A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (44 page)

To summarise:

ECMWF Analysis
is the best estimate of the actual weather observed around the globe every six hours. This is what actually happened.

In this, the development of a jet over a rapidly deepening depression over southern Russia and northern India was clear. Winds in the Everest region steadily increased from 8 May onwards, reaching a maximum intensity on 11 May. On 12 May, the wind speeds reduced quite quickly.

ECMWF Forecasts:
these covered a ten-day period; the ones for 3, 5 and 7 May were looked at. These were consistent in predicting a steady increase in the wind from 8 May onwards. All indicated the strength of the winds on 11 May quite clearly.

Met Office Forecasts:
these covered a six-day period; the ones for 5 and 7 May were looked at. In both, the storm on 11 May was apparent.

The quote I had been searching for all this time was: ‘We went on the 10th of May because we knew the weather was going to go bad the next day.’ There was no inconsistency between the forecasts and what actually happened. They’d been remarkably accurate. The problem lay not in the forecasts but with those who’d received them.

As far as I can ascertain, this was the first time these teams had received forecasts for Mount Everest. Their lack of expertise in the interpretation of these forecasts in the wider context was apparent.

The weather is a three-dimensional continual system that cannot be divided up into exact twenty-four-hour periods. But the evidence suggested that this was something Rob and Scott had attempted to do, while interpreting differently to others the unsettled weather they could see around them.

As I tried to imagine why they would still want to pursue their attempt after seeing such forecasts, this new information suggested that Rob and Scott had taken their clients to the summit of Everest knowing a Himalayan storm was due. I’m amazed they didn’t revise their plans. The weather was generally unsettled and somewhat harsh at times. They appeared to have used the forecasts to say on what day the storm was not predicted to hit Everest, rather than correctly utilising the information they contained: that of steadily worsening conditions over the three days following 8 May.

A leading risk specialist I spoke to told me it was wrong to say that the information (forecasts) had been ignored by Rob and Scott. From a risk perspective, they chose to interpret them differently to others, probably convincing themselves that with their guides, Sherpa support and previous experience they would be able to manage. Nevertheless, surely it was important data? Considering the credence it was being given by the Danish team, and judging from Henrik’s answer also by the Imax team, as he had told me:
‘We did receive and compare the forecasts throughout May and did not find the 10th good,
’ this should have been heeded by Rob and Scott and shared by them with other teams, especially ours, which was to be the only team attempting the summit on 11 May.

Meteorologists had supplied the forecasts based on data from many sources. Their predictions weren’t supposed to be used in such a manner. By doing just that, Rob and Scott had put their paying clients in significant and unnecessary danger.

I do not believe Rob and Scott had meant us any harm by asking our team to drop back one day and make our attempt on the 11th. They just wanted us out of the way to allow their teams a clear shot at the summit. Once they were aware of the predicted storm, my guess is they probably thought we’d get to the South Col, the weather would turn bad at some point, and we’d be forced to retreat and try again another day. However, we could have gone ahead on 11 May and the storm could have come in underneath us, trapping our climbers near the summit of Everest at 29,000 feet, with wind speeds of 80 miles an hour and blizzard conditions. Rob and Scott had no way of knowing what would happen. They had gambled with our lives and those of their clients.

The evening I presented Geoff with Mike’s report based on the material held in the ECWMF archives was one of the few times I’d seen him lost for words. He knew the implications of what he’d read, the importance of the information it contained. However, we understood each other and he didn’t need to justify his apparent lack of reaction. The 40 years of being a professional lawyer dictated that he needed, once more, to see all the information I’d gathered, the emails I’d received, to read the previously published accounts again, to ponder the smallest detail before finally drawing his own conclusion.

It was on 10 April 2008 that a message appeared in my email inbox from Neil Laughton. He was organising an Everest reunion for those whose company he had enjoyed while on his trips to the region. This was to be extended to other ‘good eggs’, as he put it, who had climbed, trekked, painted or flown over the great mountain. The event was to take place in Surrey, at the Artists Rifles Club, Bisley Camp. Catherine and myself were amongst those invited.

