Jon Krakauer describes summit-day tragedy

Editors note: The following interview contains language that may be offensive to some readers. Discretion is advised.

How can a mountain be both big and crowded?

It's a huge mountain, but when you come to the upper 3,000 feet, the route gets narrower and narrower. And on the fixed ropes on the upper southeast ridge, only one person can climb at a time. So definitely the crowds played a factor in slowing down ... final members, I think, and ... it's unavoidable in this day and age, but 30 people on that route is a lot of people.

At the end of the route, I don't know how much people were delayed. They were delayed some. They were slow anyway. But yeah, it definitely slowed people down.

Another factor was, before the final assault, a deal was worked out who would try what day. Originally the Yugoslavs--the Montenegrins--would be first and we thought they would fix the route. And if not them, IMAX was going to be second and they were a strong team. We figured they would fix the upper route. The fact that Scott's group and our group (led by Rob Hall) were in fact the first group to the summit meant that we would have to put up a fair amount of fixed rope, which further delayed the group significantly.

We all got to the south summit, quite a large number of us, and we sat there for an hour waiting for this hypoxic rumor, that the Sherpa were going to fix the final section of the summit ridge and the south summit to the summit--which didn't have any fixed rope or not much, a few bits were coming out of the snow, old rope. And then after an hour the Sherpa made it clear they weren't going to do it, and so I forget which of us finally said "well, we'll do it." It was Anatoli (Boukreev), Neal Beidleman, me, and Andy Harris. We took it upon ourselves to finally say "Well, fuck, we'll do it. What's the problem? Who's got the rope?" Some Sherpa coughed some up and other people coughed some up, and I was basically carrying rope. But Anatoli led it out and Neal was belaying him. And after the four of us finished fixing the final bit from the south summit to the summit, the floodgates opened and right on our heels, eventually people were right behind me.

Anatoli got to the top first. I was running out of gas (oxygen). Neal had been second, but he let me pass him. My oxygen was about to run out and I wanted to tag the summit and get back to the south summit where I had another cylinder. So I was the second one to the top, and Andy was the third, and Neal came up.

The delays, even on the way back ... By the time I got to the Hillary Step, I got there just in time for the major traffic jam. And my oxygen ran out at the top of the Hillary Step and I had to wait there. I didn't want to try to weave my way through the crowd without oxygen because I was so dizzy. I didn't want to fall and blow it. So I just waited. I stood there at the Hillary Step for maybe half an hour. I don't know how long, must have been at least half an hour, maybe longer. And at that point I watched almost everyone, maybe everyone pass. I was on my way down and they were going up. The end of the line was Rob and Doug (Hansen), Scott, and Makalu Gao. I saw the whole parade go by right there and it was definitely a time-consuming thing.

There's no way to avoid (delays), but they're a factor. The delays fixing ropes at the southeast ridge, the delay at the south summit while we all sat around with our thumbs up our butts wondering who was going to fix the summit, and then the delay at the Hillary Step. All those factors.

Did these delays prove significant when the storm moved in?

That storm, if it had come an hour or two later, nobody would have died. If it had come an hour or two earlier, 20-plus people would have died.

Scott's group--to Neal and Anatoli's credit--all of his clients survived. But man, it was a hair's breadth from all of them dying or many of them dying. Sandy (Pittman) and Charlotte (Fox), they were laid out on the ice, helpless. If Anatoli had not come back, they would have been dead.

Yasuko (Namba) died and Beck (Weathers) got seriously fucked up because we didn't have an Anatoli. Two of our three guides were dead and the third was seriously frostbitten. Those guys were laid out on the ice, too, and no one came back to get them.

We started at 11:30 (p.m. on May 9). Scott about a half-hour later. Our group was older and slower, without a doubt. Starting in the dark, it was a beautiful morning, cold, a little bit of breeze, but just perfect conditions.

Rob made it clear that he didn't want the fast guys in our group to go out ahead. He wanted us all to stay together till sunrise. So those of us in the front--it was me, Ang Dorje Sherpa, and Mike Groom--were breaking trail. We repeatedly had to wait and got cold waiting for the slow members of our group. At dawn I reached the southeast ridge, about halfway, a beautiful sunrise, I mean it was just fucking amazing. At that point Rob made it clear, no going ahead until we're all there. So I waited there an hour and a half from the time I got there to the slowest members of the group.

