Anatoli Bookreev and G Weston DeWalt.
This might be a long one. Be warned. I have a lot of feelings about Everest.
I will start by saying that I have a friend who consistently and continually reads about Arctic/Antarctic exploration. She is passionate and determined. And unwaveringly interested. I never understood it until a short while ago. I went to see the movie Everest with some friends. It awoke in me a fascination of Everest that had been sleeping in my brain for many years.
I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and a weirdly young age. I don't remember if I was still in Elementary school, or maybe it was Jr High. I signed it out of my school library and did a book report on it. I remember thinking that a lot of the book was boring. I was not interested in all of his history of the mountain. But when he finally got around to the summit and the following disaster, I was riveted. Something about that particular mountain and that particular disaster.
I sort of forgot about it all. When we went to the movie all I could remember of the book was that I had been weirdly into it when I was young, there was a big storm, and a lot of people died. I couldn't remember who lived and who died, so the movie was suspenseful and emotionally draining. I was so hoping Rob Hall and Scott Fischer would live. But alas, you can't change history.
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I am fascinated by those who want climb Everest. I have no desire to be on that mountain. I would love to see it, to go to base camp even, but the idea of being high on that mountain has no appeal to me. I think I am fascinated by it because I am afraid of it. Not like I'm scared of spiders afraid, more like the fear and respect you have for nature, the how small and insignificant am I, kind of fear. If that makes sense.
I spent some time in University learning about the effects altitude have on the body, training at altitude, and I actually took a climbing class where my final project was to research what it would take to successfully summit Everest. It is crazy. Everyone has a different reaction to altitude, and conditions like High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) can strike without warning at any time, regardless of experience or training. And so much of Everest is out of reach of any rescue. There was a great line in the movie where they were talking about the climbers trapped up above the South Col, they said, "They might as well be on the moon."
And then there is the ascending with oxygen vs ascending without oxygen debate. When I learned about VO2 max we talked about this. VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in and use. Your VO2 max is not set at birth, you can train to increase it. However, it is also dependent upon your size, gender, and other genetic conditions. Due to the decrease in the partial pressure of oxygen in the air, by the time you reach 8000 meters you are functioning at a ridiculously low percentage of your original VO2 max. How high your VO2 max was initially sort of determines whether or not you can function at that altitude. The body requires a baseline amount of oxygen to keep brain/living functions going, and if the ridiculously low percentage of your VO2 max does not meet that threshold amount, you will not be able to function without additional oxygen. So for some people it is straight up impossible to summit Everest without oxygen.
Another thing that is fascinating to me is the attitude/personality that says, 'I am willing to die in order to stand on top of this mountain.' Add to that the price tag of joining an expedition, which is the only way most people can climb Everest. That costs at least $65 000 and doesn't include airfare to Nepal. (It is likely much more now, that was the price in 1996). But that means that for most people, it is their one and only shot to make it. The result is this weird state in which people are willing to lose fingers, toes, hands, feet, and ultimately their lives in order to summit.
In 1996, the commercial climbing industry was relatively new. At least on Everest it was. Expedition companies were competing for clients and sponsorship. Some expeditions were guaranteeing a successful summit in order to get clients. This put additional pressure on the guides and expedition leaders and made it even harder to turn climbers around before they reached the summit.
Then add into that the controversy about commercially guiding clients to the top of the world. The idea that if someone is rich enough, they can pay someone to drag them to the top of Everest. This results in an increase of people with limited experience at altitude being brought up to the elevation of 8000 meters where, if they run into trouble, they have little to no ability to help or rescue themselves.
Once you take all of that into account, it seems like a high-altitude disaster was not an unlikely outcome.
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The Climb was Anatoli Bookreev's personal account of the 1996 Mountain Madness expedition up Mt Everest. Anatoli was a mountaineer from Kazakhstan who served as a guide on Scott Fischer's expedition. He had extensive mountaineering experience and had summited Everest twice before the 1996 season, both times without supplemental oxygen.
On summit day, Anatoli was at the front of the pack of climbers. I believe he was one of the first, if not the first, to reach the summit. On his descent, he encountered Scott Fischer still ascending. They talked and Anatoli says they decided Anatoli should descend to camp IV quickly so that he would be able to ascend back up if necessary to aid climbers who would be running out of oxygen after a late summit. After he returned to camp IV, the storm hit. Visibility was gone and he was left, without a radio, to wait for the climber-clients from his expedition to return. Climbers were lost and running out of oxygen all over the South Col, some were still stranding up above the South Summit.
Finally, after hours of waiting, a few of the stranded Mountain Madness clients wandered into camp. Anatoli got them into their tents and then got as much information as he could about the whereabouts of the rest of the group still stranded on the South Col. At the same time he heard word that Scott Fischer was stranded up near the South Summit. He went around to the tents of the sherpas as well as the tents of other expeditions trying to get some one to come and help him attempt a rescue. When everyone refused, he grabbed a bottle of oxygen and went out on his own. He found no one on his first trip and had to come back for better directions. He then made two more trips out to bring back a total of three clients. I think it was something like 5am by that time.
