A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (32 page)

The panoramic views from the prayer-flag-strewn high passes of the Tibetan Plateau promised of an adventure to be shared. All five of us held the anticipation of what lay ahead, enthused by our diminutive Tibetan guide, Dorje.

However, when our Chinese driver pulled the four-wheel-drive vehicle up on the outskirts of Base Camp and I got out, my soaring spirit plummeted to earth. The reality of actually standing at Base Camp and staring up at the North Face of Everest rising nearly 12,000 feet from the Rongbuk Glacier brought memories rushing back.

It was from this very spot, a full year before the 1996 disaster, that we’d listened to the radio calls of Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants as they turned around from their attempt.

Of the eight climbers from our team who’d summited from the Tibetan side in 1995, three were now dead, amongst them Anatoli Boukreev and Michael Jörgensen. The third was the talented Brazilian, Mozart Catao, who had been killed in 1998 by an avalanche while attempting the notorious South Face of Aconcagua.

The laughter and camaraderie from our 1995 expedition seemed like only yesterday, but nine years had slipped by since I’d last seen the north side of the mountain.

By the time mid-April came around, Catherine and I had returned to Nepal and were trekking in the Solu Khumbu, following the rugged mountain path that shadows the course of the Dudh Kosi river, its turbulent waters, swollen by the spring thaw, cascading far below through the steep mountain landscape. Towering above us, jagged Himalayan peaks displayed spectacular fluted ribs of snow sculpted by a winter wind. Their seemingly fragile summits contrasted against a cerulean sky. Alpine forests began to give way to the hardy rhododendron, whose woody stems shaded the last remnants of the rapidly melting snow, their heavy, flower-laden buds hailing the arrival of a new season. We were on our way to Everest Base Camp on the south side of the mountain, where we’d arranged to visit some old friends who were climbing again that year.

Our arrival there brought smiles from the Sherpas, many of whom I’d climbed with before. Not least from the Sirdar, Kami Nuhru, who, having known me for almost a decade, had eventually reached the juncture where he felt comfortable calling me Graham rather than ‘sir’.

The quarry-like surroundings of Base Camp, along with its amphitheatre of Himalayan giants, felt worryingly like home to me, as though a cradle of security amongst the hidden and often silent dangers of this most dramatic of landscapes. Catherine, although in awe of the beauty, would have quite happily skipped the two nights we spent here. Her tolerance to the plummeting night-time temperatures was somewhat less than mine.

It was while we were here that I couldn’t help but notice a large film crew attached to one of the other expeditions. They were working a short distance away. Initially curious at the level of their activity, I sat outside our mess tent with a coffee and observed them. What raised the level of my interest was the number of people they had organising, or attending to, any particular sequence. This in itself was quite unusual. Eventually I enquired with our hosts as to the purpose of this shoot. I was informed that these people were filming sequences for a Hollywood-type movie about the Everest disaster of 1996, based on previous accounts. The budget was reputedly in excess of $100 million. Whether this was correct I didn’t know, but with the explanation I’d been given, it did not seem unreasonable. My heart sank at the continued exploitation of this tragedy. It may have been that those who’d already made considerable sums of money as a result of the catastrophe were once again involved. If they were, I really didn’t want to know at that time.

I would later discover that David Breashears was taking part in the filming. Also present from the 1996 Imax team were Ed Viesturs and Robert Schauer. Joining them was Veikka Gustaffson, who had been on Mal Duff’s expedition in 1996. The expedition, under David’s leadership, went under the name of 2004 WT Everest Expedition. Working Title Films are part of Universal Films. Under the direction of Stephen Daldry, it was planned that the film
Everest
would chronicle the tragic events of 10 May 1996, when a brutal storm on the world’s highest mountain claimed the lives of eight mountaineers.

