wrong he rushed from Pumori to Everest to give whatever assistance he could.
The one thing that I have learned from my years in the army, and particularly from my time working in war-torn Yugoslavia, is that things will only get more complicated if you try and sort a bad situation out with a fogged mind. I was feeling exhausted and ill and if I was going to do the job I had been sent down to do, then rest was vital. In any case the situation on the mountain was still very confused and it was not going to be possible to organise the appropriate support until the situation we faced became clearer. I talked briefly to Guy and the head Nepalese liaison officer, and I scheduled a meeting at which I wanted all liaison officers and a representative from all of the teams on the mountain to attend.
I then went to my tent and attempted to close my eyes for two hours.