A Day on Mount Everest
A benefit in memory of Scott Fischer brought together a unique group of the world's finest alpinists and Everest veterans for an in-depth look at current high-altitude mountaineering issues.

American Alpine Club
Golden, Colorado
Saturday, July, 13, 1996
7:00 p.m. (MST)

Master of Ceremonies
Glenn Porsak: One of the first Americans to summit three 8,000-meter peaks (First American to summit Shisha Pangma, 1983; second American to summit Makalu, 1987; summited Everest having participated in two expeditions prior to that, 1990). Led first American expedition (ascent) of Lhotse. Still holds the American high-altitude record on Moslu (8,000 meter peak still un-climbed by Americans). Climbed seven summits. Past President of American Alpine Club and the Colorado Mountain Club. He's been an expedition leader for the past five years.

Panel Participants
Anatoli Boukreev: Guide, 1996 Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition; seven 8,000-meter peaks, speed ascents of Dhaulagiri, Lhotse, and Everest.

Charlotte Fox: From Snowmass, Colorado. 1996 Sagarmatha Evnvironmental Expedition; first American woman to summit three 8,000-meter peaks.

Tom Hornbein: First ascent of Masherbrum (1960). Long's Peak Ranger in 1940's. First ascent of West Ridge and complete traverse of Mount Everest during 1963 American expedition

Skip Horner: Only person to guide the highest summit on each of the seven continents

Ed Webster: Author, photographer, adventurer from Boulder Colorado. Mount Everest summits: Three trips from West, one from North, Trip to east new route on Kangshung Face in 1988.

Jim Williams: Professional mountain guide; two guided Everest trips, leader 1988/89 International South Pole Expedition

The proceedings

Master of Ceremonies: Well, if I could ask you to take your seats and let's start grilling you. Tonight what we're going to do is deal with five topics regarding high altitude climbing that have truly captured national attention in the recent months and while the major discussion will focus upon and surround mount Everest, know that Mt. Everest is just a metaphor for all the world's highest peaks.

The first topic we'll get into of course is guiding the Himalayas, particularly guiding on Everest. A number of questions have been raised about guided climbs on Everest. and I'll start out by asking our panelists: What is the client-screening process on commercially guided expeditions? Is money the only criteria?

HORNER: Certainly money is one of the most important aspects of screening people, without the money of course the expedition couldn't happen. None of these expeditions from the very beginning are cheap. So for a guided climb the only choice is to charge people the money that it costs to run the trip. However, that is not the only screening criteria. For the most part people who come on these guided climbs have climbed with one or more of the guides on the trip at least once, so we know what their capabilities are. If they haven't climbed with one of us, they have climbed with somebody, so we talk to whoever they've climbed with before and we know how good they are, what they can do, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses might be. So we are pretty rigorous about checking them out. Sometimes it is impossible to know for sure; they send a resume, we talk to them on the phone, they sound good. We just have to go by a gut feeling that this person probably has it together to do a good show on the mountain and we watch them as the trip progresses and see how it goes. Sometimes half way up the mountain, we have to say, "look, you shouldn't be up here, sorry, but you probably ought to go down." It's happened to me at least once that I've had to tell someone who's paid a lot of money that "you don't really belong up here, I'm sorry but, I don't feel good about taking you any higher and I think you ought to go down." It causes hard feelings sometimes, but it's better to send them down than to take them higher and jeopardize their life, my life, or anybody else's life around them. We do take pains to be as careful as we can.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me ask, on these guided expeditions, do these clients have any responsibilities and is there discussion in that regard or do they expect you to take care of them?

WILLIAMS: Well, let me just say that this is an expedition and everybody is a team member. There is a responsibility towards the team and the expedition in general. Even though someone may sign on to the expedition as a client or a member--a paying member helping to defray the cost of the expedition--they have a responsibility for their own safety and the well-being of the group. So that it is not just a stand in line get on a leash and take off. You do have to be responsible for yourself and for the things that are going on during the expedition.

Master of Ceremonies: Well, when you put these expeditions together, given the financial aspects of the thing and the type of people you are getting, do you feel that there is true informed consent? By that I mean, do the people you're taking really have a deep understanding and knowledge of the dangers that are out there and also a knowledge of the other team members and the strengths and weaknesses of those other team members?

