The 1996 Disaster · STORM OVER EVEREST

The 1996 Disaster · STORM OVER EVEREST

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (01:25):
For over twenty five years, I've been making the journey
to Mount Everest. I've stood on its summit five times.
The mountain has given me great joy and close friendships.
It's also been a place of hardship and tragedy. In

(01:49):
nineteen ninety six, a fast moving storm trapped climbers high
on the mountain and people died. Stories were told, ever
changing the world's perception and my own about climbing Everest.

(02:09):
Now I've come back to base camp alone to remember
and to reflect on what it was like to be
here on this mountain ten years ago. We were all
gathered at the mountain's base that year. We'd come with

(02:33):
a common goal. I shared their energy, optimism, and desire,
all those hopes, all those dreams. But most of all,
I remember the climbers and friends caught in that storm.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
This is their story.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
When we left base camp, we were all wary, of course,
of Mighty Everest in front of us, but this was it.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
This was our chance.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
So we took off and it was a great feeling.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Nobody can go there without thinking this is way cool,
just to be able to climb on this thing, just
that idea that you're actually going to put your feet
on everest. I don't care whether you're a climber or
not a climber. That's big stuff, that's exciting.

Speaker 5 (03:58):
We went two thirds of the white suit the hospital,
and I was hooked. It was a spectacular piece of
real estate that i'd ever climbed on. It helps you
to put yourself in perspective with what lasts all about.

Speaker 6 (04:16):
I got through the ice fall and I started crying,
and I thought, well, I'm probably hyper ventilating because I'm really,
really tired. And then I realized that I was beginning
to cry because it was so amazing.

Speaker 7 (04:30):
It's just so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I remember seeing them coming up the Western Combe. It
was May eighth. I was already on the mountain. We'd
set out a day ahead of the other teams, climbing
up the Lotzi Face on our way to the summit.

(05:12):
I was leading the Imax film team, but we'd been
held up by high winds, and I was worried about
the conditions higher up. We needed clear weather for filming.
Looking down from Camp three, we could see them climbing
towards us. The mountain suddenly seemed crowded. We decided to

(05:40):
go down and wait on the way down, I met
an old friend who was leading one of the expeditions,
the New Zealander Rob Hall. We talked about the weather.
I took his picture. Further down, I met another friend

(06:07):
who I'd known since we were young climbers in Colorado.
Scott Fisher was leading his team of clients. The day before,
he'd taken a sick climber down to base camp. It
was good to see him, but he seemed tired. The

(06:34):
next day I watched from lower down as Scott and
all the others began this steep ascent to Camp four
on the south coal.

Speaker 8 (06:46):
When you leave Camp three on the Lotzi face, it's
the first time that you can actually see this summit.
Your goal is visible, and that's very thrilling, what lind
faith It's been this whole time climbing this far without

(07:09):
having your goal in front of you.

Speaker 9 (07:13):
My very first view of Everest, it was a long
moment and a big herd swallow, and the thought was,
I'm not so sure whether I can do this.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Leaving Camp three, we donned our down suits for the
first time and definitely could feel the altitude and strenuousness
of the climb and climbing above twenty four into twenty
five thousand feet is really hard. It's I don't care
who you are, it really is. It's challenging and it's

(07:49):
hard work.

Speaker 8 (07:51):
This was the first time that I remember registering the
air is much much thinner here thin anyway or else
I've ever been.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Earlier that morning, there'd been an accident to Camp three.
A Tiwanese climber had slipped and fallen into a crevass,
but he assured his teammate that he was okay and
would rest before going higher.

Speaker 10 (08:19):
Woman's aide Kai design Wang Sampo Ta kalzuas or Shoshi.

Speaker 11 (08:28):
He cuts own to I'm it's own to Yo.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
You move out of an area that seems familiar, there
is this sense of a desolate place. It's kind of
like moving into Galgatha. This is a barren, hard inhospitable cold,
and I don't mean that in temperature. I mean that
in just a sense of heaviness about the place.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
In the afternoon, we got a radio call. The Taiwanese
climber's health had deteriorated. The sherpas were bringing him down
and they asked us to help. We climbed fast up
the Lotzi face. But by the time we reached him,
Chen was dead. The sherpas, superstitious about death on the mountain,

(09:26):
wanted us to bring the body down. Chen's close friend
and team leader, Makalugau, had just arrived at Camp four
on the south coal. What's sitting at base camp? All

(09:56):
these years later, I can still remember my reaction, how
upset I was by his response and his decision not
to come down.

Speaker 10 (10:10):
So Pasi tends to a big canal. There you go again, puzzo,
what's all you? I told he chooses one in some easess.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Is only now after hearing his story do I know
why he decided to go on, and how little I
understood about what it was like to be high on
this mountain. Over the next few days.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
The weather was so crummy that when we first got
in there, I didn't think there was any chance that
we're going to climb that night.

Speaker 6 (10:55):
In our sense at camp for that night it was
living hill. It was absolutely crazy.

Speaker 9 (11:06):
It was bad weather, and the concern was, well, what
if it's like this tomorrow?

Speaker 4 (11:21):
We thought we may have struggled all the way up here,
and if this keeps up at all, then the whole
crowd is just going to get to head back down
and parties over.

Speaker 12 (11:32):
About eight o'clock the wind died off, and so we
were able to snatch a little sleep as much as
you can. Up there, you just are basically listening to
your heartbeat and thinking, well, the day is calm. I
can't believe it.

Speaker 9 (11:48):
Get ready, be ready, eleven o'clock, we're going. I remember
looking at the faces of the other people. Doug thought
it was bad idea. You could just tell it in
his eyes that he didn't want to go.

Speaker 12 (12:11):
You had a little cover over your head, a little
skull cap, and then you've got this massive thing like this,
and you're trying to get your goggles adjusted. Josh right,
And meanwhile you can't see to put your gloves on,
and you've got your straps. Oh gosh, I got the
crampons on the wrong feet.

Speaker 13 (12:27):
I'll be there in a minute.

Speaker 10 (12:40):
nWay didn't get sew and I'm going things on phone
theme Nogo ha ge way now the twohaul, Soyoda even
sheds things.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
You get out, you stand up, and it's a different
world than the one you saw when you came in.
Because the night is gorgeous, the wind is still. You
can see more stars than you ever dream that a
place could have, and they're so close to you that
you feel like you can touch them.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
In front of us is this great silhouette, the blackness
of Everest, and the Milky Way was just on fire
as like a like a row of lights.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
Above us.

Speaker 7 (13:25):
It was a vast open sky.