Meanwhile, Scott's group had passed, leapfrogged past the slower members of our group and got to the southeast ridge. I was sort of pissed off. I knew the crowd was a problem and I wanted to get ahead of it for safety reasons. I was forced to wait. And meanwhile they weren't under any constraints. They just started going on ahead. And so they passed me. As soon as Rob gave me the go-ahead, I went and got as far up, passed as many of Scott's group as I had, and actually got right up behind Anatoli and Neal, or probably not Neal, maybe Lobsang or one of Scott's Sherpas. So I think there was a little tension between Scott's group and our group--just sort of who was going to get ahead. Everyone knew you didn't want to get stuck at the back of the parade. But it was civil.

And we all got to the south summit, the bulk of the group, and just sort of spaced out there, using up precious oxygen, wasting precious time, waiting for the summit ropes to be fixed when finally the four of us fixed them. Once again, the crowd surged forward. The final summit ridge is the most technical part of the climb. There's no way to pass anybody. It's steep, 60 degrees, really good snow, perfect snow-ice. But it's steep, not all of it was fixed, so there were sections where you can't fuck up. If you trip or don't get a good ice ax placement and you trip, you're going to take the Big Ride. So people were trying to be careful there. So I don't know who else ran out of oxygen there. I suspect I wasn't the only one.

Coming from the south summit, the final very distinct section of knife-edged ridge from the south summit to the summit. I don't know how far it is, maybe it's a half-mile, maybe it's a quarter-mile. It only gains about 400 vertical feet but it's really quite spectacular. It involves the Hillary Step and one other short step. And then you're sort of on this knife edge and then it empties into a gentle bowl and then there's the summit with a survey marker with a couple of GPS--part of this GPS study program--a survey marker festooned with prayer flags.

Anatoli was there and Andy Harris and I were all there and I took some photos. I knew my oxygen was running out. It wasn't so much the weather then. By the time I got to the summit ridge it was still windy, but it was still clear up high. People don't realize that. It wasn't like big storm clouds out on the horizon. It was slow, creeping clouds coming out of the Western Cwm. I remember after shooting Anatoli with his flag, and Andy with his flag, I shot some pictures. I turned around and got the hell out of there. Neal was coming up there and I shot some pictures of Neal looking back down the ridge.

And for the first time through my viewfinder I noticed these wispy clouds almost level with the summit. Shortly after I got to the south summit the clouds had enveloped the mountain and it was a whiteout. It wasn't still so alarming, it was just a classic ... bad visibility whiteout and it started to snow. The wind still wasn't severe and I just got the hell down, and I could do that because I had the experience, unlike most of the people who stuck with their guides. So I just booked on down, and I met one of Scott's group, Martin (Adams), who had gone down ahead of me. And he was just wandering, seemed sort of lost, but maybe not, maybe I was imagining that. And then I went down through the whiteout and he started following me and then at some point he waited for Scott.

And then I met Beck at the southeast ridge, the same point in the morning where we had to wait at dawn. And he had been there since dawn. His eyesight had been failing. He had this radiokeratotomy, and it turned out that this eye surgery, this corrective eye surgery, for some reason at altitude the pressure change made him go blind. He couldn't see. And Rob had told him, "You're not climbing any higher, pal" and he waited there.

So he waited there and when I got there, halfway down, the storm was coming in and I said, "Beck, come with me, I'll get you down." And he was almost ready to do it and he looked up and saw Mike Groom, one of our guides, coming down with Yasuko, and he decided to wait because I'm not a guide. He said, "I'll wait for Mike because he's a guide and he'll short-rope me." I didn't have a rope and that proved to be a very significant decision on his part, for him and Mike and Yasuko, because that meant that Mike had to bring back both Beck and Yasuko. So anyway, I left Beck. I was secretly relieved that I didn't have to take this guy down, and I just booked and headed down the lower face. At some point, the wind really picked up, I don't know, this was 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I ran out of oxygen somewhere in there, too, but I was still doing all right. I got to the very bottom of the face, well within easy sight of the camp. The last thing about the (South) Col is this really gentle blue ice, very hard blue ice and it's the kind of thing that's easy when you're not tired. You just walk on it, it's not even steep enough to use your ice ax. But coming down it was scary. I didn't want to blow it. I didn't want to slip there and break my neck or my legs so I stopped, adjusted my down suit, took my useless, frozen oxygen mask off my neck and got so I could really do it.