WILLIAMS: Well, obviously, if you put an expedition together of people that some don't know each other and likes, they may not in advance know what Charlotte or what somebody else out there has as a climbing resume. But, you as a guide take a responsibility of assessing, as Skip said, screening the people to make sure that people are prepared. And that's risks about the undertaking they're about to go on. And I can draw on some experiences. I mean clients, even though the popular sort of myth is that these people have enough money to go and they have no background, most of these people have climbed quite a bit. As Skip said, they climb with you. Many have climbed three or four of the seven summits, if you will, or even maybe even all but (Everest). So they climbed Denali, Mt. Vincent. They've probably climbed Rainier, they've probably climbed...here in Colorado, maybe the Tetons, elsewhere. So that together they have some common experiences, even though they may not have climbed together.

Master of Ceremonies: But how many of them have climbed in the Himalayas before?

WILLIAMS: Well, I can go from this year on our expedition. Out of the five members on our expedition this year, four out of the five had climbed in the Himalayas before. And some were on their third, fourth trip to Mount Everest. And two or three climbed in the Himalayas.

Master of Ceremonies: Charlotte let me ask you, in the most recent trip you went on, were you aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the other team members?

FOX: I think Scott made that fairly clear. And I think it's really important, having been on a couple of expeditions, that I had signed on for the convenience of going, and not having to go through the planning because of the lack of time. Beyond that, there is an unequal experience level and how frustrating it is for both sides, each end of the spectrum, to have to deal with that working together. Our group I found to be experienced, competent. And luckily Scott, Neal (Beidleman), and Anatoli gave us a lot of free rein which some people have criticized and not understood. But, I think that it was wonderful that it still retained a sense of adventure for us by giving us that free rein, of thinking for ourselves. And in the end that thinking for ourselves got us a long way, at least coming home.

Master of Ceremonies: Well, Ed, let me ask you, listening to a little bit of the dialogue about the makeup of the commercially guided expeditions, really is what they're doing any different from maybe your trip to the West ridge of Everest in, what was it, '84 or thereabouts?

WEBSTER: In 1985 I went to my first Everest expedition to the West ridge direct. And, I was overjoyed to get invited on this trip. However, I was somewhat nervous because I had actually never climbed with any of the members of that team. So, it was kind of a crap shoot as to, was I going to get along with these people? How was I going to get along climbing with them? Were they safe? Would they climb with the same styles and techniques and safety measures that I climbed with? So there was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of that trip, but there was a fairly high experience level on that expedition and we got to within 800 feet of the summit. In retrospect it was a very happy and safe expedition, no one was injured, and it was a very positive outcome. So there are times indeed when you're on, shall I say, private expeditions to the Himalaya when you find yourself on a trip with people you don't know or several people that you don't know. And you just get a feeling for their resume their background and a gut feeling for whether or not the trip will work out with that personnel. And usually it does, but sometimes it doesn't.

FOX: Of course, an ideal thing is to be able to climb with these people before hand so that you know that your personalities mesh, too, as well as your desires and goals. But that is not always possible.

Master of Ceremonies: Charlotte, one of the questions from the audience that's asked of you is, would you again take someone with no experience over 14,000 feet to an 8,000-meter climb.

FOX: Would I take them?

Master of Ceremonies: Yes.

FOX: Guiding is not my end of the deal.

Master of Ceremonies: Would you climb with them?

FOX: Oh, would I climb with someone with no experience at all.

Master of Ceremonies: Above 14,000 feet

FOX: Depends on who that person is and their experience level in the mountains prior to that. Perhaps they are very good climbers and they just haven't been to high altitude.

WEBSTER: I can actually vouch for that because the highest mountain I climbed before I went to Mount Everest was Mount Harvard.

Master of Ceremonies: And I'll add to that. I'll never forget that the first time John Roskelley went to the Himalayas. He had never been above 14,000 feet before and he summited Dhaulagiri.

Master of Ceremonies: Tom what do you think about all this?

HORNBEIN: I don't know. Basically I think I was born in an era that has sort of turned into fossils by now. My experience in mountains on expeditions has been on the whole rather a protected one where we always went with close friends in small groups. Everest was where perhaps it's the partial exception to that, in that it was a big expedition. It's the only really big expedition I've ever been on. Even there it was a nucleus or a subset. The pact that I made was that if each of the other people were going, we'd go. Otherwise...we'd just stay home. And so I never really experienced some of the issues that have been raised here and never had a very great desire to. I've always felt a lot more comfortable climbing with people that I really knew well and knew that I would be willing to lay down my life with them and vice versa. I look at the others and it seems much more complex. It obviously works. Much of the time perhaps, not always, expeditions are like marriages. They're not always the most friendliest things in the world. Either you survive them or you don't.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me ask Anatoli. Is someone truly able to guide someone above the 8,000-meter level?