Speaker 8 (13:29):
But there on the mountain, I could see the headlamps
of Rob Hall's team, and I was worried that we
might be behind before we'd even started.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
When you climb at night, much more so than the day,
you feel like you're alone. And then as you look
up and you look down, you don't see the vistas.
You see these little combes scattered along in a line
of the people that are all strung out as part
of this silent progression of individuals, each one in their
own world, separated from everyone else, and their team separated

(14:10):
from everyone else on Earth.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
H You start to get in rhythm with your oxygen.
You get your headlighted just to just right, and jiggle
your back around and and feel your body start to
come alive, and you know the blood flowing, and you
know you're you're climbing Mount Everest. It's uh, it's a
pretty cool feeling.

Speaker 10 (14:49):
So's I'm in Yosangasichi. It's a sunga based you abod.
There was a thunding, some phonda, chimen Man Yongo not
and Anji and you guys at Botau.

Speaker 12 (15:15):
Right before the balcony, which was several hours out. After
going up fixed ropes in the dark, start to see
a little light out to the east.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Within a few steps, you just walk right up into
the sunlight and everything changes. You can see what appears
to be a thousand miles out across the Tibetan plains.
The sun is now over the horizon and just glittering
off of the glaciers thousands and thousands of feet below you.
It's an amazing experience, and you know why you're climbing

(15:49):
Mount Everest.

Speaker 4 (15:49):
At that moment.

Speaker 12 (15:55):
You look across at all these other peaks that were
always way above you, and now they're tiny, they're like
waves in the ocean, and you know.

Speaker 9 (16:09):
That few people have stood here looking out over this
fantastic site.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
By dawn, the teams were just below the Southeast Ridge
at twenty seven six hundred feet. It had been five
weeks since they first arrived at base camp. Each team
was its own small world. The clients were paying their way,

(16:43):
and the professional guides like Rob and Scott promised access
to a dream.

Speaker 14 (16:52):
I felt like a part of something great. I really,
I really think that to do something with people for
a common purpose is a wonderful thing, and to help
people to achieve their dreams is something that caught me

(17:13):
as well. So much emotion and experiences and demands of
you happen in such a short space of time, six
weeks of intensive living. I never thought I'd ever do
this in my life.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
I think everybody has a place in themselves that mountains
can fill. Mountains carry great respect with people around the world,
so it doesn't surprise me at all that many people
use mountains to find this. That's what I did myself.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
I'd spent most of my adult life in profound depression,
and Ian and John waned it so that I never
let anybody know about it. And I discovered that if
you drove your body hard when you did that, you
couldn't think, and that the lack of thinking as you
as you punished your body and drove yourself was amazingly pleasant.

Speaker 8 (18:18):
Other people when they have when they're when their life
is at a difficult spot.

Speaker 7 (18:27):
Turn to drugs or drink or credit cards.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
I go to the mountains.

Speaker 7 (18:33):
That's always worked for me.

Speaker 6 (18:40):
As long as I or human beings believe that by
doing something, the world is going to change. By doing this,
I'm going to be more happy by doing that. I'm
going to be more successful by doing this. People are
going to love me more than I think. There would
be this fantastic drive behind it.

Speaker 12 (19:25):
Now that we could see the summit, you're just pulled on.
You've gone so far up the mountain, you've come so
far from home, and you've spent six months preparing for
this goal. There's no way you're going to turn around less.
Things are really going south.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
They'd been claiming hard since midnight. It's vital to get
to the summit and back to Camp four before nightfall.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
I felt very comfortable with this situation. We were inside
of our turn around time. The weather's till good. There
were certainly some delays that were unexpected, but that's how
climbing is.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
And by the time that I get up to the balcony,
I realized that I pretty much was out of the game.

Speaker 15 (20:18):
My right eye was.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
Not really usable because it's blurred over and my left
eye wasn't good enough yet that I felt comfortable going forward.
And so when I told Rob this, he volunteered to
send me down with a couple of sharpa and I
just climbed all night to get to this place. I
didn't want to go. He said, beck I want you

(20:44):
to promise me that you're going to stay here. I
come back, And I said, Rob crossed my heart, I
hope to die. I'm sticking. And it never ever crossed
my mind that he'd never come back.

Speaker 9 (21:11):
Becky had a problem and it was too bad. And
I didn't even think that much about that, because you know,
a lot of things happened and could have been me,
could have been anybody. But it was sort of like
tough break and see you later.

Speaker 12 (21:34):
Upon arriving at the South Summit, there are a few
people there and seemed to be some confusion about ropes
and who was going first, and were we using old
fixed lines or do we have enough new line to
string across the traverse to the Hillary Step.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
And until and I tied into the rope together and
trecked off towards the Hillary Step over this very beautiful,
very delicate knife hedge ridge and there was a steady
enough wind that would take the rope between us and
hold it out in this big arc would hold itself

(22:17):
out for maybe ten or even fifteen seconds at a
time and then drop down and like a sail, it
would bulge out again.

Speaker 12 (22:35):
It was definitely not a place that you wanted to fall.
You had a rope to sort of guide you that
was probably staked in pretty well, but the snow wasn't
that great for holding steaks, and the fact that when
you sunk your is acs into the snow, you could
look through the hole as you pulled it out and
see to Bet and over here you could see Nepal,

(22:57):
So you wanted to be very careful about staying right
on the border, so to speak. People were stacking up
behind us like crazy, and I was feeling lucky to
be one of the first people across.

Speaker 6 (23:17):
Lots and lots of people were so slow getting up
the Hillary step and you sort of had to wait
your turn in line before you could climb that piece
of rock face and losing one hour just more less
standing still on a mountain. That is really the stupidest
thing you can do, because b it is the same
as safety.

Speaker 9 (23:44):
Looked at my watch and I had a sick feeling
inside of myself. This is why I was feeling. I
was feeling sick at that point because I knew. I
knew it was impossible to get there by the one
pm turn on time, and.

Speaker 5 (23:59):
I thought, of I keep going now, I'll be out
of oxygen get to the summit, but I'll be coming
back down to the South Coll in the dark and
without oxygen. I'm more tired than I am now the
risks are escalating.

Speaker 9 (24:13):
My heart was beating so hard I felt like it
was going to jump right out of my chest, almost
shaking as I was struggling inside of myself with what
am I going to do? Am I going to keep
going because I'm so close? Or am I going to
turn around?

Speaker 5 (24:34):
At that stage, Rob came up passed me and I
said to him, Rob, I'm going down, and I could
even see behind his oxygen mask. He was visibly disappointed,
probably for me, because he loved to get people to
achieve their goal of getting to the top. But he said,
it's you will call Pal. Didn't say mate, like an Australian,
it's you will call Pal. I'll see you back at

(24:55):
the South Coll And that was the last time.

Speaker 10 (25:00):
Relives it cud trimming. You're in that pa hondo Senzi.
You can't Jesus tell us in they not be lah
not at.

Speaker 8 (25:22):
Was that home?

