The 1996 Disaster · STORM OVER EVEREST · PBS Documentary

[Music] [Music] [Music] so for over 25 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 [Music] tragedy in 1996 a fast-moving storm trapped climbers high on the mountain and people died stories were told forever changing the world's perception and my own about climbing everest 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 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 this is their story when we left base camp we were all wary of course of mighty everest in front of us but this was it this was our chance so we took off and it was a great feeling [Applause] 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 you're not a climber that's big stuff that's exciting we went two thirds of the way through the ice fall and i was hooked it was the most spectacular piece of real estate that i'd ever climbed on it helps you to put yourself in perspective with what life's all about i got through the ice ball and i started crying and i thought well i'm probably hyperventilating because i'm really really tired and then i realized that i was beginning to cry because it was so amazing it's just so beautiful [Music] i remember seeing them coming up the western comb it was may 8th i was already on the mountain we'd set out a day ahead of the other teams climbing up the lotsy face on our way to the summit 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 3 we could see them climbing towards us the mountain suddenly seemed crowded [Music] we decided to 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 [Music] we talked about the weather i took his picture further down i met another friend 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 next day i watched from lower down as scott and all the others began this deep ascent to camp four on the south coal when you leave camp three on the lotsy face [Music] it's the first time that you can actually see the summit your goal is visible and that's very thrilling what blind faith it's been this whole time climbing this far without having your goal in front of you my very first view of everest it was a long moment and a big hard swallow and the thought was i'm not so sure whether i can do this leaving camp three we donned our down suits for the first time and definitely could feel the altitude and strenuousness of the climb you know climbing above 24 into 25 000 feet is is really hard it's uh i don't care who you are it really is it's challenging it's it's hard work this was the first time that i remember registering the air is much much thinner here than anywhere else i've ever been [Music] earlier that morning there'd been an accident to camp three a taiwanese climber had slipped and fallen into a crevasse but he assured his teammate that he was okay and would rest before going higher [Music] [Music] you move out of an area that seems familiar there is this sense of a desolate place it's kind of like moving into golgotha [Music] this is a barren hard inhospitable cold and i don't mean that in temperature i mean that and just a sense of heaviness about the place 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 lotsy face but by the time we reached him chen was dead the sherpas superstitious about death on the mountain wanted us to bring the body down chen's close friend and team leader maka lugao had just arrived at camp 4 on the south coal [Music] sitting at base camp all these years later i can still remember my reaction how upset i was by his response and his decision not to come down [Music] 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 the weather was so crummy that when we first got in there i didn't think there was any chance that we're gonna climb that night in our tents at camp iv that night it was living hell it was absolutely crazy it was bad weather and the concern was well what if it's like this tomorrow 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 party's over about 8 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 wow the day has come i can't believe it get ready be ready 11 o'clock we're going i i still remember looking looking at the faces of the other people doug thought it was a bad idea he you could just tell it in his eyes that he didn't want to go 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 just 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 i'll be there in a minute [Music] way [Music] 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 dreamed that a place could have and they're so close to you that you feel like you can touch them in front of us is this great silhouette the the blackness of everest and the milky way was just on fire it was like a like a row of lights above us it was a vast open sky 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 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 cones 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 in their team separated from everyone else on earth [Music] you start to get in rhythm with your oxygen you get your headlight adjusted just right and jiggle your pack around and feel your body start to come alive and you know the blood flowing and you know you're you're climbing mountain everest it's a it's a pretty cool feeling [Applause] foreign 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 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 and you know why you're climbing mount everest at that moment you look across it all these other peaks that were always way above you and now they're they're tiny they're like waves in the ocean and you know that few people have stood here looking out over this fantastic site by dawn the teams were just below the southeast ridge at 27 600 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 and the professional guides like rob and scott promised access to a dream [Music] 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 as well [Music] 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 i think everybody has has a place in themselves that mountains can 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 [Music] i had spent most of my adult life in profound depression and i mean and i john