BOUKREEV: To make expeditions and to climb with himself is one separate thing. People who guide have to have experience. I think that a guide who will want to guide on Everest should first [guide] on lower elevations. It is very important [if you want to be able] to do it correctly and safely. On our expeditions all the people guides had this experience. On other expeditions I did not see this.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me put it also to Skip or Jim. Are you truly guiding people at those highest reaches or are they basically on their own and you're providing a direction, if you will.

HORNER: Well, it's somewhere in between that. They are certainly not on their own because they are part of a guided trip where it is our responsibility to make sure they are doing all right and if they are not doing all right we have to take them down. On the other hand, we can't climb the mountain for them. We can provide the wherewithal, we can provide the leadership and the direction, but they have to put one foot in front of the other. Nobody has ever been carried up Everest. Some have been carried down, but nobody's been carried up yet.

HORNBEIN: There's a first for you. Somewhere along the line, Skip, I'll volunteer to be carried.

HORNER: If you do the cooking.

HORNBEIN: That may be the death of our plan.

HORNER: Anyway, I think in general you can say it is possible to guide people and we are in fact guiding them under proper conditions. When things start to fall apart, as they did in May this year, the best of the climbers have to do what they can to help the weaker people. Whether it is a guided climb or a private climb, you are still out there trying to help each other as best you can. Sometimes the best climbers are the ones who take the biggest hit. It's a ... it's just a crap shoot.

Master of Ceremonies: Maybe that really leads into our next topic, which is high-altitude ethics or protocol if you will. With the increasing numbers and the different changes that you have seen on Everest, how has the behavior of parties changed and what is the ethic if something does go wrong among the different teams?

WILLIAMS: Well I guess, I'm not sure I understand your question, what is the ethics between team's if something goes wrong?

Master of Ceremonies: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I think it's important to realize that everybody's on that mountain . . . no matter whose team you're on. That eventually you need to lend assistance as it becomes necessary. And I'll just take a case in point from this year. The expedition I was on from Alpine Ascents International, we were at Camp III when this entire situation unfolded. We were able to monitor the entire sequence over the radio. We decided there were three guides at the time. Two guides--Peter Athens and Todd Burleson--would go to the South Col. and try to bring some order into what was basically two, well what turned out to be two leaderless expeditions with Scott having not survived and Rob Hall on the Kiwi expedition not having survived. Two leaderless expeditions. Todd and Pete went to try to bring some order. I ended up staying at Camp III with all of our clients and setting up, if you will, an aid station enroute so that those coming down, we could keep track of who's coming down or who's going up, if there was anyone going up. And with the help of some others, from IMAX, Ed Viesturs, David Breashears, we were able to keep track of all that were coming down from the South Col. And as a result, we had nobody get left anywhere. Not that we had to do much because most people were able to move down. The point is, we gave up if you will, our summit attempt. We didn't just sit still and say `okay, we're not going anywhere these guys are on their own.' We needed to go lend some assistance. Dispense oxygen to those people that were out of oxygen, taken from the stores of other expeditions, and dispense that to those people who may have been in danger, to assist those that couldn't get down on their own down the mountain. So I don't think that it's, I don't think ethically, if you will, there's really much room for sort of staying isolated and not lending any assistance. Especially in a guided situation where we are all there for sort of the same purpose. It doesn't do any of us from a profession stand point any good to have this guy and his people end up in a bad way.

Master of Ceremonies: Well let me ask the hard question. Were there groups that did not have that type of spirit?

WILLIAMS: I'm not sure that they did not have that kind of spirit. There were groups that didn't lend the degree of support who may have been in positions, who may or may not have understood the gravity of the situation. Having Todd and Pete, who had both summited numerous times on Everest, were intimately familiar with the conditions that can arise there. It was very easy for us to understand what was going on there, or very easy for us to know that what was going there on was difficult and needed some assistance. Whether the others were capable of doing that I don't know.

Master of Ceremonies: What about with the increased numbers? Does that bring about a false sense of security?

FOX: I think for many people, yes it did. But considering the results of May 10th, that dispels that rumor. You've got to get down on your own.

Master of Ceremonies: The numerous expeditions on the mountain at the same time, how has that impacted the overall experience? Was it any less an experience for you, say Charlotte, than some of your other?

FOX: Well certainly when you're in the conga line and you're waiting to get up the Hillary Step you're not exactly out there.

WEBSTER: Maybe we could clarify how many expeditions were there on the South Col route this past spring because I'm not even sure. How many separate expeditions?

FOX: I heard 11. And thanks to some foresight the leaders of all expeditions got together and planned who would go up when and distribute some of the workload who would fix what when. It didn't exactly go like that, but there was an attempt to organize things. It was put together that Rob Hall's group and Scott Fischer's group would go up on the May 10th so that there wouldn't be more of a log jam. But certainly, as you go up and down the mountain you see many people. And I think sitting here it is easy to go well gosh I didn't want just experience. But when you're on Mount Everest, you're sort of centered on where you are. Yeah. It seems to belittle, the dots on the glacier.