Speaker 11 (25:22):
Enjoy the moment, no more mon And it's not.

Speaker 12 (25:27):
Difficult climbing by rock climbing standards, but you have to
imagine you've got these massive.

Speaker 11 (25:32):
Boots with little rock holds.

Speaker 12 (25:35):
For your feet, and massive mitten hands with little rock
holds for your hands, and you're all puffy like the
Michelin person and and you're trying to execute these moves
at twenty eight twenty nine thousand feet and oxygen bottle
and your pack and it's just very awkward.

Speaker 11 (26:00):
Listens, eat young.

Speaker 10 (26:03):
Oh trains and mad Riah or your part or sense
yah it's trains and oh madam dunshun dang him parni
one sense how young her many.

Speaker 16 (26:25):
Day and bart led dial why and matti hilarist I
mean then do you potieto.

Speaker 10 (26:40):
Conda chim you the cheese hiogen kings are not being you?
How sham sods are not being a been eager? Can't
use oh funding was a champion? Can young maid to you?
And it's like show what cause treading great tend saw

(27:02):
Jos on your pada, then Pa woh your bow.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
I arrived at the summit at one twent five, and
for about five minutes I really enjoyed the summit of
Mount Everest for myself, and I started watching this stream
of people come over the rise above the hillary step.

Speaker 12 (27:26):
Finally we came to Wine Rise and I looked to
the next and there were a group of people on top,
and I knew that was it.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
In any other circumstance, you would think that somebody could
cover that distance in ten or fifteen minutes, but it
took some of these people much much longer than that.

Speaker 6 (27:46):
It's not very fat, but it's just so hot, and
even though they are not that many paces, it just
takes very very long time from there to actually get
to the summit.

Speaker 12 (28:00):
But soon enough we were joining the celebration up there
and looking down the north side and looking down the
west and the east in the south, and we could
see it all.

Speaker 7 (28:09):
We were on the roof of the world.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
You can almost see the curvature of the earth. I
know you can't, but you can feel that you're up
high enough that you're looking down on the sphere all
the hardships that you've gone through, and all the discomfort
you've been through is completely worth it.

Speaker 6 (28:26):
At that moment, what I really felt was a massive,
massive contentment and sort of a feeling of everything falling
into place.

Speaker 10 (28:41):
No mamandapinkombine now my mind, pidauphin, so I do not
jan bob bungo Pidauphin.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
It was just this cluster of people, like I couldn't
believe how many were there, but everybody is perched onto
this little ridge, so it just looked like the sea
of colors. It was hard to even recognize who is
who out of all these colors.

Speaker 12 (29:14):
It was my feeling that we celebrated a little too long.
We were waiting for Scott to come up so we
could descend us a team, but he was taking the
longest time, and people are enjoying the day. The day
was beautiful, there wasn't a cloud out there.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Finally, I was just like, we gotta go. It's getting
late now, this is no more.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
We got to go.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
So I remember walking back up to where everybody was
and you know, getting up close into everybody's face, each
person's face it was air, and telling him, look, get
yourself ready.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
We got to go down now.

Speaker 14 (29:55):
When rub cooled me from the summit at two thirty,
it was those familiar words base camp, this is Eva's summit. Oh,
and he sounded sort of hale and hearty, sounded really good.
And he told us who had just started descending, and

(30:22):
he said that Doug Hansen was he's just in sight.
And he said as soon as Doug got up to
him that they do a really quick turnaround, and it
was intending to descend straight away. I said, what's the
weather like? And he said cold and wendy, cold and windy.

Speaker 17 (30:46):
Robin, Yessica and I we started the summit for an
extra five or ten minutes and then took some photographs,
and then Yessica and I headed back down.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yasica number had just completed the seventh summits in her
sixteen years, but she was now the second Japanese woman
to climb the highest mountain on every continent.

Speaker 6 (31:15):
And then finally we started descending and then getting down
over the Hillary step, I meet Scott who's on the
way up, and I sort of really hot him.

Speaker 8 (31:26):
We high fived, we hugged, and it was just obvious
from his movement that he was intending to continue going up.

Speaker 17 (31:45):
The first thing that I noticed about Scott Fisher was
just how how badly he was traveling. Of all the
people I saw that day moving up and down the mountain,
he was the most unlikely person to be in that situation.

Speaker 18 (32:01):
Still going up the mountain.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Now hours behind schedule, fourteen climbers were still high on
the mountain. At the summit, Rob Hall waited for his client,
Doug Hanson.

Speaker 15 (32:18):
A but you go up, du dog Aina, dog maybe pretty.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Doug Hanson was a postal worker from Seattle. The year before,
also climbing with Rob Hall, he'd collapsed at the South
Summit and had to be helped down. He'd work two
jobs to save enough money to return to Everest. Finally
he was almost there.

Speaker 19 (32:56):
I was in front of Rob Hall. I told Dog Henson, Okay,
it's late. It's now a bad way.

Speaker 15 (33:03):
They're un to down.

Speaker 19 (33:04):
But Dog Henson, he didn't talk me. He just shake
his head and then he's pointing his PingER and the summit.

Speaker 15 (33:14):
Ladies to Mattie.

Speaker 19 (33:21):
Rob told me, okay, I don't want to leave glance
behind you guys go ahead, you go ahead, leave boxes
and bottle and salsa.

Speaker 15 (33:28):
Maid go down.

Speaker 17 (33:33):
From the South Summit. I recall looking back along this
razor back ridge to the Hillary Step, I saw Rob
Hall standing up and Doug Hansen leaning into the slope,
resting on his eyeex I remember giving the normal thumbs

(33:55):
up sign like that, and I got the same response
from the person I thought was Rob Hole, and that
indicated to me that everything was okay and it time
to continue the descent.

Speaker 12 (34:10):
We were headed down from the South Summit when I
saw Sandy laying in the snow.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
There's this person in a yellow suit laying face down,
head down the hill and Charlotte. I recognized Charlotte standing
above this person.

Speaker 12 (34:27):
I tried pulling her to her feet, and she was
just a load of dead weight. She couldn't go any further.

Speaker 15 (34:33):
She collapsed.

Speaker 6 (34:34):
She literally collapsed, and there was absolutely no more poweringhood
to move down.

Speaker 12 (34:39):
And then I remembered I had that injection of Dexa methasone,
kept it warm inside my suit all this time, just
in case something like this happened.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
She kind of gives me the nod as she's got
basically both hands on the syringe, that you know, is
this the right thing to do?

Speaker 4 (34:58):
And I'm like, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 12 (35:01):
So I unzipped the rainbow zip her to her rear
end and knew she had layers of pile on, but
that the needle would go right through that, and I
just took a wing back and she.

Speaker 8 (35:14):
Smiled this crazy, wonderful, maniacal smile and jammed the.