wayne did 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 other people when they have when they're when their life is at a difficult spot uh turn to drugs or drink or credit cards i go to the mountains that's always worked for me 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 then i think there'll be this fantastic drive behind it [Music] [Applause] now that we could see the summit you're just pulled in 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 unless things are really going south [Music] they'd been claiming hard since midnight it's vital to get to the summit and back to camp four before nightfall [Music] i felt very comfortable with the situation we were inside of our turnaround time the weather's still good there were certainly some delays that were unexpected but that's how climbing is [Music] and by the time that i get up to the balcony i realized that i pretty much was out of the game my right eye was was not really usable because it was 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 sherpa and i just climbed all night to get to this place i didn't want to go he said bec i want you to promise me that you're going to stay here like i'm back and i said rob cross my heart hope to die i'm sticking and it never ever crossed my mind that he'd never come back beck had a problem and it was too bad i 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 a tough break and see you later [Music] 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 using old fixed lines or did we have enough new line to string across the traverse to the hillary step [Music] anatoly and i tied into the rope together and trekked off towards the hillary step over this very beautiful very delicate knife edge ridge and there's a steady enough wind that would take the rope between us and hold it out in this big arc it would hold itself out for maybe 10 or even 15 seconds at a time and then drop down and like a sail it would it would bulge out again 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 stakes and the fact that when you sunk your ice axe into the snow you could look through the hole as you pulled it out and see tibet and over here you could see nepal 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 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 could climb that that that piece of rock face and losing one hour just more or less standing still on a mountain that is really the stupidest thing you can do because speed is the same as safety looked at my watch and i had a sick feeling inside of myself this is way i was feeling i was feeling sick at that point because i knew i knew it was impossible to get there by the 1pm turnaround time and i thought if i keep going now i'll be out of oxygen get to the summit but i'll be coming back down to the south coal in the dark and without oxygen and more tide than i am now the risks were escalating 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 at that stage rob came up past 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 mitchell call pal didn't say mate like an australian it's your call pal i'll see you back at the south col and that was the last time i saw rob alive [Music] [Music] and it's not difficult climbing by rock climbing standards but you have to imagine you've got these massive boots with little rock holds 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 28 29 000 feet and an oxygen bottle in your pack and it's just very awkward and i arrived at the summit at 125 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 finally we came to one rise and i looked to the next and there were a group of people on top and i knew that was it in any other circumstance you would think that somebody could cover that distance in 10 or 15 minutes but it took some of these people much much longer than that it's not very far but it's just so hard and even though there are not that many paces it just takes very very long time from there to actually get to the summit but soon enough we were joining the celebration up there and looking down the north side and looking down the west and the east and the south and we could see it all we were on the roof of the world 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 at that moment what i really felt was a massive massive contentment and sort of a feeling of everything falling [Music] [Music] it was just this cluster of people 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 it was my feeling that we celebrated a little too long we were waiting for scott to come up so we could descend as 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 finally i was just like we gotta go it's getting late now this is no more we gotta go 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 there and telling them look get yourself ready we got to go down now [Music] when rob called me from the summit at 2 30 it was those familiar words base camp this is everest summit oh and he sounded sort of pale and hearty he sounded really good and um he told us who had just started descending and he he said that doug hansen was he's just in sight and he said as soon as doug got up to him that they'd do a really quick turnaround and he was intending to descend straight away i said what's the weather like and he said cold and windy cold and windy rob and jessica and i we started the summit for an extra five or ten minutes and then took some photographs and then yasuko and i headed back down yasuko namba had just completed the seven summits it had taken her 16 years but she was now the second japanese woman to climb the highest mountain on every continent and then finally we started descending um and then getting down over the hillary step i meet scott who's on the way up and i sort of really hug him we high-fived we hugged and it was just obvious from his movement that he was intending to continue going up the first thing that i noticed about scott fisher was just how badly he 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 still going up the mountain [Music] now hours behind schedule 14 climbers were still high on the mountain at the summit rob hall waited for his client doug hanson [Music] doug hansen 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 worked two jobs to save enough money to return to everest finally he was almost there [Music] i was in front of rob hall i told rob henson okay it's late it's now bad weather we're going to down but dr hansen he didn't talk me he just shake his head and then he's pointing his finger and summit is rob told me okay i don't want to leave glance behind you guys go ahead you go ahead leave oxygen bottle and salsa made go [Music] down from the south summit i recall looking back along this razorback ridge to the hillary step i saw rob hall standing up and doug hansen leaning into the slope resting on his eye sex i remember giving the normal thumbs up sign like that and i got the same response from the person i thought was rob hall and that indicated to me that everything was okay and it was time to continue the descent we were headed down from the south summit when i saw sandy laying in the snow there's this person in a yellow suit laying face down head down the hill and charlotte i recognize charlotte standing above this person i tried pulling her to her feet and she was just a load of dead weight she just she couldn't go any further she collapsed she literally collapsed and then there was absolutely no more power in her to move down and then i remembered i had that injection of dexamethasone kept it warm inside my suit all this time just in case something like this happened 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 and i'm like yeah go for it so i unzipped the rainbow zipper 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 and she smiled this crazy wonderful maniacal smile and jammed the decks into my leg [Music] there we also realized that sandy was running out of oxygen 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 and she is not from then i believe tim and i moved together and left sandy with neil and we were just a little in front of the the rest of the gang on our way down to the last fixed ropes john taske was just right in front of me we basically came to the to the balcony together and there is back so we said bec come on down with us and beck said no no i basically give him a word i'll wait for rob i'll stay here and wait for him 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 in good weather that would have been obviously the right decision to make because rob was more experienced rob had a rope so he could have short rope big down back down we'd have had all sorts of trouble 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 roped and that was the end of it i could have gone down with them and obviously i should have but i really didn't want the day to end even then it wasn't any sense of being left behind or abandoned or almost dying or anything happening at that point when we got the 415 call [Music] 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 rob was on the radio to one of his guides andy harris who was waiting for him at the south summit rob was obviously distressed and concerned about something that was going on there was something wrong andy was last seen climbing back up the ridge to help rob and doug [Music] what really sort of concerned 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 clouds coming from behind tawichi 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 saw the mountains of tawichi disappear down below this what was sort of benevolent puffy clouds has now got more of a sinister look to it it's really it's starting to look like it's you know a real storm and we're walking right down into the storm the climbers nearing camp four on the south call were the first to run into trouble a rock came hurtling down the face and not lose glove from underneath the piece of rope and it went cartwheeling away with the wind following the rock we didn't know who it was but it was obviously anatoly book reeve racing down who went straight past us without talking heading off towards the uh the tents on the south coal at that moment as i looked up and saw the tents i could see the storm coming behind him one minute we could look down and we could see the count below and the next minute you couldn't see it within the space of five minutes it changed from really a good day with a little bit of wind to to desperate conditions something i'd never experienced the ferocity of before [Music] and then i came across 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 me all the snow fell off his climbing seat and suddenly i could see that there's someone in front of me and i think he said is that you mike and i said yes and i think he said well i've got a problem i can't see so mike put me on a short tether 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 the down foot and it's it's nothing there and then to my surprise still in the gully i came across yasuko sitting in the snow completely and utterly exhausted so i really had my hands full now because here's beck withers who's totally blind and yasuko who can't walk there was no more thought about who was on who's team it was just people fortunately for me neil could see my dilemma and took over the control of yessico 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 tighter because she had hope and she knew that she was heading down [Music] [Music] [Music] the sherpas never came back they left makalu gao more than a thousand feet above camp four [Music] [Music] scott soon collapsed on a ledge not far from makalu gao too weak to descend further [Music] now both teams were without their leaders 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 that's impossible up there at 5 15 he called and he said that doug was weak and um yes i i could tell things were very serious my feeling was that rob should descend to south coal and at least look after himself to be in a position to effect a rescue the next day as hard as that might be when guy was talking like this i think rob sounded a little annoyed that you know like doug doug might be listening to this at the time i was effectively being the devil's advocate i mean i was trying to give him the option to to 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 