WILLIAMS: I'll second that also. I happened to summit on a day when many other people did and from many expeditions. But we didn't get together beforehand that year. Everybody was at the South Col. that day then. Most everybody made it that day. We got to the top and there were people from I don't know how many other expeditions and I didn't know how many nationalities. I reached the top, there will probably seven people up there, probably ten more arrived while I was there and without fail, we all hugged each other. We were all so elated to be on top after all this effort, after all this desire and drive and all that. I couldn't tell who was who, we had oxygen masks, big down coats, and I couldn't tell if they were speaking Russian or French or Spanish. It didn't matter. We were giving everybody bear hugs and slapping them on the back. As much as you can at 29,000 feet. It was sort of like the international climbing camp. It wasn't like when Tom was there. He was alone on top. What a wonderful experience. The best would be to be alone on top of Mount Everest. That would be the ultimate. Not too many people have done that. But to be up there with so many people was just a great feeling. We came down to base camp and I looked around at all these other people. I didn't know if this person left base camp or if this person was on top of the mountain. It didn't matter. We were all up there together and it was just a great solid feeling. And I think anyone up there would say the same thing.

FOX: Alison Hargreaves was quoted as saying "I've climbed a lot of great mountains but I cried on top of Mount Everest."

Master of Ceremonies: Well let's turn to another controversial subject. That's the whole field of hi-tech. I think it especially meaningful at the highest mountain in the world. Let me just ask somebody who was there this past year what kind of hi-tech equipment exists now a days at the base camps of Everest or some of the 8000 meter peaks over in the Himalayas?

FOX: Our group, Scott Fischer's group had a web site that was run by Sandy Pittman in New York. This is coming from someone who only has an answering machine and won't even deal with call waiting but. She had lap tops, sat phone, couriers coming in and out. Basically if there was anything that was needed or anything to be communicated it could be done immediately, just pick up the phone. That does somewhat remove you from the wilderness experience. When I commented on this she said, `hey welcome to Mount Everest. This is the way it is here.' So it was a real shock sitting in the little city with lots of phones ringing.

Master of Ceremonies: Well with this increased communication with the outside world do you view it as a negative or a positive?

FOX: Well, how do you view the press. I think this is why this climb got so much press. Whereas other disasters have not. You had seventy five to one hundred thousand hits per day just on our web site alone and there were two others. So you had a ready audience people that were hooked into this soap opera crescendoing towards the big happy summit and the party afterwards and looked what happened. The press was on to that the internet got the word out and the press realized how much of an audience they already had so they just sat on that. And until the next disaster....

Master of Ceremonies: I take it it was with this hi-tech equipment that they were able to call that helicopter in to rescue the people at Camp I.

FOX: Most definitely, but that sort of communication as someone pointed out this afternoon has been in place for many years. I believe on Tom's expedition in `63 two were helicoptered down from base camp then. No?

HORBEIN: The helicopters couldn't get that high in those days. But they didn't have to walk on their frozen feet.

WILLIAMS: The thing to keep in mind is that this hi-tech discussion is something that takes place from Base Camp down. That the basic communication although radios have increased "how good is your Motorola or how good is your CB radio" that's changed a little bit. But, in `63, there was radio communication between camps along the way as best there could be as best as the technology at the time could allow. On these trips the radio communication was somewhat similar. And although I wasn't with Sandy or her crew I don't know whether she took her laptop to the summit or did anything like that and tried to send anything from there. She was having enough difficulty sending things from base camp, I doubt it. Peter Hillary phoned his father, making the father-son connection from the summit and that was a fairly special thing. That happened a number of years ago. But the communication within the mountain itself, the climb itself, has not significantly changed in the last twenty or thirty years.

WEBSTER: Can I add something? I'd like to say that I go to the mountains to get as far away from technology as I can. And, one of the things that I am most proud of of our Kangshung face expedition is that we had no way of communicating with the outside world for the entire three months that we were on Mount Everest in 1988. Furthermore, we had no radios on the mountain and we were completely self reliant and self-contained. In fact, the news that Stephen Venables had become the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen, which was a very historic event, didn't reach the outside world for three weeks until after it happened when we finally arrived limping back in Lhasa and were able to send a fax to the United States and Britain. That's something that I am actually quite proud of that we were self reliant and completely removed from all this hi-tech rigmarole. Personally I do not want to go the Everest with a fax machine, with a cellular telephone.