Speaker 7 (35:20):
Decks into my leg.

Speaker 6 (35:31):
There we also realized that Sandy was running out of oxygen.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
I asked Lena to exchange bottles with Sandy, and she
kind of looked at me, like, you know, you're crazy.
I'm not giving up my oxygen, and I certainly don't
blame her for that, but I was like, you gotta
do this because you're walking right now.

Speaker 8 (35:52):
And she is not.

Speaker 12 (35:55):
From then, I believe Tim and I moved together and
left sand with Neil, and we were just a little
in front of the rest of the gang on our
way down to the last fixed robes.

Speaker 9 (36:13):
John Tasky was just right in front of me. We
basically came to the to the balcony together and there's back.

Speaker 5 (36:21):
So we said, Beck, come on down with us. Beck
said no, no, I've basically give him a word or
white for Robe. I'll stay here and white for him.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
They clearly wanted me to come down, but they didn't
have the conversation with Rob. They did not promise Rob
that you'd stay there.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
In good weather.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
That would have been obviously the right decision to make,
because Rob was more experienced. Rob had a rope, so
he could have short ruted big down, big down. We'd
have had all sorts of trouble.

Speaker 9 (36:51):
Beck said he felt more comfortable if we had a rope,
and we didn't have a rope, and he said he
thought he needed to be short rope, and that was
the end of it.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
I could have gone down with them, and obviously I
should have, but I really didn't walk the day to end.
Even then.

Speaker 9 (37:11):
It wasn't any sense of being left behind or abandoned
or almost dying or anything happening.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
At that point.

Speaker 14 (37:23):
When we got the four to fifteen call, Rob was
asking somebody else in our team who may have just
been below the South Summit for more oxygen, and he
was obviously with someone in trouble.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Rob was on the radio to one of his guides,
Andy Harris, who was waiting for him at the South Summit.

Speaker 17 (37:58):
Rob was obviously distressed and concern about something.

Speaker 18 (38:02):
That was going on. There was something wrong.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
And he was last seen climbing back up the ridge
to help Robin Doug.

Speaker 20 (38:22):
What really started to concern me at this point was
that I started to see some bad weather coming in
from down the valley. It was a very black wall
of cloud coming from behind Tarwichi further down the valley,
coming in low. Unlike a lot of storms start high,
the storm was coming quite low, and it was obviously
very fast moving, very intense. In a few minutes, I

(38:45):
saw the mountains of Tarwichi disappear down below.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
What was sort of benavolent puffy clouds has now got
more of a sinister look to it. It's really it's
starting to look like it gets, you know, a real storm,
and we're walking right down into the storm.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
The clamber's nearing Camp four on the south core were
the first turn into trouble.

Speaker 5 (39:20):
A rock came hurtling down the face and not loose
glove from underneath the piece of rope and ed went
cut wheeling away with the wind following the rock. We
didn't know who it was, but it was obviously anatotly
bookreeve racing down who went straight past us without talking,
heading off towards the tents. On the south col At

(39:45):
that moment, as I looked up and saw the tents,
I could see the storm coming behind it.

Speaker 9 (39:50):
One minute we could look down and we could see
the camp below, and the next minute you couldn't fear it.

Speaker 5 (39:58):
Within the space of five it changed from really a
good day with a little bit of wind two desperate conditions,
something I'd never experienced the ferocity of before.

Speaker 18 (40:16):
And then I came across.

Speaker 17 (40:20):
Beck Weathers, which caught me completely by surprise, because by
this time snow had started to fall very lightly. Beck
had obviously been sitting very patiently and very still completely
covered in snow, and as he turned to me, all
the snow fell off his climbing sit and suddenly I
could see that there's someone in front of me, and

(40:41):
I think he said, is that you, Mike? And I
said yes, and I think he said, well, I've got
a little problem I can't see.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
So make put me on a short teather. And it
was a good decision because I'm coming down and I
do make some pretty good missteps. I put down and
actually shift my weight onto the down foot and it's
nothing there.

Speaker 17 (41:08):
And then, to my surprise, still in the gully, I
came across Yesico sitting in the snow, completely and utterly exhausted.
So I really had my hands full now because he
is beck whethers is tightly blind, and Yessica who can't walk.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
There was no more thought about who was on whose team,
who was just people.

Speaker 17 (41:34):
Fortunately for me, Neil could see my dilemma and took
over the control.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Of Yesico. I could feel when I grabbed her. At
first her arm was limp, but once we got her
up and started started walking, I could tell she was
hanging on tight her because she had hope and she
knew that she was heading down.

Speaker 11 (42:03):
Cris Decay Summit. Are you at now? Ya?

Speaker 8 (42:12):
Ho?

Speaker 11 (42:14):
Mymanda? Well, h what's hired? Jo in shape and jo in?
Our bos woman passing lights?

Speaker 4 (42:24):
Hi? Ja in?

Speaker 10 (42:26):
About your cousins that now? Oh yeah that yo Naga
bin food Alimon the.

Speaker 16 (42:36):
Bier Nowever, Petty the part named.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
The Sherpas never came back. They left Marca Luga more
than a thousand feet above Camp four alone.

Speaker 11 (42:56):
Because it showing the more band, the more band.

Speaker 10 (42:58):
It's ben Shia George, I to the whole wa tingda
hole man, You're you're singing what the whole man? Now
your gang Jin, Hey, what the whole man? Jog Nanga,
Scott said.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Scott soon collapsed on the ledge not far from Michael Lugo,
too weak to descend further. Now, both teams were without
their leaders.

Speaker 20 (43:33):
On the top of the Hillary Step, which is about
as far away from anywhere in this world that you
can get. Rob was in a situation where he had
somebody incapacitated that he could not pick this guy up
and carry him.

Speaker 18 (43:45):
That's impossible up there.

Speaker 14 (43:47):
At five fifteen, he called and he said that Doug
was weak, and yes, I could tell things were very serious.

Speaker 20 (44:00):
Feeling was that Rob should descend to South Cole and
at least look after himself to be in a position
to affect a rescue the next day, as hard as
that might be.

Speaker 14 (44:11):
When guy was talking like this, I think Rob sounded
a little annoyed that, you know, like Doug might be
listening to this.

Speaker 18 (44:22):
At the time.

Speaker 20 (44:23):
I was a foab who being the Devil's advocate. I mean,
I was trying to give him the option to decide
that what I was saying was a good idea. He
might have been thinking it in his own head, but
yet not being able to come up with that decision himself.

Speaker 14 (44:40):
I recorded at that time that it sounded like Rob
wasn't leaving Doug, and that it was kind of like
we didn't hear for another twelve hours from Rob.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
As darkness fell, the storm was nearing full force. It
swept over the south coal, engulfing Camp four.

