A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (45 page)

That said, it is inconceivable that Henry would have stuck to our agreement to go on 11 May had he subsequently been made aware that the weather was going to deteriorate badly that day. This agreement was referred to by Paul Deegan in his article that appeared in the British Mountaineering Council’s official journal
High
, August 1996, issue number 165.

Paul wrote:

From the book by Brigitte Muir,
The Wind in My Hair
:

However, it is highly unlikely that Rob and Scott knew, at this point in time, that a storm was expected to hit on 11 May, as they were only receiving five- or six-day forecasts.

The Imax team left Base Camp to move up to Camp 2.

Rob’s and Scott’s teams moved up from Base Camp to Camp 2, where the Imax team were spending a second night. While here, their respective Base Camps will have radioed them with the updated forecasts, both of which now covered up until at least the 11th. These will have showed the wind increasing steadily over the 9th and 10th, and a storm hitting on the 11th.

At this time, either Rob or Scott could have easily radioed their Base Camp and had a message passed to our team, advising us to wait because they had information that suggested an incoming storm. They did not. This may have been because at this point we could have easily rearranged our schedule and moved our summit attempt forward one day, to 10 May. This opportunity would have lain open to us until the afternoon of 7 May.

The Imax team headed up to Camp 3 in readiness for their summit bid on the 9th. Rob and Scott spent a second night in Camp 2.

At Camp 3, David Breashears and Ed Viesturs got up in the morning to see the wind blowing high on the South East Ridge. Their observations supported the information in the forecasts: that the weather was deteriorating. Perhaps it began to happen more quickly than they had hoped. Their instincts told them the weather was not settled enough. They were utilising the forecasts more wisely, by adding into the equation their observations of the weather conditions they could see around them. They decided to head down and wait.

The Imax team coming down passed Rob’s and Scott’s teams, who’d made an early start from Camp 2 to move up to Camp 3. They explained to Rob, Scott and some of their guides that they didn’t like the look of the weather higher up. These were the same conditions that Rob and Scott could see, yet these two leaders chose not to revise their plans and carried on up, appearing to be totally reliant on their interpretation of the forecast, one which suggested to them that the storm would hit on the 11th, after they had summited on the 10th. It seemed to be utilised by them as a method of confirmation for the date they’d chosen. In some blinkered fashion, it reaffirmed their belief in 10 May being a fortuitous day.

The question has to be asked: if Rob and Scott had not held the forecast would they have continued up? Or would they have used the experience they’d gathered over many years and followed the Imax team back down?

While this was happening, our team was climbing up from Base Camp to Camp 2. This positioned us one day behind Rob and Scott for our summit bid on 11 May.

Henry had also moved up to Camp 2, although he was not feeling well and spent much of his time in his tent wrapped up in bed. He’d brought with him a radio to oversee our attempt.

On the morning of 9 May, we left Camp 2 to climb up to Camp 3.

At the same time, Rob’s and Scott’s teams left Camp 3 for the South Col, where they arrived several hours later. During the course of the afternoon, wind speeds at this higher elevation picked up to in excess of 60 mph.

Rob’s and Scott’s teams, along with Makalu Gau and three Sherpas from the Taiwanese team, left the South Col shortly before midnight to begin their summit attempt. There was a lull in the weather.

We delayed our scheduled early departure from Camp 3 until after the midday radio call, to see if the weather improved; it did not. Two hours prior to this, Michael Groom had suggested to Rob that they turn back because of increasing wind speeds, but they continued up. They were at the South Summit, at 28,700 feet.

Some or all of the Danes from Mal Duff’s team had already started to move up to Camp 3 for their summit bid on 12 May. However, on hearing the strength of the winds high up, they quickly decided to abandon any idea of an attempt and descended to Camp 2 to wait for better conditions.

We arrived on the South Col during the early evening – in my case at around 6.30 p.m., much later than was normal. Anatoli, who had arrived back onto the South Col at 5 p.m. from his successful summit attempt, saw one of our Sherpas but no climbers.

The storm that had begun higher up during the course of the afternoon now detonated into full force as it descended onto the South Col: a deadly combination of gale-force winds and blizzard conditions.

Unbeknown to us, Rob Hall, Doug Hansen and Andy Harris were battling to survive near the South Summit, Scott Fischer and Makalu Gau were near collapse 1,200 feet above the South Col, and a group of seven clients, two guides and two Sherpas had formed a huddle little more than 150 yards from our tent after becoming hopelessly lost in the blizzard. There were rescue attempts made through the night, but through a twist of fate none were made by our team.

Michael Groom, who would become part of the huddle, had got his radio to work around mid evening, and Stuart Hutchison answered. It was Stuart who went out into the storm, time and time again, to try to guide them in.