Master of Ceremonies: Tom when you set off on the last day to go for the summit on the west ridge did you have any kind of communication with any of the other camps or of the other people. One of the questions asked here is what did you view your chances of returning by the route you had climbed up versus descending by the South Col.

HORBEIN: I'm going to give three answers to two questions. One of them is to pick up where Ed left off in a slightly different direction. We did have radio communication to base camp. As a matter of fact it provided, since it was recorded, a very marvelous resource for me in the writing of the West Ridge. Because there was Lilie's historic conversation to Whittaker down there saying something to the effect that we are up to the top of the yellow band and there is no place to put in a rappel anchor so it's up and over for us today and tell Dingman to keep a candle in the window over at Camp Six because we might be getting in late that night. Which gets to the second question, could we have gotten down? Well you know to be very honest with you even 33 years later, I don't think we wasted a lot of time thinking about that as an option. We wanted to climb the mountain and we reckoned that if we got to the top it would be as easy or maybe easier to go down the other side. Whether that would be true or not I don't know. The thought of a retreat was somewhere way back in the back of our heads, so we were just committed to go for it. As I sit and listen to some of the things that Charlotte just said and Ed just said and think of the experience that we had in 1963 as a very small expedition really very analogous to what you enjoyed up at the east face many years later. One of our sherpas described as the milkrun on Mount Everest, and I guess there are a couple of them right now. Where would a Sherpa get an expression like that? Anyway, mountains like the rest of us age at least in my thinking. In life stages they start out with exploration, just find the damn thing. And then to try and climb it. And Everest of course as many other mountains that we know has gone through that including Long's Peak up here and then there's the new routes. And after that inevitably there comes this sense of people especially on the notorious mountains Everest, K2, Denali, maybe Rainier, etc. Just people's desire to test themselves and get to the top. Not necessarily do it by the hardest way, but simply to see can I do it. It's the same motive that I'm sure I had or that I did have when I climbed Everest. The mountains become crowded, it becomes a different kind of experience, it's not a wilderness experience any longer. To go to up Mount Everest and expect that is...you need to go somewhere else if you want a wilderness experience and if you want to I think avoid the fax machines you can do it. It's your choice but it is not your choice to do it on a route that is no longer able to provide that kind of experience. Each of these big famous mountains has that as an element now. But for the people who climb it the same questions, the same sense of adventure, the same sense of uncertainty, is there we all get it in different flavors and different thresholds, but I don't see that experience as essentially different for you Charlotte as it was for me thirty three years ago.

Master of Ceremonies: You just put your finger on it. Everest is crowded, now even K2 is crowded. The highest mountains are crowded. What is the passion for people just going to the highest mountains.

FOX: I think for a lot of people, it's a feather in a cap. A lot of people don't have time to recreate and they feel to the pressure to these days and getting out in the mountains is it. People want these goals that look good to others unfortunately a lot of the time look good to others is just a feather in the cap. Whereas other people just want to be there. Everybody's goals in the mountains I think are different people are motivated by different things some people are into the seven summits some people by 8,000-meter peaks some just want to go with their friends and have a good time.

Master of Ceremonies: Skip can you sell a trip maybe to a beautiful peak in some far off area that's 24,000 feet and has never been heard of?

HORNER: Well, of course, it depends on how I market it, how I sell it, pictures and all. It's much more difficult certainly ever since Dick Bass did the seven summits and wrote the great book and thought what a great idea that is. Certainly good for my business. It's kept my business busy for years and I'm still busy doing it. People hear about these peaks, people 20 years ago who wouldn't even thought of climbing a mountain as something they wanted to do. All of a sudden these things have become more accessible. As we've learned they're really no less dangerous than they ever were, they're just more accessible, there's more knowledge about so we have more information to base our prudent decision on . It is more difficult to sell somebody on a remote 24,000 foot peak they've never heard of. More importantly their friends have never heard of. Everybody's heard of Everest. Everybody can imagine the highest peak in Antarctica. They may not know the name of it or what it's all about, but they know there must be a peak down there and so you say "I climbed the highest peak in Antarctica." People go "wow, good for you." Climbing Mount Everest is a wonderful experience whether it's the highest peak or not. It happens to be the highest peak. It's a good experience. They have something to grab onto that they wouldn't have had twelve years ago because now we can do these things.

WEBSTER: For many climbers I think going to the high peaks in the last ten to fifteen years has been that ultimate goal that's been driving them onwards. But I kinda think that maybe the pendulum is swinging the other way. The high peaks have become so popular and so famous, so renowned, that certain climbers, a certain breed of climbers now takes a great pleasure in going to a place that no one's ever heard of because those places are so rare and becoming so much more rare these days. So I think the pendulum is swinging the other way.