i recorded at that time that it sounded like rob wasn't leaving doug and that was kind of like we didn't hear for another 12 hours from rob as darkness fell the storm was nearing full force it swept over the south coal engulfing camp four 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 isn't anybody here why am i alone and i could hear nothing i could hear nothing but the wind it was the wind that was moving me around like shoving me and pushing me and [Music] it was terrifying i felt lonely i wanted to say goodbye i wanted to say i love you one more time i i didn't want to die alone it was uh 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 [Music] [Music] so storm which began as a cyclone in the bay of bengal surprised everyone on the mountain as it surged higher gaining in energy power and ferocity overwhelmingly exhausted summit climbers as they searched for camp on the hard rocks and steep cliffs of the south coal [Music] we would walk thinking wow the wind's going to want to blow us towards the kangshan face so let's over compensate by going the other direction and we'll probably hit base camp and as you move further and you become more disoriented and the entire time that you're doing this the storm the wind the snow the cold everything is just is moving it's crescendoing and now it's 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 like sheep and then we just became hopelessly lost i recall the ice and the snow stinging my face freezing my eyelids together to a point where i have to to sort of break the ice off my eyelids to be able to see and tripping over rocks and on the south coal picking up beck when he did the same because he fell over quite a lot 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 people who have all run out of oxygen some of them really start collapsing and those of us who are still able to work try to sort of you know pick them up make them keep walking this is survival and surviving in the mountain is to keep moving never ever stop 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 we knew we were right there we could be 40 meters from the tents and people could die there but there was no way that we could find our way back to the tents on both sides of the south call it's this big expansive flat but at the edges it becomes precipitously steep one side's the kangchang face and the other side is straight down the the steepest section on everest on the nepal side so and and it was literally it would have been walking off a cliff i just 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 get out of they were beginning on a downward slope off the can chunk face and neil sensed this i don't know how he did it and that's the reason neil's a guide and and i'm not but uh he made that decision that we're going to stop and then we start to come together this odd lot of individuals and we become the huddle [Music] 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 i don't think it's possible to get somebody who's incapacitated down the hillary step let alone along the knife edge ridge between the hillary step in the south summit let alone in a storm unless some sort of amazing thing happened and somebody came charging up with a pile of oxygen bottles that rob was in really deep trouble with doug 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 about to come unglued i don't want to die i don't want to die my face is freezing my hands are freezing i remember thinking i don't want to die i don't want to die here yaska 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 i had this sense of just gently moving away i wasn't giving up i'm just becoming unaware 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 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 certainly these were real feelings that people were having but um 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 gotta figure out how to get through the night it's just about living hour by hour minute by minute [Music] 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 [Applause] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] fashion [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign this is a situation where people die this was the real deal and there was no mistaking the danger of the situation that we were in we were on knife's edge i could almost objectively 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 you're in this little tiny world of incredible noise uh and and cold and you you're going past just shivering and shaking uncontrollably you have no ability to stop your your body from trying to generate enough heat you can't get it to stop i think it was neil who spotted the upper slopes in that interest and once he spotted them he's yelled at something and i saw the same sight and quickly like neil were able to figure out where we were in relation to to camp four i associated camp for the tents as 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 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 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 you know i tried to to drag her and help her along but i i couldn't do it 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 in the amount of time that i needed to stay with neil we were staggering about like really drunk people absolutely no resources left to to even try to move but but as it was everybody's only chance of surviving we did it anyway and i tried to go with them but i had beck and yasuko and i literally i think i had one person on each shoulder but after 20 meters yesterday had fallen over twice and it was just a hopeless situation 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 laying on club's arm shuffling along slowly but moving and me wanting to be with her but just not able to physically [Music] go so [Music] 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 [Music] and what happened to doug [Music] did he still have enough life in him to reach out to rob and say don't leave me [Music] or did doug ever look at robin say rob just go save yourself [Music] and where was andy harris [Music] we were so lucky that the direction that we went in led us