And while I was doing it, Andy Harris came down, one of our guides, and he was sort of a mystery, he was acting really strange on the summit ridge, sort of hypoxic and weird, some very weird exchanges, and he showed up here, and he sat beside me and I told him to be careful, and he seemed sort of desperate, his face was all frozen, his nose was frozen, his cheeks were all frosted up. And, he clearly just wanted to get to the tents. He was in trouble. He just sat on his butt and slid down the blue ice, which is crazy, you know you snag a crampon point, compound fracture. It's almost dark now, it's almost 6 o'clock, and it's just full-on blizzard, and intermittent whiteout. But I see him at the bottom, I see this lump, and I think, fuck, he's broken his leg. But then he stands up, and he's fine. Yells to me. Heads to camp. And I see him get within 50-60 feet of camp and the whiteout closes in, and I assume he's made it, he's right there, there's no reason he wouldn't make it. So, I make my way down the ice, eventually, 15 minutes later, I get to camp, fall in the tent. In the morning, Andy's not there. He never showed up. He's gone. He's missing. And I assumed he walked off. I went out to look for him at 6:30 in the morning, when I realized he wasn't there, searched the whole western side of the Col, and I found some crampon marks from where'd he'd been, over the Lhotse face. I think he just walked off the face in the whiteout. I'm not sure of that--he just never turned up.

The route down, what face was that?

You start out down the upper southeast ridge, which is a very distinct ridge, and then you leave the ridge proper, and head down what they call the triangle face, sort of the face above the Col, this indistinct face, sort of east of the south pillar, called the triangle face. And it's mixed climbing. It's not particularly difficult but it's not particularly easy. It's the kind of thing where, on the way down, you just have to concentrate every fucking second and you're really hypoxic and it's an effort.

Could you describe the summit experience a bit?

Well, the clouds just snuck up on us. The day seemed clear until it was a whiteout, if that makes any sense. Because you're up above everything. People on Pumori were saying, "God, why are these people going up?" But they're looking up through the clouds. But from the top of Everest, we're looking at the brown plains of Tibet. Everything's clear except for these clouds, and all of the sudden, boom, they've risen, sort of like a science fiction movie, and you're in a whiteout, it was almost that sudden, or seemed that sudden in our hypoxic state.

Even with oxygen, really, makes it instead of being at 29,000 feet, it's probably like 27,000 feet. So it's not like you're normal at all. You're very oxygen-deprived. It really is like being underwater, or like being on Quaaludes. You're just sort of dreamy. And you're doing stuff that's life or death. The summit ridge, even on a fixed rope, it wasn't all fixed, nobody could afford to just be trippin' along. I mean, what the fuck, you'd have to have your act together. On some level there's a little voice, constantly, every second, telling you, "Keep it together, keep it together," But on the other hand, you're like, you know ... stoned, sort of marveling at the view.

And you're just sucking (air). You take a step, you take two breaths. It's physically grueling. Anyone who made it to the summit, they didn't get there cheaply in terms of physical effort. And it's not just summit day, it's like you're already spent, from base camp, two hard days of climbing, I hadn't slept the previous two nights, so you're going two to three days without sleep. Summit day, there's no way you can carry up enough water, because it freezes. So you've maybe had half a liter of water when you're supposed to have four liters in a day. You haven't eaten because, in the oxygen-deprived world, you need oxygen to metabolize food. So you have zero appetite, you can't eat, or digest food. It's a serious physical ordeal. I mean, it's an effort. My hat's off for those guys who made it. There's people who definitely couldn't have made it, without being helped considerably by those guides, but the guides can't get you up that mountain.

Which really begs the question, can you flip through a catalog and buy your way to the top of Everest?

It's way more complicated than that. You have to be fit, and motivated, and then you can buy your way. But it's not like some guy who's been up Rainier once and wants to get to the top--he couldn't buy his way up.

(Anyway), there's a lot of ways to get down that lower, little bit of innocuous line of blue ice. It's treacherous and there's different ways you can make it less steep, by going down the Kangschung face, you can make it shorter but more steep towards the Lhotse face. I remember, on the way up, you have this incredible view of the Col and it was very convoluted and complicated topography. And I looked at it probably 10-20 times, sort of like a basketball drill, telling myself, 'You don't want to go there because that'll lead you off the Lhotse face. You don't want to go there because that's the Kangshung face. When you go down, if it's a whiteout, here's where you want to go...'

