Mount Everest

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Lore & Background

Numerous climbers were at a high altitude on Everest during the storm including the Adventure Consultants team, led by Rob Hall, and the Mountain Madness team, led by Scott Fischer. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the latter were more widely reported. On the South Col approach, four members of the Adventure Consultants expedition died, including Hall, while Fischer was the sole casualty of the Mountain Madness expedition. Three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police died on the North Face. Following the disaster, several survivors wrote memoirs. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine and on the Adventure Consultants team, published Into Thin Air (1997), which became a bestseller. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide in the Mountain Madness team, felt impugned by the book and co-authored a rebuttal called The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest (1997). Beck Weathers, of Hall's expedition, and Lene Gammelgaard, of Fischer's expedition, wrote about their experiences in their respective books, Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000) and Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (2000). In 2014, Lou Kasischke, also of Hall's expedition, published his own account in After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy, One Survivor's Story. In addition to the members of the Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness teams, Mike Trueman, who coordinated the rescue from Base Camp, contributed The Storms: Adventure and Tragedy on Everest (2015). Graham Ratcliffe, who climbed to the South Col of Everest on 10 May, noted in A Day to Die For (2011) that weather reports forecasting a major storm developing after 8 May and peaking in intensity on 11 May were delivered to expedition leaders. Hall and Fischer received these before their planned summit attempts on 10 May. Some of their climbers summited Everest during an apparent break in this developing storm only for it to return in full force as they descended late on 10 May.

Reader's Guide

Hall and Fischer's plan for their clients to summit Everest on 10 May was to leave Camp IV on the South Col at midnight, to reach the summit of Everest about 12:00 p.m. and to descend, returning to Camp IV at about 6 p.m. The time required for the round trip would be eighteen hours. Hall established a turn-around time of 2:00 p.m. (some sources say 1 p.m) at which time all climbers, wherever they were on the mountain, were required to begin their return to Camp IV. Hall said that his decision to descend was 'absolute law, beyond appeal.' Fischer does not seem to have established a firm turn-around time. Thirty-three climbers departed Camp IV on 10 May to climb upward toward the Everest summit. Twenty of them consisted of Hall's and Fisher's guides and clients and the rest were Sherpas and the Taiwanese climber Makalu. The Adventure Consultants' 1996 Everest expedition, led by Rob Hall, consisted of 19 people, including eight clients. The Mountain Madness 1996 Everest expedition, led by Scott Fischer, consisted of 19 people, including 8 clients. Half of the climbing team from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police North Col expedition from India (Subedar Tsewang Samanla, Lance Naik Dorje Morup, and Head Constable Tsewang Paljor) died on the Northeast Ridge.

Did You Know?

• On 10–11 May 1996, eight climbers were caught in a blizzard and died on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit.
• Over the 1996 season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest season until the April 2015 Nepal earthquake caused 23 fatalities.
• Rob Hall established a turn-around time of 2:00 p.m. (some sources say 1 p.m) and said his decision to descend was 'absolute law, beyond appeal.'
• Three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police died on the North Face: Subedar Tsewang Samanla, Lance Naik Dorje Morup, and Head Constable Tsewang Paljor.
• Graham Ratcliffe noted in A Day to Die For (2011) that weather reports forecasting a major storm peaking on 11 May were delivered to expedition leaders Hall and Fischer before their planned summit attempts on 10 May.