to camp iv 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 eventually we sort of just staggered into the tents and more or less collapsed anatoly was like where's scott he kept asking where's scott i remember telling anatoly he wasn't with us no scott not here not here but people and i remember turning around and pointing anatoly buchriev 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 [Music] and i totally gathered some thermos with hot tea whatever could be utilized to really revive people for for at least for a little while and then he set out into the snowstorm and at that point i really felt like i had passed this baton to anatoly and i just assumed that this same set of actions was happening for rob's team and that isuko and backwood make it back as well there was certainly a great deal of hope when i saw the group move off towards the tents that meant that somebody would know where the rest of us were surely someone would come out and find us that clearly was what needed to be done i thought it's not going to be very long we'll have help to come back out here and we'll be back in the tents it couldn't be more than half an hour and folks will be back [Music] so we could see a headlamp coming vaguely in our direction but certainly not striding purposefully but it was a light and with a light was a glimmer of hope and soon it became clear that it was anatoly 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 that was impossible we had to keep moving finally i came into a tent and there was neal with a huge hot hot hot cup of tea and remember him handing it to me and i couldn't hold it because my hands were shaking so violently that he had defeated me the first few sips and then i could put my hands around that cup and warm them enough to be able to stop shaking as much and drink myself anatoly had promised me that he would be right back at a certain point i i lost hope that he was going to come back because it seemed like it was taking so long [Music] it was it was a glorious sight seeing that little tiny headlamp in the distance growing larger and coming closer to us he came back [Music] and i totally spent the whole night trying to rescue those people he would have wanted to bring back both beck and sukup at that point but if he had done that he probably would have died himself [Music] the last part of being there i couldn't see anybody i could still feel somebody next to me and i remember thinking it was probably esco it at that point there was no pain left there was just a sense of of just this detachment and calm and i didn't feel uncomfortable i didn't nothing hurt it just was sliding away [Music] gradually faded into black [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] my [Music] um [Music] when rob called in the morning i scrambled out of my sleeping bag and i just remember climbing over bodies to get to the radio i just had to get there and i i picked up the radio and i said rob where are you i was really hoping he was going to say south coal and he said i'm at the south summit and my heart just hit the floor [Music] rob once said that if you're stuck up there you might as well be on the moon [Music] rob called saying he couldn't move and come and get me [Music] and when we asked rob about doug and all rob could say as the doug is gone [Music] at that stage he asked about andy harris he said andy was with me last night does anybody know where he is [Music] in the morning we went through looking through number and back 350 or 400 meter from south carolina back was lying down i pick up yes phone number but she wasn't to respond to me and then i told them okay number is dead here you guys go down look back here they went down they look they were totally not moving they told me it seemed like a number is totally lie down [Music] at base camp they called the united states and told beck's wife that her husband was dead [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] um [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] during the morning the winds became so strong the sherpas tried their hardest to get to rob they had to turn around somewhere up on the south east ridge there came a point that they realized it was too dangerous for them to continue it was still blowing and hard to see how to find a path [Music] we both decided we may not reach there or we made something going to be happening for us too [Music] they were very upset that they had not been able to to get up to rob they tried their hardest but these guys were very exhausted [Music] i was so sad i came all the way up there to help rob but i didn't met him i had to return close to by him they were about 100 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 that was a very hard call to make to have to tell your friend and long-time climbing partner that the rescue that would save his life was no longer coming nobody can come that day it's already late he has been already one night he spent outside there and then yeah i already thought when we let he's going to die i was now the person responsible for this the survival of the of the the team and i was certainly no condition to even mount a rescue for those who are still outside or get the survivors of our team down to safer ground the decision to leave beck and isuko 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 were these other people exposed to phenomenal winds at least 80 miles an hour 20 30 below zero all night we thought it was kinder to leave them rather than cause them pain even in a semi-conscious state by dragging them over to where we were they were basically dead when i initially began to come around i thought i 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 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 i really at that point i knew exactly that i was somewhere on that call somewhere on that mountain so i was on my own i was as good as dead then when i saw my wife and children just directly in front of me that that's what drove me and that got me up and that got me moving [Music] i felt that 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 not the rest of the stuff around but 