Into Thin Air (40 page)

NOVEMBER 29, 1996 • 270 FEET

Charles Bowden

Several people who were on Everest last May have told me they’ve managed to move beyond the tragedy. In mid-November I received a letter from Lou Kasischke in which he wrote,

It took a few months in my case for the positive aspects to begin to develop. But they have. Everest was the worst experience in my life. But that was then. Now is now. I’m focusing on the positive. I learned some important things about life, others, and myself. I feel I now have a clearer perspective on life. I see things today I never saw before.

Lou had just returned from spending a weekend with Beck Weathers in Dallas. Following his helicopter evacuation from the Western Cwm, Beck had his right arm amputated halfway below the elbow. All four fingers and the thumb on his left hand were removed. His nose was amputated and reconstructed with tissue from his ear and forehead. Lou mused that visiting Beck

was both sad and triumphant. It hurts to see Beck like this: rebuilt nose, facial scars, disabled for life, Beck wondering if he can practice medicine again, and the like. But it was also remarkable to see how a man can accept all this and be ready to move on in life. He is conquering this. He will be victorious.

Beck had only nice things to say about everyone. Beck doesn’t play the blame game. You may not have shared political views with Beck, but you would share my pride in seeing how he has handled this. Somehow, someday, this will net out in a positive way for Beck.

I’m heartened that Beck, Lou, and others are apparently able to look at the positive side of the experience—and envious. Perhaps after more time has passed I, too, will be able to recognize some greater good that’s resulted from so much suffering, but right now I can’t.

As I write these words, half a year has passed since I returned from Nepal, and on any given day during those six months, no more than two or three hours have gone by in which Everest hasn’t monopolized my thoughts. Not even in sleep is there respite: imagery from the climb and its aftermath continues to permeate my dreams.

After my article about the expedition was published in the September issue of
Outside
, the magazine received an unusually large volume of mail about the piece. Much of the correspondence offered support and sympathy for those of us who had returned, but there was also an abundance of scathingly critical letters. For example, a lawyer from Florida admonished,

All I can say is that I agree with Mr. Krakauer when he said, “My actions—or failure to act—played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris.” I also agree with him when he says, “[He was] a mere 350 yards [away], lying inside a tent, doing absolutely nothing … ” I don’t know how he can live with himself.

Some of the angriest letters—and by far the most disturbing to read—came from relatives of the deceased. Scott Fischer’s sister, Lisa Fischer-Luckenbach, wrote,

Based on your written word, YOU certainly seem now to have the uncanny ability to know precisely what was going on in the minds and hearts of every individual on the expedition. Now that YOU are home, alive and well, you have judged the judgments of others, analyzed their intentions, behaviors, personalities and motivations. You have commented on what SHOULD have been done by the leaders, the Sherpas, the clients, and have made arrogant accusations of their wrongdoing. All according to Jon Krakauer, who after sensing the doom brewing, scrambled back to his tent for his own safety and survival …

Perhaps catch a glimpse of what you are doing by seeming to KNOW EVERYTHING. You have already been wrong with your SPECULATION of what happened to Andy Harris causing much grief and anguish to his family and friends. And now you have repudiated the character of Lopsang with your “tattle tale” accounts of him.

What I am reading is YOUR OWN ego frantically struggling to make sense out of what happened. No amount of your analyzing, criticizing, judging, or hypothesizing will bring the peace you are looking for. There are no answers. No one is at fault. No one is to blame. Everyone was doing their best at the given time under the given circumstances.

No one intended harm for one another. No one wanted to die.

This latter missive was especially upsetting because I received it soon after learning that the list of victims had grown to include Lopsang Jangbu. In August, after the retreat of the monsoon from the high Himalaya, Lopsang had returned to Everest to guide a Japanese client up the South Col and Southeast Ridge route. On September 25, as they were ascending from Camp Three to Camp Four to launch their summit assault, a slab avalanche engulfed Lopsang, another Sherpa, and a French climber just below the Geneva Spur and swept them down the Lhotse Face to their deaths. Lopsang left behind a young wife and a two-month-old baby in Kathmandu.

There has been other bad news as well. On May 17, after resting for just two days at Base Camp after coming down from Everest, Anatoli Boukreev climbed alone to the summit of Lhotse. “I am tired,” he told me, “but I go for Scott.” Continuing his quest to ascend all fourteen of the world’s 8, 000-meter peaks, in September Boukreev traveled to Tibet and climbed both Cho Oyu and 26, 291-foot Shisha Pangma. But in mid-November, during a visit to his home in Kazakhstan, a bus he was riding in crashed. The driver was killed and Anatoli received severe head injuries, including grave and possibly permanent damage to one of his eyes.

On October 14, 1996, the following message was posted on the Internet as part of a South African discussion forum about Everest:

I am a Sherpa orphan. My father was killed in the Khumbu Icefall while load-ferrying for an expedition in the late sixties. My mother died just below Pheriche when her heart gave out under the weight of the load she was carrying for another expedition in 1970. Three of my siblings died from various causes, my sister and I were sent to foster homes in Europe and the U.S.

I never have gone back to my homeland because I feel it is cursed. My ancestors arrived in the Solo-Khumbu region fleeing from persecution in the lowlands. There they found sanctuary in the shadow of “Sagarmathaji,” “mother goddess of the earth.” In return they were expected to protect that goddesses’ sanctuary from outsiders.