Speaker 9 (45:13):
When I got back to camp, I crawled inside the
tent and the next thing I remember was the feeling
like somebody was shoving me. But the thoughts were, why

(45:36):
isn't anybody here? Why am I alone? And I could
hear nothing. I could hear nothing but the wind. It

(46:03):
was the wind that was moving me around, shoving me
and pushing me, and and it was terrifying. I felt lonely.

(46:28):
I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to say I
love you one more time. I didn't want to die alone.
It was something that I never knew about myself would
be important to me to be dying separated from the
people I love and who love me.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
The storm, which began as a cyclone in the Bay
of Bengal, surprised everyone on the mountain as it searched higher,
gaining an energy power and ferocity, overwhelming the exhausted summit

(47:40):
climbers as they searched for camp on the hard rocks
and steep cliffs of the South Coal.

Speaker 12 (48:07):
We will walk thinking, Wow, the wind's gonna want to
blow us towards the can shunk face, so let's overcompensate
by going the other direction and we'll probably hit base camp.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
And as you move further and you've become more disoriented.
And the entire time that you're doing this, the storm,
the wind, the snow of the cold, everything is just moving.
It is creshindoing, and now it's the noise level. It's
starting to overwhelm you. And you've got to yell at
each other to be heard at all. And I don't
know whether we're getting a sense of just being led

(48:41):
like sheep.

Speaker 18 (48:49):
And then we just became hopelessly lost.

Speaker 17 (48:52):
I recall an ice and the snow stinging my face,
freezing my eyelids together to a point where I have
to to sort of break the eyes off my eyelids
to be able to see, and tripping out of rocks,
and on the south call picking out Beck when he
did the sign, because he fell out of quite a lot.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
I had no idea where we were going. I knew enough,
though to keep track of Mike Groom's arm, because I
thought if I let go of him and I got
three feet away, I wouldn't have any idea where anybody was.

Speaker 6 (49:41):
People who have all run out of oxygen, some of
them really starts collapsing, and those of us who are
still able to walk try to sort of, you know,
pick them up, make them keep walking. This is survival
and surviving in the mountain. To keep moving never ever stopped.

Speaker 12 (50:06):
We all felt that camp was close and we couldn't
figure out why we had not stumbled upon it. We
had passed discarded oxygen tanks, pots and pans, ripped fabric
of tents.

Speaker 13 (50:20):
We knew we were right there.

Speaker 6 (50:22):
We could be forty meters from the tents and people
could die there, but there's no way that we could
find our way back to the tents.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
On both sides of the South Call, it's this big,
expansive flat, but at the edges it becomes precipitously steep.

Speaker 8 (50:42):
One side's the Kangshunk Face and the other side is
straight down. The steepest section on Everest on the Nepal side,
and it was literally it would have been walking off
a cliff.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
I had this strong, strong feeling that we had to
just stop and sit down and just wait for a
little bit for the storm to abate before we made
a decision we couldn't.

Speaker 4 (51:11):
Get out of.

Speaker 19 (51:17):
That.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
We're beginning on a downward slope off the can Hunk face,
and Neil sensed this. I don't know how he did,
and that's the reason. Neil's a guide and I'm not.
But he made that decision that we're going to stop.
And then we start to come together, this odd lot

(51:45):
of individuals, and we become the huddle.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Most of us knew nothing of what was happening that night.
We knew only that many climbers were missing, and that
Rob and Doug were still high on the mountain unable
to get down.

Speaker 14 (52:49):
I don't think it's possible to get somebody who's incapacitated
down the Hillary Step a little alone along the knife
edge ridge between the Hilary Step and South Summit, let
alone in a storm, unless some sort of amazing thing

(53:20):
happened and somebody came charging up with a pile of
oxygen bottles that robbed with in really deep trouble with Dug.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
As time passes, each one of us becomes more and
more absorbed in our own world. You can know the
other individuals are there, but you're beginning to lose that
sense of contact with them. Charlotte says, I don't care anymore.
All I want to do is die, and Sandy is

(54:30):
about to come unglued. I don't want to die. I
don't want to die. My face is freezing, my hands freezing.

Speaker 7 (54:37):
I remember thinking, I don't want to die. I don't
want to die.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
Here Yasca was next to me, and I was pretty
much trying to shove her and pummel her and try
to keep it going. And at some point in there, though,

(55:05):
and I have this sense of just gently moving away.
I wasn't giving up. I'm just becoming unaware.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
We knew that going to sleep was the wrong thing
to do, and it was too easy to do. You
just suck yourself back, you draw yourself back as far
as you could into your down suit hood and just
close your eyes and take a few breaths. And it
was too easy to want to let go.

Speaker 12 (55:41):
And that was the point where I just said, you
know what, I don't know if I'm going to make
it through the night. Maybe it's just easier to just
go into that sleep before hypothermia takes you and just
go on and get it over with because this is
too much.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Certainly these were real feelings that people were but it
was like, well, you know, we we just can't go there.
It's it's you know, we're gonna be okay. We just
got to figure out how to get through the night.
It's just about living hour by hour, minute by minute.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Mucalugo was caught by the storm far above the climbers
on the south coal. He was alone with Scott Fisher,
who lay helpless only a few feet away.

Speaker 5 (56:43):
M h.

Speaker 14 (57:02):
M hm hm m hm.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
H m hmmmm.

Speaker 11 (57:16):
So that was what war. Now that's a whole. Who
was sweet y'all?

Speaker 10 (57:20):
Look Sunday and your way when it's the shady there,
so it's god put jo I'm not fordle Chris.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Was it.

Speaker 11 (57:35):
Child? That means macaddle strae job macaddle for stra job.
Then this is the whole. He went and young ly
and young lead. That's another Sunday and wait coddle what.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Else joab.

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Hm, So.

Speaker 10 (58:08):
I need to tell Disco, no, tell disco. We have
that sending in don't in, don't I'm going to you
one so you know your down paid don t go like.

Speaker 8 (58:23):
T go.

Speaker 11 (58:30):
H my mone you don't.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
You don't.

Speaker 10 (58:43):
Oh fashion that pang bian well, you don't mendo yojo,
and more than some more on the scar visioning gang
that was bing the no couch in tender and Young
told you, I am sick singing him Wagel Chase with

(59:06):
King Doll.

Speaker 11 (59:06):
No, but I am s going down. That's all that's
I'm being when needs a wo man, I need you
to deal with.

Speaker 17 (59:30):
This is a.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Situation where people die. This was the real deal, and
there was no mistaking the danger of the situation that
we were in.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
We were on knife's edge.