Master of Ceremonies: Do the rest of you think it is, I mean I hope it is but I'm not so sure.

WILLIAMS: I have no idea whether it's going to swing back. I mean, I tend to specialize in taking people to places they can't even pronounce . It's hard as can be to get people to go places. But one thing that guiding is doing is increasing access to well known places. There's a huge population of people accused of being armchair mountaineers. Okay, they've read about these things, they've spent their time, they've read The West Ridge. They've read everything that they can find. And all of a sudden they now have some discretionary income, they've got some time. They've been climbing here in Colorado. They've been climbing around. And they're interested. And they've been interested! And now there's an opportunity to go there. So in a sense maybe we've provided an opportunity for those who would have been armchair mountaineers, drinking beer or smoking a pipe in a stuffy old room, to go out and do something. I mean I tend to look at guiding from a positive side and say, `Hey, I give the opportunity for people to go and experience things, to become involved in the outdoors, in mountaineering' and try to do it in as safe a way as possible. And I think that, between Anatoli and Skip, the three of us sitting up here who are guides, I think that's the goal of all of ours: To provide the opportunity for people.

Master of Ceremonies: Anatoli, you've guided both Americans and Russians. Are there any difference in the motivations?

BOUKREEV: Motivations are very different. American people have lots of ambitions. More ambitions than Russians. Why it is exactly, I don't know. But for high altitude it is different than for low altitude. People also enjoy this mountains. But enjoy with high altitude? It is something very difficult to understand how possible to enjoy this high altitude. But I think somebody have lots of ambitions, but little enjoy. Or somebody have lots of enjoy, but little ambitions. It's difficult to say about.

Master of Ceremonies: Well let's turn for a second to the cold reality of financing a large expedition. We hear of the high peak fees and one of the questions here was how much is a permit to climb Mount Everest?

WEBSTER: Could I give a small story on that. When I went to Everest in 1985, for the first time, the peak fee in Nepal was $3,500. A couple of years later it went to $10,000. I think it was around 1991 it went to $50,000. And it is now at $70,000. So that is the evolution of the peak fee scale on Mount Everest in Nepal since 1985.

Master of Ceremonies: And I think just to clarify the $70,000 is for seven people and if you want to add, I think you're entitled to add another three people, you have to pay $10,000 per additional person.

WILLIAMS: I believe it is twelve total. But at $10,000 per head.

WEBSTER: Tom, what was the peak fee in 1963?

HORNBEIN: We thought it was out of sight. It was $650.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me ask though, everybody talks about the peak fees and they are clearly through the roof but there are a lot of other costs that have remained constant and other costs, equipment and otherwise, particularly with the sharing that goes on among expeditions, that have gone down. Let me ask you is the modern day expedition, even with larger peak fees, any more expensive, relatively speaking, than the expedition 10 and 20 years ago?

WILLIAMS: Tom, what did your expedition cost all together?

HORNBEIN: Our expedition, I think, cost about $400,000 which included of course the making of that National Geographic film and a bunch of research, and that was for twenty people. So it gets hard. I mean, the question you're asking I think is probably answerable but not easily. In many ways getting to Everest is like what happened on Denali. It became dirt cheap to fly up to Alaska and fly in and in some senses became far more accessible than it was 33 or 43 years ago. But how all those factors balance out in terms of the real cost of the climb maybe somebody who has just done a small climb of Everest can answer that better than me.

WILLIAMS: You take the peak fee out and in Tom's case twenty people for $650, this is an insignificant amount. $10,000 a head for this year is not insignificant. But that brings the common or popular figure sixty five, that brings it down to fifty-five. But if you draw into that, as we were talking about guided trips in this case, you draw in, on Scott's team for instance three guides, ours this year was three guides, Rob had three guides. All those people had to be, are part of that cost. So when you start looking at fixed cost I suspect that there really isn't an escalation of price that's outside of normal rope in thirty-three years. You know you could buy a house in Boulder thirty-three years ago for probably $20,000, I challenge you to even get a room for a year for $20,000 in Boulder. There are things that have changed prices have gone up but so have the demands and so have the fixed costs, improved oxygen. You do talk about some things that have changed, expeditions now share, for instance, the Khumbu Icefall costs. With eleven expeditions, actually I think twelve including the Lhotse expedition. A British team put in the icefall this year and maintained it during almost the entire season and they charged each expedition exactly the same amount, regardless of it's size. In the eleven expeditions, it should be noted, some expeditions had one member on 'em. It is not twelve people times twelve or twelve people times eleven. It's some at one, some at two, some at three, some at full twelve, for that matter.