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 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 that the blue things or 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 in front of me and we look at each other over one of these blue rocks do i realize that that i'm back in the tent i'm in a sleeping bag and they know that i'm here [Music] an hour before dark i radioed rob to tell him that his wife jan was calling from new zealand on the satellite telephone at base 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 snow in my mouth to moisten it i'm a bit dry before he could talk to her which you know was was rob just wanted to make sure that when he did talk to jan that he came across sounding good and probably to reassure her that that he was okay and this was just a bit of a fix but he was gonna get his way out of it and i guess nobody wanted to admit it to themselves that it was going to be their last call [Music] it was something that was just never said [Music] and as i put the call through and held the microphone of the radio against the satellite phone i was almost doubled up holding my hands up with the phone because i was crying so much and i i felt that uh in some ways i it you know it was terrible to be doing it was a terrible thing as well as a really good thing it nearly broke my heart but i was glad that i could do that for them and every time he spoke to jan he he lifted [Music] and so that's that's the most important thing i think i've ever done 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 he had been in a tent no more than 10 feet from where i was during the night i woke up and i realized that i was completely alone and i'm incredibly thirsty so i call out enough till finally one of the sherpa comes over and he has a thing of hot tea and he's right outside the the door of the tent uh and i try to get him to come into the tent 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 [Applause] on the morning of the 12th i tried to raise rob on the radio from base camp but there was no response [Music] we tried repeatedly through the day we always were monitoring the radio [Music] but we didn't hear from rob again there were so many people needing assistance and help from south coal that there was just no possible way to initiate another rescue effort [Music] in the morning of the twelfth [Music] still laying there thinking about what we're gonna do mike groom unzipped the door of the tent and said gotta get out of here hey mike how you doing boy good to see you uh you know i thought mike was gone but all of a sudden mike made a miraculous survival and he's back and he said 20 minutes we're going 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 over whatever personal belongings you want to take back to base 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 and a 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 know you sometimes do with a with a dead body and people have asked me well why didn't i look to see who was underneath it but i've i've seen enough dead bodies in my life to 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 but that was actually beck withers no one had told him that beck had come back beck had been put in a tent alone left for dead once again [Music] i really don't know what the time is i've lost sense of how much time has passed it's daylight i'm yelling out to try to get some connection again some attention that you can [Music] re see another person that's what i really wanted incredibly one of the last people leaving camp heard beck calling out the news traveled down the mountain the man everyone thought was dead was coming down [Music] after dissenting the lotsy face i came across david britis 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 added some expletive deleted and said that's not true and he said have a look for yourself and i looked up across the lots he faced towards the geneva spur and there were two people helping this fellow down in a suit which was obviously back suit 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 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 [Music] moment [Music] it wasn't until i got through the very last section of the ice flow and i could see people up ahead from our base camp and i sat down and i cried and cried and cried i never cried like that my whole life i don't [Applause] think [Music] when we got down to the base camp and i walked in for the first meal into the mess tent that was probably the second biggest shock [Music] the enormity of it all hit me in one fell swoop looking around and seeing all this space is half of the people that i knew weren't there anymore that leaving was so hard and i remember being so slow as i couldn't stop turning around to look it was so hard to turn your back on the mountain with with rob and andy and doug and yasko and and scott fisher all lying up there [Music] foreign everybody always says that the definition of character is what you do when nobody's 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 they exposed them would do and some individuals come out 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 did well that were selfless i mean they every one of those people every one of them is uh to me a hero even if nobody knows that [Music] 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 isn't burdened by our hopes and dreams everything it means to us is only what we bring to it it's what the mountain reveals about us that has any lasting value [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: David Snow

Views: 295,119

Rating: 4.8295965 out of 5

Keywords: Everest Summit, Summit of mt Everest;, Mt Everest Summit;, Everest climbing expedition, everest expedition, everest climbing, best everest documentary, everest documentary, climbing everest, everest film, everest full length film, everest deathzone, everest documentaries, best everest films, everest climbing footage, everest death rate, best everest stories, everest hiking, 1996 Everest, 1996 everest disaster, 1996 Mt Everest climb, 1996 Everest expedition

Id: So3vH9FY2H4

Length: 101min 4sec (6064 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021