A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (48 page)

His answer: ‘I think David Breashears would be the best person to answer that.’

Other teams holding a forecast does not make them responsible for the deaths and injuries that occurred on Everest over the period of 10–11 May 1996. Rob and Scott held the same information and were responsible for themselves, their guides, Sherpas and clients. However, the forecasts coming into Base Camp were selectively used by certain teams, and therein lay the danger. Anyone who read the forecasts and was aware of an incoming storm had the responsibility to warn all other climbers.

Liesl Clark, a producer for NOVA online, part of the Public Broadcasting Service in the US, accompanied the Imax expedition in 1996 but had returned to the US before the storm hit. At NOVA’s offices in Boston, she assisted in uploading the information they received from Audrey Salkeld and David Breashears at Base Camp.

These reports contained a single reference – the only information I had found in the public domain up to that point – that established David Breashears was discussing the forecasts as early as 5 May. Fortunately for me, the report, once posted on the website and therefore destined for the PBS archives, had become a historical record.

Audrey Salkeld, an eminent historian recognised by many as ‘the authority’ on Everest, an author and journalist, makes no mention of a weather forecast prior to 10 May in any of her numerous pieces connected to the disaster that I’ve read. It only appears in her report of 5 May 1996.

Audrey would write her own book, published by the National Geographic Society, called
Climbing Everest: Tales of Triumph and Tragedy on the World’s Highest Mountain,
in which she dedicates a chapter to the events of 1996. It contained no mention of weather forecasts that I could find.

Audrey was one of the first to notice the storm coming in on the afternoon of 10 May. She writes:

The storm Audrey had witnessed had come from the south, up the Khumbu Glacier. Yet Mike Harrison had told me from the archives that the approaching bad weather had a basically westerly flow. I wondered if the wind was acting in a similar manner to a tide rising over a rocky coastline, where the shape and size of the rocks can deflect the incoming water, and on occasions force it back on itself. I telephoned Mike Harrison to ask if I was right in my assumption.

‘That’s exactly right,’ said Mike. ‘In the upper atmosphere, that would not be the case, but when you get nearer the ground, and especially with the topography of the Himalaya, very strange things can happen. What people witnessed at Base Camp was coming from the west, just it had been forced by the topography of the landscape back up the Khumbu Valley; such occurrences are quite normal.’

I wrote to Audrey and set out, in a similar manner as I had done for David Breashears, the fact I had been in contact with Henrik and the information I had subsequently received from him. I put to her the following questions:

I then went on to ask Audrey why neither of the forecasts were mentioned in her book.

Audrey replied saying she was unable to find her diary for the 1996 expedition due to a recent move but that she would try to work from her memory and the article she had written for the
Alpine Journal
back in 1997.

I looked at Audrey’s article in the
Alpine Journal
of 1997. In this she had written: ‘I was employed to accompany the 1996 Imax filming expedition specifically to produce accurate reports of the expedition progress for the worldwide web, and my reports joined others put out by Nova/WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston, USA.’

I sent Audrey two further questions, the first:

Audrey replied:

The second question:

Audrey’s explanation:

Bob Aran was a name I had not come across before. I managed to track Bob down to his home in Northamptonshire and telephoned him.

I was unsure what information I might glean and nervously waited as the phone rang twice before the receiver was picked up.

‘Hello,’ said the voice at the other end.

‘Could I speak to Bob Aran, please?’ I replied.

‘Speaking,’ came back the quiet but confident answer.

I introduced myself and informed Bob I was researching the events on Everest in 1996, more specifically the Imax team’s weather forecast. I told him I had been made aware that David Breashears had sent him a fax from the Imax team at Base Camp on 13 May of that year and asked if this was correct.

Without any hesitation came Bob’s reply: ‘Yes.’

I have to say I was taken aback at how quickly and positively he had answered my question about a fax he had received 14 years earlier.

I continued: ‘Were you aware the Imax team were receiving weather information before that date?’

Again his reply was immediate: ‘Yes, I was supplying it.’

This I had not been expecting.

For the last five years, I had been unsuccessfully trying to find who had supplied the Imax forecasts. I tried to remain calm, not to let myself get carried away but to maintain the tone of our conversation. In reality, I wanted throw my hands in the air and shout, ‘YES!’, as loud as I could. I kept my composure.

‘Was the supply of these forecasts arranged with the Imax team before they left for Nepal?’ was the next logical question I could think of asking Bob while I quickly gathered my thoughts.

‘Oh, quite some time before,’ replied Bob. ‘We had to make sure the model worked.’