Master of Ceremonies:: You mentioned a moment ago that the guiding fee is upwards of $65,000 per person. Has that kind of fee structure in any way affected people's commitment on the mountain? Are they more committed, less committed, has it clouded judgment? When people have paid that kind of money, how easy is it to say `you're not going'?

HORNER: Well it's not easy to say that, of course, when you know someone has spent that kind of money. As I said before, you make a decision and you try to leave the money aspect out of it because we're talking about life and death here and the money was an issue for down below. Up here on the mountain we're sort of all equalized. You really can't allow the money to step into it. Likewise, on my last expedition there, we had two men who paid $35,000, which was the price in 1992. They came in ... one spent four days and one spent ten days. They realized they were not going to be able to climb the mountain and they left. They sacrificed the money. They said, "Hey, I'm cutting my loses. I'm going home, going back to work, whatever." And were happy to say, "Keep the money. I know I'm not going to make it. It's a waste of my time being here. I'm going home." You get people like that, that have the feeling money gets them there but it's really not the ultimate motivation of being there.

WILLIAMS: Let me just say in two aspects of that. The $65,000 or whatever it is, is paid to you to make sound judgment and to keep the expedition together and running smoothly and safely. So, it does play a big part. And it should play a big part in making prudent and maybe even conservative decisions rather than one spurred on by somebody's ego or your own. Hopefully that is not the motivation. But the motivation should be the welfare of the group. That's what you're paid to do. You're not paid to summit Everest. You're paid to get people to the summit of Everest safely and return them safely. A case in point was last year...there were three of us guiding, we had six clients, nine sherpas, we were also involved in GPS. We had a whole lot of things on our plate, we were trying to do a GPS survey of Everest for Brad Washburn. We had a lot of orbiting things. We were in weather not too un-similar to what you might find on a cool day up here. We were literally in long sleeve poly-pro on the south summit at 10:30 in the morning in waste deep snow. We turned around and went down with everybody. Because we could not come up with a timeline that was gonna allow us to safely summit and return with these people with sufficient oxygen before it got dark. There's some disappointed people but they're all alive and disappointed. That's what the $65,000 is for. It's not for getting them there and saying, "Sorry bud, you're out of O2 start breathing something else." Because, there ain't anything else to breath.

Master of Ceremonies: Tom let me pose this question to you. There has been criticism of the commercial nature of guided trips. But, you were on the '63 Everest expedition you had tremendous corporate and other financial backing. Was it really any different?

HORNBEIN: I cannot answer that because I've only experienced one side of the coin. But it didn't, we never thought, well I shouldn't say that, we mostly didn't think that there was anything commercial about it. Obviously most of the money came from someplace other than our own pockets. And I think the people who were most responsible for our expedition like our leader were concerned about our responsibilities to supporters. But, the recalcitrant bunch of climbers probably didn't give much of a damn.

Master of Ceremonies: But didn't it affect the initial push as to which way you were going to climb the mountain first?

HORNBEIN: Not really, the commercial promotion for that trip was, I think it was called the Triple Slam--climb Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse--because you know Everest had already been climbed before. Those of us who were interested in climbing first of all didn't have much interest in Lhotse or Nuptse at all. And we were not, we really didn't feel very strongly that we had to reach the summit by the South Col., we were a little bit selfish about it I'd say, we just wanted to have a go at trying to do something that hadn't been done before. And so none of that mattered to many of us on the trip. I don't know how to connect that to the issue of someone paying $65,000 and there being therefore a responsibility that they should get to the top. It seems to me you deal with it the exactly the same way as based on everything else other than economic and financial issues, as Jim just articulated and Skip just articulated.

FOX: And I think in some instances people are paying $65,000 for the convenience of having someone set up the details of the trip. Many people don't have a year or two of their lives to put into organizing a trip like this, or the knowledge of how to. And I think a lot of folks worked, got in shape and let, in our case, Scott Fischer put this together because it's his job and he's good at it. Then we all went climbing.

HORNBEIN: This sort of half do-it-yourself kind of thing. How do you two guides, three guides feel about that?

Master of Ceremonies:: Anatoli?

BOUKREEV: It is a very different thing to work on Everest than it is to work in the Alps, or on McKinley or Denali. It is more like the relationship between a guide and a climber on Everest should be more like a trainer and a sportsman. Because if you achieve the summit once you're up there, you might have very hard weather, you need to have this relationship. The sportsman, the client that wants to make this ascent, needs to prepare for this ascent, not only one year. The majority of Americans he's seen, they get a little bit of experience on McKinley and they go directly to K2 or Everest.

Master of Ceremonies: Anatoli, let me ask you, would Russians ever consider, and I'm generalizing of course, but would Russians ever consider going from Peak Lenin immediately to Mount Everest?