Speaker 12 (59:58):
I could almost object actively watch what was happening to me,
and that was fairly eerie, not so much as being
an out of body experience, but monitoring myself for my downfall.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
You're in this little, tiny world of incredible noise and cold,
and you're going past just shivering and shaking uncontrollably, where
you have no ability to stop your body from trying
to generate in the heat. You can't get it to stop.

Speaker 17 (01:00:48):
I think it was Neil who spotted the upper slaps
in that interest, and once he spotted them, he yelled
at something and I saw the same sight, and quickly,
like Neil, were able to figure out where we were
in relation to Camp Full.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
I associated Camp for the tenses our salvation. If somehow
we could just get there and alert people to our position,
that to me was how this situation was going to
go from extremely bad to better.

Speaker 12 (01:01:29):
There was hope again to get up and walk back
to camp, but I had already let myself get so
cold and mentally so detached that every time I stood up,
I just fell down. Finally, people had to keep moving
and go save themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Yasuko I had on my arm the entire time in
the huddle, and when I grabbed her to try to
stand her up, she kept falling to the ground.

Speaker 9 (01:02:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
I tried to drag her and help her along, but
I couldn't do it.

Speaker 8 (01:02:31):
Trying to get up, Trying to get on your feet
with a pack on your back, on unstable ground and
in the condition that I was in, was not possible.

Speaker 7 (01:02:43):
In the amount of time that I needed to stay
with Neil.

Speaker 6 (01:03:02):
We were staggering about like really drunk people, absolutely no
resources left to to even try to move, But as
it was everybody's only tons of surviving, we did it anyway.

Speaker 17 (01:03:14):
And I tried to go with them, but I had
Beck and Yessico and I literally I think I had
one person on each shoulder. But after twenty meters, Yesica
had fallen over twice and it was just a hopeless situation.

Speaker 12 (01:03:43):
So everyone moved off and that we tried a few
times to get going, and we could see people getting
further and further away from us. I remember Lena on
Klob's arm, shuffling along slowly but moving, I mean, wanting
to be her, but just not able to physically go.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
We'll never know what happened to Rob that night. It
must have been a desperate struggle as he tried to
move dug along that ridge only a few feet at
a time, so far from the safety of camp. And

(01:05:34):
what happened to Doug. Did he still have enough life
in him to reach out to Rob and say don't
leave me? Or did Doug ever look at Rob and say, Rob,
just go save yourself? And where was Andy Harris?

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
We were so lucky that the direction that we went
in led us to camp for because we could have
missed the tents by you know, just a few degrees
and kept walking past. We could have been wandering on
the south call forever.

Speaker 6 (01:06:48):
Eventually we sort of just staggered into the tents and
more less collapsed.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
The an told he was like, where's Scott? He kept
asking Scott, And I remember telling Anatole wasn't with us,
No Scott, not here, not here, but people, And I
remember turning around and pointing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Anatotally. Bukriev, a strong Russian climber, was one of Scott
Fisher's guides. He'd climbed to the summit without bottled oxygen
and had descended to Camp four on the south coal
hours ahead of his teammates.

Speaker 6 (01:07:28):
Anatotally gathered some thermos with hot tea, whatever could be
utilized to really revive people for at least for a
little while, and then he set out into the snowstorm.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
And at that point I really felt like I had
passed this baton to anatolely and I had just assumed
that the same set of actions was happening for Rob's
team that Hissuko and back to make.

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
It back as well.

Speaker 12 (01:08:05):
There was certainly a great deal of hope when I
saw the group move off towards the times. That meant
that somebody would know where the rest of us were.
Surely someone would come out and find us.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
That clearly was what needed to be done. I thought,
it's not going to be very long. We will have
hope to come back out here, and we'll be back
in the tenths. It couldn't be more than a half
an hour, and folks will be back.

Speaker 7 (01:09:03):
We could see a headlamp.

Speaker 8 (01:09:06):
Coming vaguely in our direction, but certainly not striding purposefully.

Speaker 7 (01:09:15):
But it was a light, and with a light with.

Speaker 8 (01:09:18):
A glimmer of hope, and soon it became clear that
it was anatoly.

Speaker 12 (01:09:29):
He just grabbed me and said I'll be back for
the rest of the group and Sandy and Tim, and
he hooked arms with me and assisted me to my
feet and we started to walk back. I tried once
again to sit down every few feet and rest, but
he told me not to do that.

Speaker 7 (01:09:48):
That was impossible. We had to keep moving.

Speaker 12 (01:09:52):
Finally I came into a tent and there was Neil
with a huge, hot, hot, hot cup of tea. Remember
him handing it to me, and I couldn't hold it
because my hands were shaking so violently that he had
to fill me the first few steps and then I
could put my hands around that cop and warm them

(01:10:13):
enough to be able to stop shaking as much and
drink myself.

Speaker 8 (01:10:24):
Ana totally had promised me that he would be right back.
At a certain point, I lost hope that he was
going to come back because it seemed like it was
taking so long.

Speaker 9 (01:10:52):
It was.

Speaker 8 (01:10:54):
A glorious sight seeing that little tiny headlamp in the
discs growing larger and coming closer to us.

Speaker 6 (01:11:06):
He came back, and I totally spent the whole night
trying to rescue those people. He would have wanted to
bring back both back and Yesukub at that point, but
if he had done that, he probably would have died himself.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):
The last part being there, I couldn't see anybody. I
could still feel somebody next to me, and I remember
thinking it was probably asco.

Speaker 8 (01:12:03):
It.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
At that point, there was no pain left. There was
just a sense of of just this attachment and calm,
and I didn't feel uncomfortable. I didn't nothing hurt. They
just were sliding away, gradually faded into black.

Speaker 11 (01:12:39):
What's under why society of the thiefun Now.

Speaker 10 (01:12:45):
You wait, well, young handur fun far shan cut some
young long number or young such it's under me and
uish else.

Speaker 11 (01:12:57):
It shand.

Speaker 10 (01:13:00):
Oh she and han doane so you push h Christians

(01:13:26):
open so d d d the picture fan the Quanghian
push the trample head Chiku yoshiang lands Yoshian buys Yoshian home,
Sir the ind w t and kando sha controng sn.

Speaker 11 (01:13:49):
Or that sham.

Speaker 10 (01:13:51):
Quangian d l e long shout out. You know, don't
cheque the Quansian.

Speaker 14 (01:13:59):
M hm mm hm.

Speaker 10 (01:14:02):
H down type get a cania how shans and nagger Thai.
I am your tour then I'm the younger. There's a
bush him there needing your ten turned down nugga under

(01:14:24):
your Thai young too, that your young gandahua.

Speaker 11 (01:14:28):
That your boets there.

Speaker 8 (01:14:35):
H m.

Speaker 17 (01:14:48):
Hm m h.

Speaker 14 (01:14:55):
When robbed cold in the morning, I scrambled out of
my even bag and I just remember climbing over bodies
to get to the radio. I just had to get there.