At 6 a.m. on 14 June, Catherine and I departed from the north-east of England for the 300-mile drive south to Bisley Camp, each of us behind the wheel of a vehicle stuffed to the gunnels with goods and possessions for our onward journey to our new home in France. The aged eight-seater people carrier I was driving had recently been bought for this purpose. It had been new when I’d climbed Everest with Anatoli and Nikolai some 13 years earlier. On top of my vehicle there were two metal rails to which I had strapped a set of triple ladders, decorating steps and two 16-ft sections of a large roof ladder. The family car Catherine was driving contained more homely goods and soft furnishings. Behind her she was towing an enclosed trailer containing mountain bikes, a table tennis table and other outdoor activity equipment for the friends and family who had threatened to visit us, many climbers amongst them. These were the last of our belongings; two previous trips in a large box van and flatbed trailer had already taken the majority across the English Channel.

We had sold our property in Tynemouth and the commercial building we owned in North Shields. After concluding that my climbs to extreme altitude in the Himalaya were probably over, I had wanted a new adventure.

For Catherine and me, life had slipped into routine. With my ongoing research there was little in the way of excitement to share, except for our occasional travels abroad. Our daughters had left home long ago, and we were now doting grandparents. Although our four-year-old granddaughter, Sophia, brought us great pleasure, we needed a new passion in our lives. This we had found. It had come in the form of an oak-framed French manor house dating from the mid-1400s that needed some restoration. Although in remarkably sound condition, it was a ludicrous property to buy given that it held France’s top listing for a historic building. I had dusted off my climbing harness and bought a 160-ft length of quality rope to use while carrying out the repairs. Scaffold towers had been purchased.

Built some 30 years before Henry VIII was born, the property was one that we couldn’t resist. After its construction in 1461, it had been given the title of Château Rouge. This was not because of the green-oak frame that would darken in the years to come, or for the lime-rendered wattle and daub that filled between the framework, but because of the 30,000 hand-crafted red clay tiles, each weighing 3.3 lb, that made up the magnificent overhanging roof. The building sat easily in the French countryside surrounded by oak trees, as it had done for nearly 600 years. It had miraculously survived the widespread destruction of properties owned by the aristocracy in the 1790s, during the French Revolution. This was where our new life was taking us. The fact that neither of us spoke much French posed another small problem we had yet to overcome, especially with the bureaucracy we knew we would have to face. However, in that regard, the fact I had been taught French at school some 40 years ago was on our side, despite my failure in the subsequent exam.

By four o’clock in the afternoon, the heavily laden vehicles that Catherine and I were driving swung through the broad grassy entrance of Bisley Camp. Covering an area of 3,000 acres, the land, owned by the National Rifle Association, National Small-bore Rifle Association and Ministry of Defence, is a conservation area that represents something of an Edwardian timewarp.

After winding our way through the narrow network of tarmac roads that give access to the numerous shooting clubs that occupy these ranges, we pulled up outside the colonial-style Artists Rifles’ Clubhouse. The stack of ladders tied to my roof rack and the trailer behind Catherine’s car looked conspicuously out of place amongst the other vehicles that were already parked.

The Artists Rifles, as a regiment, was raised in 1859 from a group of painters, sculptors, engravers, musicians, architects and actors. It was part of the great Volunteer Corps movement that grew rapidly that year in response to a threat of invasion by the French, under Napoleon III.

The Corps was officially named ‘The 38th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers’. Its first effective Commanding Officers were Henry Wyndham Phillips, the painter, and Fredric Leighton, who later, as Lord Leighton, was president of the Royal Academy. Amongst the other famous names that would pass through this highly decorated regiment were Noel Coward and Sir Barnes Wallis.