For more than seven years, I’d gone out of my way to avoid the aftermath. Despite this, I appeared to have turned up in the right place at the right time to witness an event that once again connected me to that tragic time. These were reminders that seemed to be moving beyond coincidence, as if my mind was trying to rouse me from my state of denial. My avoidance was edging towards anger. Inside, I sensed a growing unrest. The confusion couldn’t continue. I had to know the truth as to what had brought such a terrible outcome all those years ago. I needed to come to terms with the guilt that gnawed away inside.

By May, Catherine and I had moved into northern India, to a place in a bygone era that had been considered one of the most desirable and romantic postings in the colonial British Empire – the far-flung hill station and tea plantations of Darjeeling. Here, we booked into the Tibetan-owned Bellevue Hotel. In the reception lounge, black and white photographs hung proudly on the wall. They were of the Dalai Lama and his entourage during His Holiness’s flight from Tibet in 1959. Noticing our interest in these historical images, the elderly owner seized his opportunity.

‘That’s me,’ he said as he pointed to a figure wearing dark horn-rimmed glasses, dressed in a long felt coat with what looked like a Smith & Wesson revolver tucked under his belt.

Looking back at the gentleman, I replied, ‘I can tell it’s you.’

His face was unmistakable, even from an image taken so many years ago. As was his justifiable pride in the part he’d played. There was no doubt in our minds their escape from Lhasa and the subsequent journey out of Tibet had been a perilous undertaking.

The history that surrounded Darjeeling was undeniable, similarly its connection to Everest. Tenzing Norgay, who made the first ascent of Everest with the late Sir Edmund Hillary, had spent much of his life here, becoming director of field training for the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute based in the town. However, Darjeeling’s link to Everest went back much further. The early reconnaissance expeditions of 1921 and 1922 passed through here, as did the ill-fated 1924 expedition. Old black and white photographs of the latter endeavour still hang on the wall of the snooker room in the Planters Club: the place to be seen, the very heart of Darjeeling society in its day. Amongst these images was the unmistakable figure of Bentley Beetham, the schoolmaster from Barnard Castle School, a member of the 1924 expedition whose photographs of the very same are held by the charitable trust of which I am now the chairman. I was no longer an outsider to this continuity. I had, like so many others before me, become part of it.

Immediately outside the Bellevue Hotel lies the Chowrasta: a large rectangular crossroads, a public space similar to a town square. Here, brass bands played, social events took place and horses could be hired – an ideal place to promenade. Two sides of this area are lined by small businesses. Amongst these stands an attractive two-storey colonial-style wooden building, painted in bottle green, the ground floor of which contains a sizeable bookshop, the Oxford Book and Stationery Co.

During an evening stroll, Catherine and I entered this particular emporium, not with any intention of making a purchase but more out of curiosity and to wile away the time. Inside the sparsely decorated shop lay thousands of publications displayed in large shallow trays placed on tables that ran the length of the establishment.

While browsing through one of the many containers, I came across a second-hand copy of Jon Krakauer’s
Into Thin Air
. Catherine, standing a few feet away, noticed which book had caught my attention.

‘I think it’s about time you read that,’ she said.

The filming we’d witnessed at Base Camp had made me pick up Krakauer’s book. Catherine’s encouragement helped me overcome the last hurdle: the decision to finally read it.

The following day, I settled down into one of the many old armchairs in the Bellevue’s lounge, with its row of large windows overlooking the Chowrasta. Wafting through the air across this public square were pre-recorded chants of Tibetan prayer emanating from speakers strategically placed around its perimeter.

The celebration of Buddha’s birthday, which lasts for a week or more, had been well under way before our arrival here. Beginning at first light, the music woke Catherine and me from our slumber each morning. As the sun’s rays rapidly warmed our wood-panelled room, it massaged us from our dreams with a luxurious sense of calm.

Now these soothing recitals brought reassurance as I opened
Into Thin Air
for the first time. Slumping back into the chair, my surroundings gradually faded as I entered the realms of my past.

As I bared myself to what had gone before, I knew I would stir up feelings of sadness and bitter regret, that the deeper I delved, the stronger these emotions would become. And this was the case. They brought with them the disturbingly clear images I had in my subconscious, as though I was back on the South Col that deadly night. Although I was now witnessing these events in my mind, the outcome had to remain the same; nothing could be changed.

