A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (49 page)

Bo had not responded at all to my initial enquiry, so I sent him a follow-up email, to which I received an unexpected reply:
‘Sorry, Graham – I cannot recall having weather forecasts except those from the Imax team.’

I was confused by his answer, as Henrik had previously told me Bo was the one who had approached the DMI. I went back to Henrik and asked him specifically who amongst the Danes made the original approach/arrangement with the DMI?

Henrik’s reply: ‘Bo made the original contact.’

I wanted to give Bo another opportunity to consider the questions I had asked, so this time I laid out the facts, unambiguously, about the Danish forecast, the DMI confirmation these were supplied in 1996 and his apparent involvement. I received no reply, despite following this up with another email. It could be that Bo’s memories of the events that year have completely faded and he feels unable to answer my questions.

I asked Henrik one final question:
‘When the forecasts were looked at between your Danish climbers and the Imax team, was Audrey Salkeld present?’

Henrik’s answer:
‘Audrey was present at most times.’

This confirmation of Audrey’s attendance at forecast meetings was another inconsistency revealed by my search. Audrey had told me that she was aware of the forecasts but didn’t see any, nor was she briefed on such matters. If it were the case that Audrey Salkeld was present, then it is one of life’s delicious ironies that she should write an article that appeared in a section called ‘High Witness’ of issue 191 of the British Mountaineering Council’s
High
magazine.

In this, Audrey refers to an article written by Steve Weinberg called ‘Why Books Err So Often’ that appeared in the 1998 July/August issue of the
Columbia Journalism Review
. Weinberg, having read
The Climb
, tried unsuccessfully to contact Jon Krakauer. Concerned that certain aspects with regard to the role of Anatoli in Jon’s account could be either ‘exaggerated or plain wrong’, and because he was unable to talk to Jon, Weinberg published his article.

Jon, having been accused of not making sure of all of his facts with regard to Anatoli before going to print with
Into Thin Air
, retaliated, accusing Weinberg and the
Columbia Journalism Review
of the very same poor journalistic practice.

This was reported in an article called ‘Coming Down’, which appeared on 3 August 1998 on www.salon.com under the heading of ‘Wanderlust’.

Quoting from this piece:

The article continues: ‘“I take my reputation as a reporter more seriously than I take my reputation as a writer,” Krakauer says. “I didn’t rely on fact-checkers to catch my errors. I busted my ass to get it right first time.”’

It is to Jon Krakauer’s
Into Thin Air
that I now turn.

Having read through his book carefully, I agree with what many have said: he is a masterful writer. However, that does not necessarily mean that his account is an entirely accurate or correct portrayal of events.

So as to make sure there are no doubts, I am going to write this clearly and unambiguously. Not hidden in some sentence that infers something without quite being conclusive. Jon Krakauer’s book
Into Thin Air
is either poorly researched in certain key areas that relate to the events leading up to and during the tragic events on Everest in May 1996 or he has chosen not to place this material in his account.

From Jon’s introduction to his book:

If five people lay dead – four from your own team – others terribly injured or traumatised as a result of a storm and you were a journalist who was determined to get it right first time, you could a) write that ‘a rogue storm blew in without warning’ or b) obtain a backdated weather forecast to see what happened and where this storm came from.

I wrote to Henrik Hansen and asked him:
‘I understand Jon Krakauer was writing about the expedition while he was in Base Camp for the article he was preparing for Outside magazine. Did Jon speak with you about the weather forecasts for his article?’

Henrik’s reply: ‘No – their group information went through Rob.’

I sent emails to Rob’s surviving clients for whom I could find contact details, of those only one replied – Frank Fischbeck, who currently resides in Hong Kong.

I had written to Frank with the following:

In his reply Frank Fischbeck wrote:

I found it odd that Jon’s teammate knew Rob was receiving forecasts, which were radioed up the mountain from Base Camp and then verbally delivered by Rob to the team, yet Jon, as a reporter on the same team, did not; or did he not think these important enough to include in his account?

From my own experience of several Everest expeditions, such a significant topic as the weather would remain firmly in the conversation and be discussed over and over again. That would be especially so with nerves increasing as they headed up for their summit attempt and with the poor weather they could see around them.