And I did that out of instinct because I've been climbing for 33 years, 34 years, and that's just what I do. And, I suspect that a lot of people didn't do that, because they figured the guide would show them down. I'm not used to being guided. I don't like being guided. I didn't like being guided on this trip. I didn't like being told, 'wait for the group.' I'm just cooling my jets for an hour and 1/2 at the southeast summit, saying I'm wasting time thinking, "this is critical, this is critical."

But anyway ... there's a lot of ways to get to get back to base camp from the bottom of the face, and there's a lot of ways to go wrong. And I really, in my mind, imprinted, where I'm going to go, I'm going to get to that rock, and I'm going to follow that little line of snow. And I have no idea if other people did it or not, I suspect not. That's something that you don't do normally. In any case, I had the huge advantage of being down early enough ,so the white out was intermittent. I don't know how many hours after me, Neal and his group and Mike Groom, probably an hour or two, or three. It was pitch black, it was whiteout, there's no way, no way in fucking hell you're going to, no matter how much you memorize, you're going to find the tents.

When did you first sense that things were going wrong on the mountain?

When we were getting radio calls from Mike (Groom), we knew he was lost out there. We all had lights on in our tents, we would periodically go out and shine our lights into the sky, some people had lights mounted straight up, we'd bang pots and pans, none of that had any effect. The sound was lost, you couldn't talk from one tent to the next. It was real chaotic at Camp IV. Afterwards, partly because two of our three guides were dead, or on their way, they weren't with us. The third guy was lost. Neal and Scott were both gone. It was just a bunch of climbers, totally whipped, totally exhausted in their tents, not thinking clearly, not enough oxygen.

We all could have done more, in retrospect. Why didn't I go out with Stuart one of our guys, and look for Yasuko and Beck, well, because Stuart Hutchinson was doing it, and at the time, I was just trying to get through the night. And why didn't Stuart, after he found Yasuko and Beck, bring them back. Well, he made this decision that they were going to die. He was fucked up. He had been searching most of the night, and, there were other people lost, and he figured he'd save the resources for the rest them. And when Beck walks in six hours later, it's a shock.

What he did was so beyond strange. He wasn't confirmed dead. He was given up for dead. And he was in really bad shape, and he came back. And, he walked into camp. Beck's story. I mean... Beck, twice--the second time--well, I thought he was dead too. Next thing I know, I'm meetin' him at the bottom of Lhotse face, he's walking under his own power.

Did you see Scott as he was heading up? Any indication he was in trouble?

No, I don't think he was. Maybe he was. We were all so fucked up. At that point, everyone's celebrating. It literally is the high-fives. You're going down the line, I'm going down, he's going up, he's going up, 'congratulations, everyone's making the summit.' The weather's still looking fine, just starting to get cloudy, Scott's lookin' tired, and sort of out of it, but who isn't. I mean he's, Scott, he's a fuckin' aerobic animal. No one, no one thought he was in trouble.

Neal was very nervous , he just wanted to get down. He was waiting up there as people were moving up.

I was on my way down. I got to the summit before Neal, and left before he got there. I have a picture I took of Neal, as I'm at the summit, looking back and Neal's just coming up. At the time, we were all just happy. So, maybe he got there. I stayed on the summit less than five minutes, maybe less than three minutes, so I don't really know. I left Neal on his way up to the top.

Anatoli, Neal, Andy Harris and I were out in front, fixing rope. I assumed that we would fix the rope and they (the clients) would all wait at the South Col, but at some point, soon after we starting fixing rope, the more eager and impatient clients were right on my butt, right behind me. As soon as the rope was fixed, they were right there. The clients....I guess they were, so it was all Scott's clients, some of them were straggling, and some were right there. I think the first of Scott's clients after Neal--Neal was the fourth person to the summit--got there right after him, and soon after that, the other's came. Some of them, I remember, I was back at the Hillary Step. And some of Scott's clients were still, you know, clogging up the Hillary Step while I was waiting to get down. And, I was very concerned, because my oxygen had just run out and so I was, 'come on, come on come on, I'm out of gas here. And I'm dizzy, and I don't want to have brain damage, so hurry it up.'