BOUKREEV: Americans have very good experience and training in technical routes. So these people think that the way on these high peaks are easier in a way. But it is very dangerous. It is the most dangerous.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me ask the three guides, do you like guiding at high altitude? No seriously, do you like it or is it just financially something you have to do?

WILLIAMS: No actually, I personally like it. You know you brought it up earlier. You asked the question, is it possible to guide? You can find in literature, you can find in people's sales pitches where they say, "Well, we can take you to the last camp. We can guide above 8,000-meters or we can't guide on summit day or whatever." And you can decide for yourself as a purchaser, consumer of that service whether you're comfortable with that. I'll kinda back up to Tom's question earlier with Charlotte about an organizer and the likes. When you as a consumer purchase, consumer I mean client, purchase a part of a trip you have to be comfortable with the framework that that trip is set up. And some people may buy on to a trip that's just organized and expect to be guided in a much more close relationship. Or they may buy on to a closed trip and expect to be free to go as they like and set up the camps when they like and move at their own pace and not want to be under the close supervision of the guide. You have to be comfortable. You have to be knowledgeable as the consumer when you purchase your trip to mount Everest if you will. But to answer your question, yeah I actually do enjoy being there. I enjoy the place and I enjoy sharing with those people that are there the experience of being on Mount Everest whether or not it reaches the summit or not.

HORNER: I'll second that of course. Guiding is not a very lucrative profession. You have to love what you're doing to be good at it. I'm in guiding because I love adventure. I don't just guide mountains, I guide river trips, I do safaris and all sorts of things because I find this adventure wherever it might be and I love it and I enjoy being with people who also love doing this and who probably couldn't do it or wouldn't do it on their own without a guide. So we have a great relationship and we have a great time. Even at high altitude, even at summit day at Everest I remember being scared being excited but really feeling focused on what I was doing. And feeling this is probably the greatest adventure of my life. That which I am seeking all the time in my work and my play is adventure. And this is it, how do you top this. I was working with another very strong guide, I had a very strong client, we had a really good chance on this and I was just really excited, as much as you can be at 26,000 feet, everything's sort of muted and depressed but still I could tell what we're about to do here is a big deal and I love it. And I'm scared, I'm excited and I can't wait to pull this off if we can. And sure I'd do it again, if I had the opportunity I'd do it again.

Master of Ceremonies: Charlotte you've been on both sides of the fence. In the end did it feel any different to you whether it was a guided trip or one that you put together on your own?

FOX: I think it definitely does feel different. I think when you put all the pieces of the puzzle into place, from planning to executing, you do get more of a sense of accomplishment. But as these guys were saying, it didn't color having stood on top in this instant. It all came together. I'm afraid the grim reaper was following us down. But it was a great moment. It's certainly different to go along on someone else's trip as Tom was pointing out as well.

Master of Ceremonies: Let me put this question. Are guided climbs evidence that we have lost our spirit of adventure or are they just evidence that a greater number of people are seeking that spirit of adventure?

HORNER: I think the spirit of adventure is still there without a question. I just think this adventure is more accessible than ever it was before. I think the guided trips have opened it up to more people who wouldn't have done it otherwise, who desire the adventure but wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. You might argue against that but doing it yourself as Tom and his friend did in `63 would be the ultimate adventure. Doing it on your own under your own strength make it or break it whereas guided trips the client is relying on the guide to get them up there and down again in some sick fashion. The adventure is still there, sticking his neck out there pretty far, feeling probably the same way I did. He was scared, he was feeling anticipatory, he was really kind of worried about how the day was going to go, but feeling positive and optimistic about the possibilities and feeling this is the greatest adventure of my life.

Master of Ceremonies: Tom, do you think adventure travel is a legitimate adventure?

HORBEIN: In a sense, perhaps. These certain kinds of guided climbs up Everest might be regarded as an ultimate adventure travel experience. But, and they are in that sense different from the kind of adventure that we experienced 33 years ago. But it is still adventure. It's still a matter of getting one foot in front of the other, until Skip is ready to carry you there. You can't escape the risks, the uncertainty, and the personal testing of "CAN I?". So to me it is a very legitimate adventure as something that, it's just inevitable evolution that is characteristics not just of mountains but of so many aspects of life--when those who seek new frontiers testing whoever knows, they've got to go father and farther afield to do that. Either geographically or in the caliber of and risk that they set out to try to surmount. And that's true in the mountains and it's true in most of our other endeavors in our life. But I suspect that we as human beings will continue to try to effect those, those cutting edge breakthroughs. At least a few of us will as long as there are people around with that sort of sense of creativity.