Speaker 6 (01:15:05):
And I.

Speaker 14 (01:15:07):
Picked up the radio and I said, Rob, where are you?
I was really hoping he was going to say South Call,
and he said, I'm at the South Summit, and my
heart just hit the floor. Rob once said that if

(01:15:30):
you're stuck up there, you might as well be on
the moon.

Speaker 20 (01:15:42):
Rob called saying they couldn't move and come and get me.
And when we asked Rob about Doug. Now all Rob
ca say is that Doug has gone yeh. At that

(01:16:06):
stage he asked about Andy Harris. He said, and he
was with me last night. Does anybody know where he is?

Speaker 19 (01:16:26):
In the morning, we went through looking through the number
and back three hundred fifty or four hundred meter from
South komb.

Speaker 11 (01:16:35):
Beck was lying down.

Speaker 19 (01:16:43):
I pick up the ysphone number, but she wasn't respond
to me, and then I told them, okay, number is dead.
Here you guys go down.

Speaker 15 (01:16:52):
Look back, guys had a goa and I want to
do that and do that a human hero.

Speaker 11 (01:17:04):
They went down. They look totally not moving.

Speaker 15 (01:17:09):
They told me, it seems like a number is totally
lie down.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
At base camp. They called the United States and told
Beck's wife that her husband was dead.

Speaker 11 (01:17:27):
What thing dow your rangela Caruso macarosa? What thing dollar?

Speaker 15 (01:17:34):
Thanks?

Speaker 11 (01:17:34):
What are you engine?

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
Baby?

Speaker 11 (01:17:38):
March agha? The thing that mom? Yeah, you're e young
Jim and jo now your soon your is check the
what I did marvel the.

Speaker 10 (01:17:58):
Macha know the round the long as it's got Yeah, should.

Speaker 11 (01:18:04):
Get lucas.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
Uh the downs and letter.

Speaker 11 (01:18:17):
Yes yesterday murder.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
Jna and the angle he tay.

Speaker 15 (01:18:31):
Marcola, Lord m I'm jose and ding Miller Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:18:45):
Yeah, Ganji with the sona in bang bangda Jong Jam
then don't jujo from down tim jamn and don't go
now who ponga each She.

Speaker 11 (01:19:02):
Cut the answer, So you're.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Not do.

Speaker 8 (01:19:07):
You know?

Speaker 15 (01:19:09):
Do just a non dons in.

Speaker 5 (01:19:17):
Me to.

Speaker 15 (01:19:19):
Men?

Speaker 11 (01:19:20):
Well, so all your.

Speaker 10 (01:19:23):
The younger you you got your bunja Scarfe should send down,
get out to one and gom huhi Scarfe issue thanks
to Joda and young when I was all now jr
aging mom? What mean she about your title man workandang

(01:19:44):
and your ma Ma Ma Manda which she sos called.

Speaker 20 (01:19:53):
During the morning, the winds became so strong the shippers
tried the hardest skit to rob the heads turn around
somewhere up on the southeast ridge became a point that
they realized it was too dangerous for them to continue.

Speaker 19 (01:20:06):
It was still blowing, and to see how to find
the path. We both desaided men not read there or
we met.

Speaker 11 (01:20:25):
Something going to be happening for us too.

Speaker 20 (01:20:35):
They were very upset that they had not been able
to get up to rob. They tried their hardest, but
these guys were very exhausted.

Speaker 18 (01:20:46):
I was so sad.

Speaker 19 (01:20:49):
I came all the way up there to help up,
but I didn't met him. I had to return close
to bay him.

Speaker 14 (01:21:01):
They were about one hundred vertical meters below him, and
they had to turn around, and they left some tea
and the hope that Rob might possibly get to it.
But when I heard that news, I was in tears.
And guy had to speak and tell Rob.

Speaker 20 (01:21:21):
That was a very hard call to make, to have
to tell your friend and a longtime climbing partner that
the rescue that would save his life was no longer coming.

Speaker 19 (01:21:33):
Nobody can come. That day's alderly late. He has been
already one day to spend. I'll say there and then yeah,
I already retired when we led he's going to day.

Speaker 17 (01:21:58):
I was now the person responsible for this, the survival
of the team, and I was certainly no condition to
even mount a rescue for those who were still outside
or get the survivors.

Speaker 18 (01:22:18):
Of our team down to safer ground.

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):
The decision to lead.

Speaker 5 (01:22:27):
Back and Yusuko where they were was not really a
difficult decision, with probably partly my medical background, but also
what we'd been through the night before. Was this was
horrific to see Mike come in very close to death.
My estimate would have been at half an hour, and
Mike would not have been able to move. And here

(01:22:50):
were these other people exposed to phenomenal wins at least
eighty miles an hour, twenty to thirty below zero all night.
We thought it was kinda to leave them rather than
cause them pining, even in a semi conscious Stipe, by
dragging him out of the way we were they were

(01:23:10):
bicycly dead.

Speaker 4 (01:23:17):
When I initially began to come around, I thought it
was in my own bed. It was pleasant, it was warm.
I was not the least bit uncomfortable. There was nothing
to hurt, because all the parts that were exposed were dead,
and dead flesh doesn't hurt. And it wasn't until I

(01:23:40):
got far enough along that I opened my eyes and
could see the ice in front of my face, and
then I managed to look over and I saw the
claw that was my frozen hand that I really At
that point I knew exactly that I was somewhere on
that call, somewhere on that mountain, so I was on

(01:24:03):
my own well, I was as good as it did.
Then when I saw my wife and children just directly
in front of me, That's what drove me, and that
got me up, and that got me moving. I found

(01:24:27):
out a bunch of times I was just trying to
keep from going in circles. I remember one thing that
was pretty unsettling. I can see the sun and the
rest of the stuff around when I can see the
big yellow ball up there, and I'm looking at it,
and it's about there as I'm looking above the horizon,

(01:24:50):
and as you well know, when that sun goes down,
the place changes rather dramatically from something which is survivable
to something which is just horror on earth. I'm shuffling along,
aware that I'm hallucinating, and as I was getting closer
to these blue objects, and I'm really not aware yet

(01:25:13):
that they blew things. Are the tents it rolls through
that they might be, but I don't really know that.
And it's only when somebody stands up in front of
me and we look at each other over one of
these blue rocks do I realize that I'm back. I'm

(01:25:35):
in the tent, I'm in a sleeping bag, and they
know that I'm here.

Speaker 18 (01:25:45):
An hour before Doc I ready.