The Hillary Step is halfway, so I've got to descend the Hillary Step and get down half this ridge without oxygen. But I made a decision. I could have barged my way down, and said, 'coming through, coming through, I'm out of gas.' But that would not have gone over well. And I might of lost it. So I just waited, I figured these guys are going up, they're more impatient that me. So, I just planted my ice ax, and kneeled over it, and just waited. So I saw the whole parade. I remember Rob passed me there, and I'm pretty sure Scott was behind Rob. I could be wrong about that, in my fuzz. And Makalu Gao, I didn't recognize, I thought he was a Sherpa. Everyone came by. And by the time I got to the south summit, they were all between, there's a picture I wish I would have taken, I didn't in my fog, I remember looking back towards the summit and this huge string of people, along the summit ridge. And I thought that'd make a great picture. But I was too tired--forget it.

But was everyone still working in a fairly rational way at this point?

That's right. Although Andy Harris, in retrospect, did some things that were extremely strange. I'd been with him for most of the morning, so I had the opportunity to see where he was coming from.

And then you get down and the disaster starts to roll?

Not until the morning, did I really recognize it. I mean, at 12:30 a.m. at night, I was sharing a tent with Stuart. Mike was saying, 'Stuart, Stuart, Stuart, get your stuff man, I'm in trouble.'. And Mike had made it in, this was after Neal had brought in three of his clients, and the other three were still out on the ice. And Mike followed him in, but he couldn't bring in Yasuko because she was too weak, and Beck was blind.

So, at that point, Mike could barely talk, he was almost dead. Stuart went to help him. And I guess some sherpas went out looking for Beck and Yasuko but never found them. I mean, I never went out. Stuart's been criticized before, but I was so fucked up. Stuart and a couple others made a decision to turn back an hour or two before they got to the summit, and I think they were some of the smartest. That's got to be a difficult decision, you just spent $65,000 and all this time, and to turn around that close, takes something, and they had it, and they're alive today because of it. Stuart had come down earlier, he had a little more energy, so he was out looking in the night.

Neal and his clients and Mike and Yasuko and Beck were all in the same area over by the Kangshung Face. Neal brought in I thought three but maybe it was just two. Charlotte and Sandy were so fucked up, they just gave up, they were just lying there, unable to move. Tim (Madsen), Charlotte's boyfriend, decided to stay with them. When Neal came back, that's when he found Anatoli, and Anatoli when out with oxygen bottles, the first attempt. Anatoli went out, he couldn't find anybody. He came back for more directions. The second try he went and got Charlotte and Tim, I think, maybe it was Sandy, I forget. But he made two more trips and brought back his guys. He either didn't see Yasuko, or because they weren't his guys, they weren't concerned. He didn't bring back Yasuko or Beck. And none of our guys had their shit together enough, or sherpas, or members, to go out and get them. I didn't. In the morning, I realized there was trouble. Andy hadn't come back, and Yasuko and Beck hadn't come back. And that's when the light went on in my head, and I put my boots on, and went into the storm looking.

And where was Martin, Lene, or Klev?

I think Neal brought back all those guys. They had all been sitting on the ice, sort of trusting in Neal, sort of the blind trust that clients have, and thank god Neal was up to the task. Neal deserves incredible credit for getting all his guys down alive. I mean, Anatoli came in the end--sort of the superman as he is--to save them. But it was Neal who got them down the mountain, and kept them together at that horrible place, and kept looking, and kept looking, and finally got just a brief, near glimpse of camp and ran for it.

And when Neal got back, he was pretty much finished?

Yeah, just like Mike did in ours, he was so fucked up. He spent himself getting his clients down, as Mike Groom had, so yeah, he spent himself. And Scott's group sent Anatoli to go out and save the stragglers, and our group had nobody.

And that's just the fate thing...

Yeah, it's part of the deal. It raised the question of, what are you doing on this mountain if you can't get yourself down. I mean, at some point, there's only so much you can ask of a guide or sherpa. Climbing is about self-reliance. And, on a mountain like Everest, when something goes wrong.... I think Scott's group is very lucky they had Neal, and he's lucky that things worked out. If he hadn't gotten that glimpse, they could have died. But he got them down, and Anatoli was there to mop up and Mike went to get Yasuko and Beck down, but there was no Anatoli to mop up. There's just me, and Stuart and the other guys in our group who were just a bunch of clients. I mean, I was more of a client I guess. I had to become--with two of our guides dead, and the other severely frost-bitten and incapacitated--I sort of had to become the guide, and the next day, when we all went down, I sort of pulled sweep. Get people down and get them motivated. At one point, Stuart said, you know, having to buckle their fuckin harnesses. I mean, that's just what a guide does. I used to be a guide and I didn't like it. And I don't like it now, but I had no choice.