But my people went the other way. They helped outsiders find their way into the sanctuary and violate every limb of her body by standing on top of her, crowing in victory, and dirtying and polluting her bosom. Some of them have had to sacrifice themselves, others escaped through the skin of their teeth, or offered other lives in lieu.…

So I believe that even the Sherpas are to blame for the tragedy of 1996 on “Sagarmatha.” I have no regrets of not going back, for I know the people of the area are doomed, and so are those rich, arrogant outsiders who feel they can conquer the world. Remember the Titanic. Even the unsinkable sank, and what are foolish mortals like Weathers, Pittman, Fischer, Lopsang, Tenzing, Messner, Bonington in the face of the “Mother Goddess.” As such I have vowed never to return home and be part of that sacrilege.

Everest seems to have poisoned many lives. Relationships have foundered. The wife of one of the victims has been hospitalized for depression. When I last spoke to a certain teammate, his life had been thrown into turmoil. He reported that the strain of coping with the expedition’s aftereffects was threatening to wreck his marriage. He couldn’t concentrate at work, he said, and he had received taunts and insults from strangers.

Upon her return to Manhattan, Sandy Pittman found that she’d become a lightning rod for a great deal of public anger over what had happened on Everest.
Vanity Fair
magazine published a withering article about her in its August 1996 issue. A camera crew from the tabloid television program
Hard Copy
ambushed her outside her apartment. The writer Christopher Buckley used Pittman’s high-altitude tribulations as the punchline of a joke on the back page of
The New Yorker
. By autumn, things had gotten so bad that she confessed tearfully to a friend that her son was being ridiculed and ostracized by classmates at his exclusive private school. The blistering intensity of the collective wrath over Everest—and the fact that so much of that wrath was directed at her—took Pittman completely by surprise and left her reeling.

For Neal Beidleman’s part, he helped save the lives of five clients by guiding them down the mountain, yet he remains haunted by a death he was unable to prevent, of a client who wasn’t on his team and thus wasn’t even officially his responsibility.

I chatted with Beidleman after we’d both re-acclimated to our home turf, and he recalled what it felt like to be out on the South Col, huddling with his group in the awful wind, trying desperately to keep everyone alive. “As soon as the sky cleared enough to give us an idea where camp was,” he recounted, “it was like, ‘Hey, this break in the storm may not last long, so let’s
GO
!’ I was screaming at everyone to get moving, but it became clear that some people didn’t have enough strength to walk, or even stand.

“People were crying. I heard someone yell, ‘Don’t let me die here!’ It was obvious that it was now or never. I tried to get Yasuko on her feet. She grabbed my arm, but she was too weak to get up past her knees. I started walking, and dragged her for a step or two, then her grip loosened and she fell away. I had to keep going. Somebody had to make it to the tents and get help or everybody was going to die.”

Beidleman paused. “But I can’t help thinking about Yasuko,” he said when he resumed, his voice hushed. “She was so little. I can still feel her fingers sliding across my biceps, and then letting go. I never even turned to look back.”

My article in
Outside
angered several of the people I wrote about, and hurt the friends and relatives of some Everest victims. I sincerely regret this—I did not set out to harm anyone. My intent in the magazine piece, and to an even greater degree in this book, was to tell what happened on the mountain as accurately and honestly as possible, and to do it in a sensitive, respectful manner. I believe quite strongly that this story needed to be told. Obviously, not everyone feels this way, and I apologize to those who feel wounded by my words.

Additionally, I would like to express my profound condolences to Fiona McPherson, Ron Harris, Mary Harris, David Harris, Jan Arnold, Sarah Arnold, Eddie Hall, Millie Hall, Jaime Hansen, Angie Hansen, Bud Hansen, Tom Hansen, Steve Hansen, Diane Hansen, Karen Marie Rochel, Kenichi Namba, Jean Price, Andy Fischer-Price, Katie Rose Fischer-Price, Gene Fischer, Shirley Fischer, Lisa Fischer-Luckenbach, Rhonda Fischer Salerno, Sue Thompson, and Ngawang Sya Kya Sherpa.

In assembling this book I received invaluable assistance from many people, but Linda Mariam Moore and David S. Roberts deserve special mention. Not only was their expert advice crucial to this volume, but without their support and encouragement I would never have attempted the dubious business of writing for a living, or stuck with it over the years.

On Everest I benefited from the companionship of Caroline Mackenzie, Helen Wilton, Mike Groom, Ang Dorje Sherpa, Lhakpa Chhiri Sherpa, Chhongba Sherpa, Ang Tshering Sherpa, Kami Sherpa, Tenzing Sherpa, Arita Sherpa, Chuldum Sherpa, Ngawang Norbu Sherpa, Pemba Sherpa, Tendi Sherpa, Beck Weathers, Stuart Hutchison, Frank Fischbeck, Lou Kasischke, John Taske, Guy Cotter, Nancy Hutchison, Susan Allen, Anatoli Boukreev, Neal Beidleman, Jane Bromet, Ingrid Hunt, Ngima Kale Sherpa, Sandy Hill Pittman, Charlotte Fox, Tim Madsen, Pete Schoening, Klev Schoening, Lene Gammelgaard, Martin Adams, Dale Kruse, David Breashears, Robert Schauer, Ed Viesturs, Paula Viesturs, Liz Cohen, Araceli Segarra, Sumiyo Tsuzuki, Laura Ziemer, Jim Litch, Peter Athans, Todd Burleson, Scott Darsney, Brent Bishop, Andy de Klerk, Ed February, Cathy O’Dowd, Deshun Deysel, Alexandrine Gaudin, Philip Woodall, Makalu Gau, Ken Kamler, Charles Corfield, Becky Johnston, Jim Williams, Mal Duff, Mike Trueman, Michael Burns, Henrik Jessen Hansen, Veikka Gustafsson, Henry Todd, Mark Pfetzer, Ray Door, Göran Kropp, Dave Hiddleston, Chris Jillet, Dan Mazur, Jonathan Pratt, and Chantal Mauduit.