On the lawn outside, a croquet match was under way. Amongst the players was Henry. He had recently returned from his latest commercial expedition to Everest. We had not spoken since 2006, prior to my episode with his nephew, Oscar, and the subsequent email I had sent to him at Base Camp. I was unsure of the reception I might receive.

‘Hello, Graham, or should I say,
Bonjour
,’ said Henry, extending his arm to shake my hand.

‘Hi, Henry,’ I replied, as I grasped his outstretched hand.

As Henry then turned to greet Catherine, Neil came across and asked if I wanted to join in.

‘Grab yourself a mallet, we are about to start a new game,’ he said.

This gave me an ideal opportunity to gauge Henry’s current feelings towards me. We had always got on well in the past, and although there had been the odd minor disagreement, these had blown over as quickly as they had arisen. Catherine stood on the sidelines with others, watching the game.

To Catherine and me, it looked as though Henry had made a wise move by saying hello to me as soon as we arrived: it got it out of the way and we were amongst company that both Henry and I knew. However, there was none of Henry’s bullish and exuberant nature towards me that had been an integral part of the past friendship. The reception I received was, in a word, frosty. There was no rudeness on Henry’s behalf, merely a reluctance to engage in conversation.

When the game finished, we retired to the bar for a drink before the food was served. Inside, sofas and comfortable armchairs were arranged around low occasional tables. Satirical cartoons, historical pictures and regimental memorabilia adorned the walls. The medium-sized dark wooden bar with the optics behind and a line of select whiskies and hand-pulled ales had a homely feel. It had an atmosphere that one would expect to find in a village pub, steeped in history, quietly tucked away in the English countryside.

In the last couple of weeks, news had filtered through that a good friend of ours, Iñaki Ochoa, had passed away high on Annapurna in western Nepal on 23 May. He was 40 years old. Reports first posted on the Internet had spread like wildfire across the climbing community.

My lasting memory of Iñaki is that of late April 1999, when the two of us climbed our way up to the South Col. We were attempting to be the first to summit Everest that year. From lower down, other climbers will have seen us as two small dots on the Lhotse Face, as we made our way across the Yellow Band and onward to the Geneva Spur. Iñaki had been with me when I stepped onto the South Col for the first time since my departure from that place on 11 May 1996.

We all knew what had happened to Iñaki could have been the fate of any one of us; he had been unlucky. For this reason, we did not dwell on the subject that summer’s evening.

There were many questions I wanted to ask Henry, resulting from the wealth of information I had uncovered. I had both concrete evidence and confirmation that forecasts had been received into Everest Base Camp prior to 10 May 1996. By pure coincidence, it looked as though one of these had originated from the Met Office’s International Forecasting Unit at Bracknell, situated not more than ten miles down the road from Bisley Camp.

Henry had not been able to help me with information on the matter when we had spoken over lunch in 2005, a time when we had got on well. Neither had he been willing to consider that his old friends Rob Hall and Scott Fischer might have placed our team in danger. I’d clearly infuriated him by sending my email about Oscar. So why would he want to talk to me now? I’d had an outside chance of getting him to open up his thoughts to me before the Oscar incident, now I didn’t have a hope in hell.

As the evening wore on, I thought he might mellow, but he did not; both conversation and myself appeared to be avoided. I would have to continue my research with that avenue remaining closed.

Catherine and I departed from the clubhouse around 11 p.m. in order to catch the early-morning ferry for our onward journey to France. I was sad about the way things had turned out with Henry.

As far as our team’s planning in 1996 was concerned, Henry wanted to be done with summit attempts by mid-May if possible, because he and others were of the opinion that, as the weather warmed, shifts in the Icefall increased. Such a rise in the activity within this unpredictable mass of ice would effectively place our Sherpas, who climbed through time after time carrying supplies and equipment, at greater risk.

Without knowledge of the forecasts, our team independently chose 10 May.

On hearing that we were intending to make our attempt on the same day, Rob, on behalf of himself and Scott, approached Henry to ask if we’d drop back a day and make our summit bid on 11 May; we agreed.