We didn't go down on Saturday (the next morning). We stayed up there another day and a night, which I think was good, but it was really debilitating. Neal's group, they went down that Saturday. Our group didn't. So, I have no idea. Neal's group, they went down, so they must have been really fucked up and they were just on their way down, and I think there was a real sense of foreboding and panic. But I can't say. Our group, waiting a day, gave our group time to collect themselves, and I think we were pretty controlled, I tried to keep it that way. People seemed to have their act together. A couple of them were really slow. Lou was sort of delirious, and it really took a long time to get down. Everyone else in the group took a little bit of baby-sitting but basically did well, and we had that extra day, to collect ourselves. And by that time, Brashears had donated oxygen, so everybody was on gas on the way down. I don't know if Neal's group was....So our group was fairly orderly and without of sense of panic. I have no idea about Neal's team. I bet it wasn't good.

Did you get a sense that the mountain, that there was a mean spirited thing happening.

That south col, was...it's the most inhospitable place I have ever been. It is just scary. And yeah, it was like the mountain lured us up there with this good weather, and just slammed its jaws shut. It's nasty. The wind doesn't quit. And it's a scary place. You get around the Geneva Spur and all the sudden the wind dies, and the mountain just feels like another serious mountain, but when you're up in the col, it feels scary. It is a very scary place.

And all that second night our tents are getting blown flat, we worried seriously about losing them. We got the boots on, got all our clothes on, just ready for the tent to blow away.

And, your estimate of the wind speed during that first night?

Both the first and second night it didn't let up. It was blowing, I would say, steady 60 and above and gusting hard, and that's based on my experience in Patagonia and other places. In the morning it's the kind of wind that knocks you down. It's serious wind. It's gale force or above. It's a hurricane. I don't think it was an unusually heavy storm for Everest. I think that's sort of the norm. But you're not supposed to be up there when it's like that. I think it was just that, the window was supposed to last a week, and it lasted less than 24 hours. Actually, probably about 18 hours.

When you were coming down, what was the scene like, the situation, as you got into base camp?

By that point, Pete Athans and Todd Burleson had come up to take care of Beck. It was sort of the sense, an amazing sense, where there had been all this sniping, and not the best will between groups before, everyone came together to take care of everybody. So there's the sense of, these people on rescue missions. I remember Mal Duff coming up, "What can I do? What can I do?" And I said, "Well, you can take care of Lou, he's going really slow or let Mike G, or leave him, go down and fix his frostbite. Stuff like, our batteries for our radio, went dead, and people like David Brashears told me how to break into his locked tent and get some batteries. The main thing was Brashears giving up all their oxygen for people who needed it, which was a huge plus. And that could have seriously jeopardized his attempt. It ended, most of that was replaced, but it was a very generous gesture. Basically, jeopardizing a million dollar film project to help people, without even thinking about it.

Once in base camp, a discussion flared up about the suitability of Everest for guided trips, and how to self-regulate.

Yeah, I missed most of that. I wasn't at base camp through all that. But I know David has some strong views about that. On the way down, I stopped at 3 and David and Ed were there, and I talked to them. And David was so wound up anyway, and he was definitely saying, "I hope you're right about this, I hope you're right about this...Everest...there's people who don't belong here, there's competent people here, this whole guided thing is going to change" He was pretty animated. Most of it I heard from David, I didn't hear too many people discussing that at that time.