I had hardly opened the book when one particular sentence from the introduction sent my thoughts spinning: ‘Among my five teammates who reached the top, four, including Hall, perished in a rogue storm that blew in without warning while we were still high on the peak.’

The weather had not been settled for at least two days prior to their attempt; in fact, it had been deteriorating, as indicated by the two radio calls we had made to Henry. Surely this was a warning that a storm might be coming, the one that had caught them high on the mountain? Confused by his opening statement, I pressed on. With the turn of each page, I looked carefully for any mention of a weather forecast. I was searching for some kind of verification of the quote I had seen some years ago: ‘
We went on the 10th of May because we knew the weather was going to go bad the next day.
’ This statement had been made by a member of Rob Hall’s expedition, the one Jon Krakauer was part of, so I wondered if he had been aware of it. Page after page there was nothing. In fact, it surprised me how little the weather was mentioned, except when the storm hit. I do not mean weather forecasts specifically but the weather in general.

His book moved its focus onto others, most notably Anatoli, who seemed to come in for quite severe criticism, first for not using oxygen while guiding and then for descending back down to the South Col ahead of the clients.

Rob and Scott were also put under the spotlight for not enforcing a turnaround time to make sure their clients had sufficient daylight to return safely to Camp 4 on the South Col before dark.

However, I was very surprised, and I have to say disappointed, that Jon’s book did not seem to question what they were doing up there in the first place. Instead, he went on to say: ‘In fact, the gale of May 10, though violent, was nothing extraordinary; it was a fairly typical Everest squall.’ Surely they had seen the same deteriorating weather conditions as we had?

Each time I put the book down to partake in the exploration of our colonial surroundings, I sensed a compulsion to continue the read. Deep down I was looking for answers, ones that in the end never came. The book left me disappointed, as though in limbo. More puzzling questions had been raised; of answers there were none.

I returned home to the UK after our trip to Asia in 2004 with a sense of purpose. Now, more than ever before, I needed to understand what had led to the tragic outcome on 10 May 1996.

In 1996, I had returned home, like so many others, mourning the tragic loss of fellow climbers in the belief that fate alone had taken these lives. The only link, the only clues, to suggest that this might not be the case were the two quotes I had read: ‘We went on the 10th of May because we knew the weather was going to go bad the next day’ and ‘. . . computer models were forecasting 100 to 120 km/hour winds to arrive at the weekend, leaving an adequate weather window for a round trip to Everest’s high point on Friday the 10th.’ These two lines of print would become my driving force.

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent, after a thorough search of our home, that the original magazine containing the first of these two quotes had inadvertently been thrown out back in 1998, at the time we’d moved to our current apartment. The article that stated ‘computer models were forecasting 100 to 120 km/hour winds to arrive at the weekend’ I had readily to hand. But this was only half of what I thought I needed. Missing the first, I had nothing to confirm that Rob Hall and Scott Fischer knew what weather had been predicted.

If I’d been able to take a long run-up, I would have kicked myself. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a stupid mistake. However, I knew the missing quote had appeared in either a UK climbing magazine or UK outdoor trade publication. So began the arduous task of collecting all the copies of every title I was able to identify. In case I’d got my timing slightly out, and to make sure the net was being cast wide enough, I gathered all the ones I could from between June 1996 and the summer of 1999. Unfortunately, the publication I was looking for was printed during the early days of the Internet. Whereas nowadays a simple phrase search might well have pulled it up, as many are now published or stored online, around 1997 this was not the case.

My initial hope that my quest would only take a few weeks to complete was short-lived, as were my expectations that I might find other references to these two guided teams receiving weather information in the spring of 1996. I couldn’t find a single thing to substantiate the two quotes anywhere. This in itself fuelled the intensity of my search and yet at the same time perplexed me. At the time, the world’s press had been crawling all over the horrifying story of Everest’s worst disaster. Why had this vanished off the radar?