Stuart was sharing a tent with Jon Krakauer that night. Unlike Jon, he’d not summited but had turned around two hours earlier at 11.30 a.m. from 28,000 feet. Rob had told him that the summit was still three hours away, a conservative estimate that put the top well beyond the 1 p.m. cut-off time he’d set in his mind.

In his book
Sheer Will
, Michael describes how, in the early hours of 11 May and close to complete exhaustion, he and a few who could still walk eventually managed to find Camp 4 on the South Col:

This conversation was confirmed by Hutchison, who is quoted as saying about Michael Groom:

Only moments after raising this alarm, Michael found himself outside another of the tents. ‘I yelled for help and Frank [Fischbeck] responded from inside the tent . . . Frank operated with the efficiency of a battlefield medic and pulled me inside the tent. It was at that point I gave up trying.’

Reflecting on these events, Michael wrote:

Anatoli also went out into the storm several times and successfully rescued some of the stricken climbers. He had been alerted as to where survivors lay by Neal Beidleman, who had staggered into camp with Michael Groom. Unfortunately, Anatoli and Stuart did not know of each other’s efforts and so remained uncoordinated.

Our early-morning radio call and the subsequent check around the other tents on the South Col led to confusion as to who, if anyone, was missing. I spoke with Henry on the radio and was asked to bring our youngest team member, Mark Pfetzer and his designated Sherpa, Jabion, down from the South Col. All three of us departed within the hour. Accounts say that the camp on the South Col was devastated and in tatters. This is not true. Unaware of the disaster at the time, I took several photographs before I left. One photograph is of the tents on the South Col, another is of Mark, while the penultimate one captures the South Summit with the wind blasting off it. In the very last frame there is a Himalayan chough rising up over the lip of the Lhotse Face and onto the South Col, like a harbinger of death. Had the camp been devastated, that in itself would have raised the alarm, but outwardly it looked intact.

On our arrival at Camp 2, we were told that everyone had been asked to observe a 24-hour blackout on news getting out, until relatives of those injured or killed had been informed. Families of climbers who had escaped uninjured were also contacted. Catherine received a phone call from Henry’s partner Peta, who was in Edinburgh. She was informed that news would soon be breaking of a huge accident on Everest but that I was safe. Catherine knew before Reuters. Nowadays, I don’t think this would be achievable.

Michael Jörgensen, Neil Laughton and Brigitte Muir from our team had remained on the South Col to ponder their options. Their thoughts were to wait and see if the weather cleared for a possible attempt the next night: not an option that I thought was either safe or wise. Once it became apparent to them that casualties and deaths had occurred, they changed their plans immediately and stayed on the South Col to help in whatever way they could. They descended to Camp 2 the following day: 12 May.

The sequence of events has been reasonably well documented concerning the rescues over the 11th and 12th. Some accounts, however, leave the impression that only one or two teams helped in the overall rescue. This is not the case. Ours, like most others, joined in these efforts, although these appear to have received little mention in certain narratives. We did our part, as did nearly everybody else.

Looking back, the summit days chosen versus forecasted conditions speak for themselves.

Our first summer in France had ended and autumn was upon us. I was working on the manor. I’d thrown myself into the important work that needed to be carried out before the onset of winter; roof repairs had been top of the list.

Perched some fifty feet up, I leant against the hefty chimneystack that rose from the two broad medieval fireplaces far below. Around my waist was the climbing harness that I had worn throughout my Everest years: my protector, a silent witness to events that continued to concern me. Now it secured me via two karabiners and a strap to the rope that I had tied around the base of the brick chimney.

It was late September and the oak trees were beginning to shed their leaves. Red squirrels scurried through branches collecting acorns and hazelnuts to bury for the winter months ahead. From my unrivalled vantage point, deer and hares could be seen breaking cover across open fields cleared by the farmers working around the clock to gather in this year’s crops. A fresh autumn wind was blowing through the air.

Sitting astride the central ridge, my thoughts wandered way beyond my lofty bounds and the distant hills afire with golds and reds to times past. I was reminded of my adolescent escapades when I had sat on top of my parents’ three-storey Edwardian house, coughing my way through a cigarette: a time when advertising companies portrayed images of exhilarating sports and tobacco in the same picture. Now, nearly 40 years later, I was straddling a French manor house. Much had changed in the intervening period of my personal time/distance continuum. The ludicrous risk-taking of my youth had moved to one where I took control of dangers based on previous experience – as indicated by the climbing harness fastened around my waist. My adolescent desire to see how far I could push the edge, and the actions I had undertaken without any thought as to how they might affect others, had long since been curbed. I had come to understand that the combination of how we accept responsibility for our own actions, and the willingness to offer assistance to those to whom we have no real connection, defines who we are.