Speaker 20 (01:25:47):
I would rab to tell him that his wife Jan
was calling from New Zealand on the satellite telephone at
Vice Camp and that I was going to patch him
through to her. And he said, hold on a minute, mate,
I've just got to put some style in my mouth
to moisten it. I'm a bit dry before he could
talk to her, which you know, was Rob just wanting

(01:26:11):
to make sure that when he did talk to Jan,
that he came across sounding good, and probably to reassure
her that he was okay and this was just a
bit of a fix, but he was going to get
his way out of it.

Speaker 14 (01:26:27):
And I guess nobody wanted to admit it to themselves
that it was going to be their last call. It
was something that was just never said. And as I
put the call through and held the microphone of the
radio against the satellite phone, I was almost doubled up

(01:26:50):
holding my hands up with the phone because I was
crying so much.

Speaker 8 (01:26:56):
And I.

Speaker 14 (01:27:00):
I felt that in some ways, I you know, it
was terrible to be doing. It was a terrible thing
as well as a really good thing that nearly broke

(01:27:26):
my heart. But I was glad that I could do
that for them. And every time he spoke to Jan
he he lifted, and so that's that's the most important
thing I think I've ever done.

Speaker 5 (01:28:04):
On the second night, the winds blew up even more
than the first night, and at one stage the moorings
that were holding the tent to the rocks started to give.
I didn't realize that Beck was alive. And what surprised
me more was when I heard that the whole night

(01:28:26):
he had been in a tent no more than ten
feet from where I was.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
During the night, I woke up and realized I was
completely alone, and I'm incredibly thirsty, so I call out
enough to Finally one of the sherpa comes over and
he has a thing of hot tea. He's right outside
the door of the tent, and I tried to get

(01:28:57):
him to come into the tent and he won't come in.
We sit and stare at each other for a while.
I can't get out and he's not coming in, and
eventually he wanders off. I think there was something about
me that that had an air of death.

Speaker 20 (01:29:43):
On the morning of the twelfth, I tried to raise
Rob on the radio from basement, but there was no response.
We tried repeatedly through the day and we will. We're
monitoring the radio, but we didn't hear from Rob again.

(01:30:08):
There were so many people needing assistance and help from
South Cole that there was just no possible way to
initiate another riscue effort.

Speaker 9 (01:30:23):
In the morning of the twelfth, still laying there thinking
about what we're going to do, Mike Groom un zipped
the door of the tent and said, I got to
get out of here. Hey, Mike, how are you doing. Boy,
good to see you. You know, I thought Mike was gone,

(01:30:48):
but all of a sudden, Mike made a miraculous survival
and he's back. And he said twenty minutes, we're going.

Speaker 17 (01:30:58):
I did the rounds of the tent and said we're
going to leave in half an hour. Make sure you've
got your oxygen and whatever supply, whatever personal belongings you
want to take back to Bay's camp and be ready
to leave in half an hour time. And I passed
one tent, and what caught my eye was the fact
the front door was open and the back door was open,

(01:31:19):
and the pair of climbing boots sticking out the end
of the tent. And I really didn't think much of it,
except to think, well, that's one unfortunate person that didn't
survive last night. And because I didn't recognize the person
because on the upper part of their body there was
a sleeping bag draped loosely over the upper part of
their body and their head, which you sometimes do with

(01:31:43):
a dead body. And people have asked me, well, wow,
why didn't I look to see who was underneath it?
But I've seen enough dead bodies in my life not
to want to have to do that, So I just
dismissed it as someone who didn't survive the night. But
I didn't know it at the time that was actually
Beck Weathers.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):
No one had told him that Beck had come back.
Beck had been put in a tent alone, left for
dead once again.

Speaker 4 (01:32:28):
I really don't know what the time is. I've lost
sense of how much time has passed. Its daylight. I'm
yelling out to try to get some connection again, some
attention that you can see another person. That's what I
really wanted.

Speaker 1 (01:32:51):
Incredibly, one of the last people leaving camp heard back
calling out the news traveled down the the man everyone
thought was dead was coming down.

Speaker 5 (01:33:12):
After descending the Lotzi face, I came across David Bridges,
who was holding out a water bottle to me, and
as I was drinking, he said, do you know Beck's alive.
You could have slapped me in the face and not
surprised me as much as that. And I uttered some
exploitive deleted and said that's not true, and he said,

(01:33:35):
have a look for yourself. And I looked up across
the Lotzi face towards a Geneva spear and there were
two people helping us fellow down in a suit which
was obviously becksuit.

Speaker 4 (01:33:47):
I was alive again. I was coming back, even if
I just fell apart. At this point, I was going
to get off the mountain, and the hardest part, the
dangerous part, the part where you're gonna get wounded, is
all behind you. And now it's simply a matter of
getting home.

Speaker 9 (01:34:23):
For days, people have been dying all around me, and
I'm having no emotion. My emotions were frozen as my
body almost But what's in fact happening is they're all
storing up inside of me for this moment. It wasn't

(01:35:02):
until I got through the very last section of the
ace floor and I could see people up ahead from
our base camp, and I sat down, and I cried
and cried and cried, and I never cried like that
my whole life, I don't think.

Speaker 5 (01:35:30):
When we got down to the base camp and I
walked in for the first meal into the mistent, that
was probably the second biggest shock. The enormity of it
all hit me in one fell swoop, looking around and saying, well,

(01:35:51):
these spaces half of the people that I knew weren't
there anymore.

Speaker 14 (01:36:13):
That leaving was so hard, and I remember being so
slow as I couldn't stop turning around that look. It
was so hard to turn your back on the mountain

(01:36:34):
with with Rob and Andy and Doug and Jasko and
Scott Fisher all lying up there.

Speaker 11 (01:37:01):
Jinden.

Speaker 10 (01:37:03):
The world wars the dog, then the the sun tick
cheers while they are busy, wash the cheer or put
you but you sign in where may or not be
young Kushi down war na Hinda tumba swang by t

(01:37:31):
J sue don't okay what gin was soiled? Then need
to be down? They go eat out book you eat
her the e y not war or jaz what just
what the shiangfa.

Speaker 4 (01:37:54):
Everybody always says that the definition of character is what
you do when nobody is looking, and when we were
up there, we didn't think anybody was looking, and so
everybody did pretty much what their inner person, the real them,
the exposed them, would do. And some individuals come out

(01:38:18):
of that I think justly proud of their actions. Others
would probably never want anybody to know. I was fortunate
I got to be witness to those acts, the good ones,
the bad ones, and the individuals that came through that

(01:38:44):
did well, that were selfless. I mean they, every one
of those people, every one of them is to me
a hero, even if nobody knows that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
For as long as people are drawn to Everest, this
line of memorials will continue to grow. The mountain doesn't
care whether we're here or not. It doesn't compete with us.
It is imburdened by our hopes and dreams. Everything it

(01:39:27):
means to us is only what we bring to it.
It's what the mountain reveals about us that has any
lasting value.