TODAY, WHEN I THINK of that Saturday, I think mostly of the night, which I remember as being black, eerie, and still. There was a going-away party for the Heards at the home of Hampton and Anne Sides—Hampton was an Outside senior editor at the time—and by 8 p.m. their back patio was full of buzzing people downing chips and designer beer and talking about you-know-what. The usual going-away stuff had been arranged—a fortune-teller, a guy in a chicken suit—but Everest hung over everything.

Early in the evening, a local woman who'd done some high-altitude mountaineering showed up,

The feeling was beyond bizarre. Rob Hall was up there dying; I was at a party with a beer in my hand. I couldn't help but wonder: Had Outside set up a race to the summit between Hall and Fischer that set the stage for disaster?

and Heard bluntly told her that Scott Fischer—the charismatic, ponytailed leader of Mountain Madness, the other commercial group that made its summit attempt the same day as Krakauer's—was dead. He wasn't aware that this woman and Fischer knew each other through climbing circles. She instantly burst into tears.

That night I was a bearer of good—if frustratingly incomplete—news. Late in the afternoon, Bryant had stepped into my office and told me what Linda Moore, Krakauer's wife, had related to him a moment earlier: Jon was now listed as accounted for. She had no additional details; later we found out that Krakauer made it to his tent just as the storm hit and spent the night shivering and delirious.

I arrived at the party with bad news as well. Rob Hall was stranded at 28,700 feet near the South Summit, trying to hang on in windchill temperatures estimated at minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently Hall had stayed with a client who was having trouble getting down the Hillary Step. (It was Doug Hansen, we later learned.) People at Base Camp, talking to Hall via radio, pleaded with him to stand up and move his legs, but he couldn't. As Hall's wife, Jan Arnold, would tell Krakauer: "He sounded like Major Tom . . . like he was just floating away."

THE FEELING WAS BEYOND BIZARRE. Hall was up there dying, and I was standing around with a beer in my hand. I thought about an issue that would be aired more than once in the months ahead: the culpability of Outside's editors. Of me.

Both Fischer's and Hall's companies had competed hard for the right to guide Krakauer to the top, but, clearly, they also seemed to have been competing on the mountain. It appeared that each man had ignored his turnaround time so he could get the most climbers to the summit. Were they motivated by a desire to show each other up in the magazine? Whatever had happened, I couldn't help wondering whether our presence on the mountain had created the environment in which the disaster played out.

A few minutes later, I heard Hampton Sides's voice from the kitchen: "Phone call for Mark." I followed him inside. It was an editor at Outside Online, our Internet partner, with updated information about Krakauer. He confirmed that Jon was alive. At the moment, he was descending the Lhotse Face with the storm's other survivors, on their way to Camp II. From there, it would take them a few days to reach Base Camp.

Mark returned to the patio and shared the good news. And then he passed along the sad part of the story that everybody sensed was coming. "I've just been told that Rob Hall quit responding to radio calls a few hours ago," he said. "Base Camp is presuming that he died."

I went to the backyard, sat down on the lawn in the darkness, and listened to more of what Mark had to say. Unfortunately, the story he told was as black as the night.