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The Everest Decade: 1996
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Ed Viesturs on 1996: Turn Around, Guys!
America's preeminent high-altitude mountaineer dissects the decisions made during 1996—the deadliest season in Everest's history.
Adapted from No Shortcuts to the Top, by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts; to be published in October 2006 by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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We'd been so focused on Rob's plight that it scarcely registered with us that we had no idea what was going on with Scott. Part of the problem was that Scott had no functioning radio, so none of us could communicate directly with him. We didn't even know whether he was alive or dead. At some point it dawned on me that Scott was probably suffering the same fate as Rob. Later, several of us were able to reconstruct Scott's movements on May 10 and 11.
Scott reached the summit at 3:40 p.m.—also well after his own prescribed turnaround time. The Mountain Madness sirdar (or head Sherpa), Lopsang Jangbu, one of the strongest climbers on the mountain, was waiting for him there. According to Lopsang (interviewed later by writer Jon Krakauer for his best-selling book Into Thin Air), Scott lingered on the summit for 15 or 20 minutes, during which he complained about his condition. In Lopsang's paraphrase, what he said was "I am too tired. I am sick, also, need medicine for stomach." Alarmed, Lopsang urged, "Scott, please, we go fast down."
As they started the descent, Rob was still on the summit, waiting for Doug Hansen. Scott was so out of it that he couldn't handle the short, normally easy rappels over the rock steps high on the ridge. To circumvent one series of steps, he glissaded, sitting on his rear end, down a snow slope parallel to them, but then he had to perform a 330-foot (101-meter) traverse through knee-deep snow to regain the route.
At 6 p.m., just above a broad shoulder called the Balcony, at 27,600 feet (8,413 meters), Lopsang, who had stayed behind to aid others in trouble, caught up with Scott. Seeing that Scott had taken off his mask, Lopsang put it back over his face and made sure he was breathing oxygen. But the words Scott uttered were further proof of his deterioration. According to Lopsang, "He says, 'I am very sick, too sick to go down. I am going to jump.' He is saying many times, acting like crazy man, so I tie him on rope, quickly, otherwise he is jumping down into Tibet."
Short-roping Scott, Lopsang got him some 300 feet (91 meters) farther down the ridge before Scott collapsed, unable to walk. In an act of extraordinary loyalty, Lopsang hunkered beside his team leader on a small, snow-covered ledge, preparing to spend the night with him. As Lopsang later reported to Jon, "He tell me, 'Lopsang, you go down, you go down.' I tell him, 'No, I stay together here with you.'"
At 8 p.m. another refugee appeared out of the darkness. It was Makalu Gau Ming-Ho, the leader of the Taiwanese expedition, accompanied by two of his team's Sherpas. Equally played out, Makalu settled onto the same ledge, freeing his Sherpas to head down to the South Col.
For another hour Lopsang shared the vigil with Makalu and Scott, even while he got so cold that he doubted his own chances of survival. But Scott once more urged him: "'You go down, send up Anatoli [Boukreev; Scott's Russian climbing guide].' So I say, 'OK, I go down, I send quick Sherpa and Anatoli up.'"
The next morning two Sherpas from Scott's team, Tashi Tshering and Ngawang Sya Kya (Lopsang's father), headed back up the ridge to try to rescue Scott. Despite the pummeling wind, they forced their way up to the bivouac ledge. There they found Scott barely breathing, his eyes fixed in a vacant stare; they tried to administer oxygen, but it seemed to do no good. Scott was just a thousand vertical feet (305 meters) above the safety of the South Col, but he might as well have been on the far side of the moon. Makalu was in almost as bad shape, but he was able to drink some tea and breathe from the bottles of oxygen the Sherpas had brought up. In another heroic rescue effort, Tashi and Ngawang put Makalu on a short rope and got him down to the South Col.
Having failed to rouse Scott and get him moving downward, the Sherpas had, in effect, given him up for dead. But Anatoli could not bear to accept that verdict. Though near exhaustion himself, he set out at 5 p.m.—only a little more than an hour before dark—to make one last effort to save Scott. It was not till 7:30 or 8 p.m. that he reached the bivouac ledge. There, in the beam of his headlamp, he saw that it was too late. As Anatoli later told Jon, "His oxygen mask is around face, but bottle is empty. He is not wearing mittens; hands completely bare. Down suit is unzipped, pulled off his shoulder, one arm is outside clothing. There is nothing I can do. Scott is dead." Anatoli covered Scott's face with his backpack, then descended to the South Col.
What most of us believe today is that Scott was in the grips of cerebral edema—fluid buildup in the brain, causing extreme confusion and loss of coordination. The hallucination that he could jump back to camp is a typical manifestation of that ailment. Yet because he was the expedition leader, there was no one else in a position to recognize Scott's condition and send him down. The very edema probably prevented Scott from recognizing what a predicament he was in. He simply thought he was tired, feeling ill, just having a bad day. There was no reason for him to go to the summit, but it would have been unthinkable for him to let the clients go up without him. In a sense, too, Scott had probably come to underestimate Everest. He was known to joke about how easy the South Col route was, referring to it as the Yellow Brick Road to the summit. In the same way, after our successful '94 expedition, Rob had advertised a "100 percent success rate" for Adventure Consultants' clients on Everest.
Yet timing was everything. Without the onset of that sudden and violent storm late on May 10, both Rob and Scott might have gotten away with it—even with their late arrival times on the summit.
By May 12 five climbers from the two teams were dead: not only both leaders, but Rob's fellow guide Andy Harris, 31, his client Yasuko Namba, 47, and, of course, his client and friend Doug Hansen, 46. By the end of the deadly spring season of 1996, Everest would take the lives of 12 of its aspirants.
Continue Part I: 1996: Turn Around, Guys!: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Next >>
Part II: 2006: The Mad Season >>
Everest Map: The 2006 Cast of Characters >>
Everest Main Page >>
More on Ed Viesturs:
Podcast interview with Ed Viesturs: Download it now >>
Best of Adventure 2006: Ed Viesturs was named the magazine's first Adventurer of the Year >>
There+Back: Ed Viesturs became the first American to climb all the world's 8,000-meter (26,248-foot) peaks when he summited Annapurna >>
Q+A: 8,000-Meter Man: Contributing Editor Michael Shnayerson profiles Ed Viesturs >>
Adventure's September 2006 issue features 31 amazing adventure towns; chaos at the top of Mount Everest; an inside look at surfing California's Lost Coast; 11 fall weekend getaways near you; the best high-tech footwear, world class adventure travel; hiking the Alps, and more!
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