Everyone was slammed. I think there's a difference. Anyone who got up there, got up on their own power, but there's a sense to me that a lot of these people--Sandy Pittman had tried Everest 3 times before she'd climbed 6 of the 7 summits, Yasuko had climbed 6 of the 7 summits--but all these people have been guided before. Being guided is a real different thing than doing it on your own. You're not hauling loads, it's just different--it leaves you more vulnerable. You don't have the experience or the mindset to take care of yourself. You learn to operate within the client framework, which is that other people are going to haul your load, other people are going to look after you, you're job is to do this within these certain constraints and not more than that. On Everest, this time, people were asked to do more than they expected. A normal climber, you learn to expect that. But as a client, if you'd had good guides, I mean they looked after you for years. I think this, I don't know....maybe I'm being too hard on Sandy, Charlotte and other professional clients, as it were. But, I think there's something you lose, in being a client and depending on the judgment of guides. It's very different as a non-client. I was a bad client. I was independent, and had to always be checked, but I knew what to do when the shit hit, and I'm not sure everyone else did. And I didn't expect anyone to take care of me, and I don't know if that made any difference or not. But I was definitely out there to save my own ass, and wasn't looking for anyone else to save it.

And you touched on that issue, that self-sufficiency may be surrendered as part of a guided trip, and that sense of I'd better map out mentally what's ahead and how to get back down through it, maybe the blinders are on if you're following a guide.

I think they definitely are. I think, to the contrary, if you're used to being a client, following a guide, you learn not to be self-sufficient, you learn not to make judgments. The guide doesn't want you to make judgments; he wants to make them for you. And that's dangerous. I don't trust that, and I never will.
I know that Rob, and Scott and all these guys had way more experience than me and I listen to it, but I want to be able to take their advice and weight it against my own experience. I don't want anyone telling me, do this, do that. I think a lot of these other people did. I mean, I don't know what else they could have done differently--they were with Neal, and Neal got them down. It's not like, I don't know what you would have done, I mean, maybe they would have gone down ahead, like me. I wasn't wasn't waiting for any fucking guide to take me down. I saw the storm coming, and I'm outta here. Maybe that's the differnece. Martin, who was out ahead of Scott's group, at some point he followed me around the southeast ridge and then I lost him and he clearly didn't come down with me, or near me, he waited, at some point, for Scott. I don't know if he was told to, or just, as a good client decided to. And he came out okay. He's strong. He's one of their strongest people. But man, if I was Martin, I wouldn't have waited around--I didn't wait around, so that's sort of the difference.

I don't know. It's easy for me. I'm tempted to be smug, and say I was smart. But in the end, I think I was just lucky. I think, I'm humble enough to know that I got lucky somehow and I'm not sure why, and maybe it has nothing to do with my experience or my cantankerousness, but who knows. Scott's guys got lucky, they're all fine, none of the frostbite was that serious.

In part, it's interesting with the three guides. We had Scott, who was clearly doing a sweep, and struggling on his own to make the summit, he was bringing up the rear, and you had Anatoli, way up front, who was waiting at camp 4, drinking tea, and trying to conserve his energy, and then you had Neal kind of running the group down, that system seemed to hold up by some quirk or miracle.

It was exactly quirk or miracle. Early in the trip, I thought Scott's system was fucked, and it ended up being way better than our system, and that shows you how little I know. I remember thinking Anatoli's this great, strong guy, but he's terrible with people. He's never around--he's always up front with his sherpa. Scott always seems to be in the back, taking some sick person up or down. and Neals's left with the group. And, Scott's group was always sort of all over the place. Our group, Rob tried to keep us together. We'd all go up the ice fall together, more or less together. In Scott's group, it was always...different days someone would stay up, down, sort of freelancing. I thought they were looking for trouble. There's all these ironies: Rob was smug. Some of us were smug--that our group was sort of the safest, that it was the most conservatively guided. And we worried about Scott's group and his laissez faire, let people do what they want. And, in the end, all Scott's clients survived.

But can you attribute that to the fact that Anatoli was waiting, and that Neal was kind of a people person?

Yeah, in the end, the chemistry worked. But who could have foreseen that?

Validation is not quite as satisfying when you can't survive to witness it, but maybe it wasn't even a conscious plan that he had executed, but rather it all just seemed to fall together.

I think that's exactly it. I don't think there's anything conscious about it. I think Neal, Neal was Neal, the kind of guy that he was. He would stick with his clients. Neal is a great fucking guide. He's good. Anatoli is who he is. He's going to be always up front. And, as it happened, this time he was down, he just happened to be down, and strong enough to save people when the time came. It was a combination that worked. And Scott, proved to be irrelevant and in fact died irrelevant. Scott had almost no bearing at all, on the whole all day, as far as clients, he was just in the rear, struggling along on his own--no one really appreciates it until it's too late.