In meteorological terms, a model is formed by feeding a wide range of climatic data into a computer and it is from this that the meteorologist will produce the specific forecast. The information that is fed in comes from satellites, aircraft, weather stations, other meteorological offices and many other sources. To ensure the model is effective and will produce a forecast that is accurate to an acceptable level it must be tested and retested against the weather that actually occurs; only then can it be supplied with a degree of confidence.

It turned out that Bob had been a meteorologist for the Royal Air Force and a business development manager for the UK Met Office. It was from here he had supplied the Imax forecasts.

He had served as a senior scientific officer to the RAF’s Bomber Command and was no stranger to the jet stream and high-altitude forecasts, or those in difficult or mountainous terrain where low-flying air cover is provided to combat troops on the ground. He knew only too well, and took very seriously, the fact that the lives of others depended on him doing his job to the best of his ability. He told me that forecasting for Everest was not dissimilar to a combat zone in a specific geographical location, where the topography of the terrain and how it affected the flow and speed of the wind, variations in air temperature, moisture and cloud cover were all critical in forming predictions for an accurate forecast.

Bob had retired 12 years ago. Because of this, he made it clear to me that any comments he gave were his and not an official response from the Met Office.

Bob’s answers meant, in simple terms, that a forecast on demand from the Met Office for Everest was not available at that time; it had to be prearranged. He confirmed I was correct in saying that in fact a forecast on demand was not available from the Met Office until 1997.

This perhaps explained why he had remembered so well the fax of 13 May, sent to him by David Breashears. I imagine that he must have been very confused to receive such a fax when he was already supplying the forecasts requested in this document.

Bob described how the Met Office had supplied the Imax team with detailed high-altitude forecasts from the very beginning of May 1996. These were five- or six-day forecasts updated each day and contained wind speeds and temperatures at several altitudes along with other specific weather information, exactly what he couldn’t now recall.

This was not the first time Bob had supplied weather forecasts for Everest; he had done so by arrangement on two previous occasions for military-backed expeditions. As he said this, I wondered if one of these might have been for Harry Taylor, who had shared the information with Michael Groom back in 1993.

‘In 1996, myself and my colleagues at the Met Office carried out an autopsy immediately after the accident, on the forecasts we had supplied the Imax team, to see if it had been in any way our fault.’ Bob paused for a moment or two. ‘It was not.’

Both the storm and its build-up had been correctly identified within the forecasts the Met Office had supplied. There was sadness in Bob’s voice as he told me this.

As Bob recounted this poignant episode, my mind drifted to the transcript in the
Washington Post
of the
Frontline
interview with David Breashears on 14 May 2008, about his latest film on the 1996 tragedy,
Storm Over Everest
.

During this interview, David had been asked two unambiguous questions:

Even giving David the benefit of doubt, I had previously struggled to see how these answers fitted with the information I had uncovered. And that was before I had spoken with Bob Aran.

I explained to Bob that the DMI had also been providing a high-altitude forecast to a Danish team at the same time and that I had had the archives in the European Centre re-read by two meteorologists, one of whom was a gentleman by the name of Mike Harrison.

‘I know Mike,’ said Bob. It turned out he also knew Martin Harris.

I confirmed to Bob that Mike and his colleague found the forecasts provided by both the Met Office and the DMI to have been remarkably accurate in both the conditions they predicted and the timing of when these would occur. Although Bob and his fellow meteorologists had found this at the time, I thought he might take some comfort in knowing that the archives backed up what their autopsy had shown.

Bob Aran also confirmed to me that after the disaster of 10 May the Met Office continued to supply the Imax team with updated weather forecasts until they summited Everest in late May 1996. I found this particularly interesting, as
Everest: Mountain Without Mercy
stated Martin Harris had supplied the jet stream information after the disaster, something that Martin had denied doing.

I wrote to Henrik Hansen, Jan Mathorne and Bo Belvedere Christensen and asked, as I had done with Audrey Salkeld and David Breashears, why neither of the forecasts prior to 10 May were mentioned in any of the books, press, articles or films that followed in the years after the disaster of 10 May. None of these three Danes addressed this question or even attempted to, not even Henrik, who had been so helpful throughout. This is probably because they had not been involved in any of the subsequent work and felt unable to answer this difficult question.

Jan did, however, confirm he was aware of the meetings that took place between members of his team and David and Ed from the Imax team, with regard to the DMI/Met Office forecasts, and that Rob and Scott also attended. Jan also told me that as his main role was with the expedition’s communications he did not really participate much in these discussions.