Jon had been sent to Everest that year to write an article for
Outside
magazine. On Scott’s team, Jane Bromet was filing reports back to
Outside Online
under the heading ‘Summit Journal ’96: Scott Fischer’. Although these two businesses are connected, they are based in two different locations in the US – a fact Jon points out in his book. He informs his readers he was unaware of Jane’s role for
Outside Online
until he’d reached Base Camp, and I have no reason to doubt that this was the case. However, I later discovered there were also reports being sent back to
Outside Online
from the Imax Base Camp under the heading of ‘Summit Journal ’96: Ed Viesturs’. I could find no mention of these in Jon’s book. Amongst those filed under this second heading was the report sent back on 5 May 1996 by Paula Viesturs, the Imax Base Camp manager:

The article Jon Krakauer wrote for
Outside
magazine also appeared on
Outside Online
in September 1996, only a matter of a few months after the reports of the ‘Summit Journal ’96: Ed Viesturs’ and that of Scott Fischer had been posted on the same website. As Jon’s book wasn’t published until the following year, 1997, it surprised me that during his extensive research he’d not read these earlier reports from Base Camp.

Scott Fischer’s and Ed Viestur’s journals could be seen on the
Outside Online website
until very recently. They now (October 2010) appear to have been removed from
Outside Online
’s archives, as have links to them from Internet search engines.

It is arguably the biggest story that either
Outside
or
Outside Online
have ever covered. In fact, it was, according to Marty Yudkovitz, president of NBC Interactive Media, the first time a major international news story had broken live on the web. NBC’s own Everest website had more than a million hits in a single day, and the ones who broke the news to the world, live online on the morning of 11 May, while the tragedy was still unfolding –
Outside Online.

I struggled to see why
Outside Online
would remove what was a historical record of the days leading up to Everest’s worst-ever disaster from their archives. I even emailed them (twice) to ask why they had done this, but I received no reply.

Returning to Jon Krakauer’s
Into Thin Air
, the problem I have is that facts critical to understanding what brought about the tragedy are missing. In his book he describes the horrors of the storm well, but prior to 9 May references to meteorological conditions are notable only by their scarcity. Having read
Into Thin Air
carefully, I am surprised at how little the weather is mentioned. His book is so well written, with such content, most would not notice this anomaly.

I was also surprised to read in Krakauer’s account of the difficulties he believed other people had experienced with email and Internet communication during the spring of 1996. Henrik had told me they’d received the weather forecasts from the DMI by email. Yet Jon had said in practice emails had been problematic:

Unfortunately, Jon’s statement here is not an accurate reflection of the overall situation regarding email communication at Base Camp. Jan Mathorne, one of the Danish climbers, was a development engineer for Thrane & Thrane, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of communication equipment that uses the Inmarsat global satellite system. Jan had managed to arrange sponsorship from his employer, which enabled the Danes to take with them the latest equipment in satellite communications. I contacted Thrane & Thrane to clarify the position with regard to emails being received in Everest Base Camp using the equipment the Danes had available to them in 1996. The company confirmed that the terminal they had both sent and received faxes and emails as well as being used as a conventional phone. So as to make sure there had been no mistake on Henrik’s behalf, I double-checked the information he’d already given me.

I asked Henrik the following:

Therefore the direct flow of precise information that could be either sent or received 24 hours a day was not only possible but actually took place. A reasonable portion of this information transfer to and from Base Camp, which included the DMI weather forecasts, was down to Jan Mathorne and Bo Belvedere Christensen. Jon, in the second edition of his book, sets out the teams on the Nepalese side of Everest that year but states that ‘not everyone present on Mt Everest in the spring of 1996 is listed’. Neither Jan Mathorne nor Bo Belvedere Christensen are on the list. Perhaps Jon was not fully aware of the facilities that were available.

Describing events during the night of 10 May, Krakauer, in his 1998/9 version of
Into Thin Air
, wrote on page 222:

From what I’d ascertained it appeared Anatoli had been unaware of our team’s presence on the South Col during the night of the storm. Therefore he would not have been drawn to check our tents, located little more than fifty feet away, on the perimeter of the South Col camp, through a maelstrom that others reported had reduced visibility to little more than three feet as the night progressed.