The next day he made an attempt to rescue Scott Fischer. Unfortunately, Scott was dead by the time he reached him and the storm returned and forced him to descend.
Anatoli returned to Everest the next year and buried Scott's body. He also buried the body of Yasuko Namba, a climber from Rob Hall's team who he had been unable to save the night he saved the three stranded clients. On December 6, 1997, Anatoli received the American Alpine Club's David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his "repeated, extraordinary efforts in searching for, then saving, the lives of three exhausted teammates trapped by a storm on the South Col of Mount Everest" and for his "valiant attempt, at great personal risk, in going out into the renewed storm in one last-ditch effort to sae his friend and expedition leader Scott Fischer."
On December 25, 1997, Anatoli was swept away by an avalanche on Annapurna I and never seen again.
It seems a lot like Anatoli is the hero of this story, if it could be said that there is a hero.
However, Boukreev and DeWalt feel that Jon Krakauer depicts him very differently in the article he wrote for Outside and in his book, Into Thin Air. They said that he describes Anatoli as an aloof guide who deserted his clients on the summit and descended because he was cold and not using oxygen.
There is so much controversy and what appears to be quite the feud about it. Krakauer seems, from the postscripts and information included in the epilogue of this book, hellbent on maintaining this idea that Anatoli should not have ascended ahead of the clients. However, DeWalt and Boukreev have stated that this shouldn't be up for debate. Anatoli maintains that Fischer instructed him to go down as he did. But since Scott Fischer died, and no one witnessed their conversation, there is much debate as to whether it actually happened. Anatoli also seems to clearly lay out his experience in climbing without oxygen, his acclimatization program, and the fact that Scott approved him climbing without oxygen.
The thing that confuses me about all of this is that Jon Krakauer wasn't on the Mountain Madness expedition. He was on Rob Hall's expedition. I don't understand his seeming eagerness to comment on the conduct and decisions of a guide who he had relatively no contact with and who was not responsible for him or anyone on his expedition. It could also be pointed out that every client on the Mountain Madness expedition survived. Anatoli went out and saved back every climber from his group. He would have gone back for Namba as well had he had the strength. This would not have been possible had he not descended early, leaving, as DeWalt adds, his clients not alone, but in the hands of another Mountain Madness guide and their expedition leader.
It seems sad that in the aftermath of such a tragic event there is a feud going on about to who to blame. By the time they hit summit day everyone was sleep deprived, food deprived, and oxygen deprived. And this tragedy in particular included most people running out of oxygen. So everybody was in a crazy state where they were essentially intoxicated and trying to function on way too little. Then add a crazy blizzard that removes all visibility and has winds so loud you can't hear anything or anyone. And you end up with everyone having a different idea of what happened and what they remember.
I am in the middle of reading Into Thin Air again. I'm trying not to be upset with Krakauer until I have more facts and know both sides of the story. I am hoping that he came around and let some of it go in later years.
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I am very aware that I am not a mountaineer and therefore am not really entitled to an opinion about who should be climbing Everest. But I think if I did have an opinion, I would subscribe more to the idea that the mountain should only be climbed by those who have the mountaineering and high altitude experience to be able to get themselves up and down unaided and take care of themselves at high altitude. I mean, anyone can get into trouble and need rescuing at high altitude, but it seems like adding in a bunch of inexperienced climbers only increases everyone's risk. When Anatoli returned to Everest in 1997 it was as a climbing consultant for an Indonesian expedition. Three of their clients were military men with no mountaineering experience who were absolutely determined to succeed. Anatoli said this,
" I think of how ready Iwan, Asmujiono, and Misirin were to die. I think how the families I know who have lost here someone they love are dealing with their sorrow. I know that this success will only encourage other inexperienced individuals into the mountains. I wish with all my power there were other opportunities for me to make a living. I am a sportsman, and there are many objectives in the mountains I would the opportunity to achieve. Like any man who has a skill, I would like to explore the limits of my capability. It is too late for me to find another way to finance my personal objectives; yet, it is with great reservation that I work to bring inexperienced men and women into this world. It is harsh for me to say I will not be called a guide, to make a distinction that will absolve me of that terrible choice between another person's ambition and his or her own life. Each person must bear the responsibility to risk his or her life. This distinction between guide and consultant is one I am sure will be mocked by some, yet it is the only protest I can make about the guarantee of success in these mountains. I can be a coach, an adviser, I will act as a rescue agent. I cannot guarantee success or safety for anyone from the crushing complexity of natural circumstance and physical debility that haunts you at high altitude. I accept that I may die in the mountains."
But basically, if you are at all interested in the 1996 Everest season, or you have read and enjoyed Into Thin Air, read The Climb. If nothing else it provides another perspective on the situation. Krakauer's article and book came out very quickly following the disaster and as a result become the widely accepted truth of what happened. In reality this may not be the case. It is his account of what happened, as The Climb is Anatoli's, so I say why not read both and get the fuller picture.
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