Outside symposium on Everest

Prompted by this year's tragic season on Everest, Outside sponsored a panel discussion on high-altitude guiding August 17 in Salt Lake City. Panelists included Ed Viesturs, Charlotte Fox, Al Green, Alex Lowe, Todd Burleson, and John Cooley. Following is a transcript of the introductory remarks by Outside Editor Mark Bryant and the panel discussion.

The event was held to honor Rob Hall, who died on Everest's summit in May. Proceeds benefit Hall's surviving wife and new-born daughter. Additional donations are encouraged.

Sponsored by Outside magazine, Woolrich, and PrimaLoft

Greetings and introduction by Mark Bryant

Mark Bryant Master of Ceremonies:

Hi, my name is Mark Bryant and I am the Editor of Outside magazine. On behalf of my colleagues at Outside and the good people of Woolrich and PrimaLoft, I want to thank you all very much for coming this evening. I think we are all aware of the devastating tragedies on Mount Everest this past Spring. Aware of the fact that on the afternoon of may 10th a storm rolled over the upper mountain and that Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, Yasuko Namba, Andy Harris, Doug Hansen, and three Indian Nationals from Ladakh lost their lives. You may also know that by the end of the Spring season on Everest the toll had reached twelve.

We're here tonight to ask ourselves what went wrong and how it might be avoided in the future. To debate the theory and practice of high altitude guiding and climbing. And to try and get a stronger handle on where to go from here in the Himalayas and elsewhere. We're also here to celebrate the memory of a remarkable guy named Rob Hall, to raise donations to help his wife Jan Arnold and their five week old daughter Sarah. So I can't urge you enough to contribute to the cause.

We're going to begin the evening with a slide show and talk by Jon Krakauer, a contributing editor of the magazine for fifteen years and a friend for at least as long. Jon was on assignment for us on Everest this Spring. We segue from there to a panel discussion with some of the most respected and accomplished climbers and guides in the world.

We began talking to Jon about going to Everest in the winter of 1995, which was about a year and a half, as it turns out, before the tragedies of last May. We and he were becoming increasingly uneasy about the extraordinary success, let's face it, less than elite climbers had been enjoying on Everest in recent years. Increasingly uneasy about days like the one in 93 in which, I believe, 39 people summited on a single day. There were a lot of people on the mountain and we were worried that perhaps some of them didn't belong there. We worried about whether this Disney-fication, if you will, of Mount Everest was leading an increasing number of people to think that there was a real safety net there. Leading people into a false sense of security about what really goes on above 8,000 meters. A feeling that because of the extraordinary success in the past, because of the skill of very experienced guides that the mountain had in fact been "wired".

Jon didn't have a particular hunger himself for Everest. He had been climbing for 34 of his 42 years. He'd done a lot of technical climbing in Alaska, Patagonia including an ascent of the West Face of Saratory and the South Face of the Moose's Tooth. But he had zero high-altitude experience before Everest and had no strong interest, as I said, in climbing it until we asked him to look into what may be developing on Everest from the vantage point of Base Camp on the South Side. The idea of spending weeks at Base Camp seemed like a not very good idea to Jon and before long we were talking about him joining a commercial expedition to get an even closer look at what really goes on, and perhaps even taking a shot, if he got lucky, at the summit. His experience and his insights into the tragedy that unraveled around him can be read in the current issue of our magazine.

Introduction of panel members

Mark Bryant: I don't think you'll find more talented climbing ability nor better leadership than the people here at the table tonight. So let me start introducing them.

ALEX LOWE: Alex Lowe is arguably the finest all around climber in the world. His resume includes 11 routes on El Capitan, climbs at the highest level of difficulties in the Andes, Alaska and the Alps. He was the winner of the 1993 World Speed Climbing Championship in Kirghizsian. His Himalayan ascents include Kwangde Nup and Kusum Kanguru, Expeditions to K2's North Ridge and Gasherbrum IV. He successfully guided Everest's South Col route in 1991 and in 1992. He also guided Sandy Hill Pittman on Everest's Kangshung Face in 94. He was also the recipient of the 1995 American Alpine Club's prestigious Underhill Award for outstanding alpine achievement.

CHARLOTTE FOX: Charlotte Fox is the first American woman to have climbed three 8,000 meter peaks. She has climbed all fifty-six of the fourteeners in Colorado. She's climbed Denali, Aconcagua, Mt. Vinson, six peaks in Peru over 18,000 feet. She's climbed Cho Oyu and Gasherbrum II. And this Spring in May she climbed Everest as a member of Scott Fischer's team. She is a resident of Aspen and she has been a professional ski patroller at Snowmass for the past fourteen years. I should also point out that Charlotte has a very interesting perspective in that she has organized expeditions, lead expeditions and then also has had the opportunity to see it from a clients perspective on the Fischer expedition. So her experience, I think, is particularly interesting for much of the discussion we're going to have here tonight.

ED VIESTURS: Ed Viesturs has climbed nine of the fourteen 8,000 meter peaks and he intends to climb the remaining five in the next three or four years -- an extraordinary feat. He began climbing for Rainier Mountaineering in 1982, he worked there until 1992, having done 187 ascents of Rainier and guided trips to Denali, Aconcagua, and the Soviet Pamirs. He began guiding his own trips in 1990 leading expeditions to Mexico, Ecuador, and Everest. In 94 he also began working with Rob Hall at Adventure Consultants. Together he an Rob guided two Everest expeditions in 94 and 95 and they guided Cho Oyu in 94. He also climbed with Rob as a partner on Lhotse, on Makalu, on Gasherbrum I and II and on Mt. Cook. He's been on eight Everest expeditions and he's reached its summit four times, three without supplemental oxygen. He's worked as a guide on three ascents and this past Spring was the climbing leader and deputy expedition leader of the Everest Imax expedition.

JOHN COOLEY: John Cooley is the Vice President of Marketing and an officer and employee owner of Marmot. He's been involved in the outdoor industry as a professional guide and educator, a commissioned salesman and entrepreneur for more than twenty-five years. He's an attorney by education, he's a mountaineer by avocation. He's been on two 8,000 meter peaks as an expedition leader of the first American ascent of Xixabangma in Tibet and the Second American ascent of Makalu in Nepal. He has climbing and skiing experience throughout North American, Europe and Asia.

AL REED: Al Reed is President of Exum Mountain Guides in Grand Teton National Park. And he's the Vice Chairman of Geographic Expeditions in San Francisco. Al lived in Nepal for twelve years, first with the U.S. Diplomatic Service and then as director of the largest and most successful trekking and expedition company in Asia in the 70's and 80's. He has led first ascent expeditions up Gaurishankar and Cholatse in Nepal. And he was a member of expeditions to Mount Everest from Tibet Dhaulagiri and to Gonga Shan in China. He's also pioneered river rafting in Nepal and launched the first commercial rafting company in Nepal. And, I believe, yesterday he was guiding Chelsea Clinton in her second climbing class.

TODD BURLESON: Todd Burleson is the director of Alpine Ascents International since it's inception in 1986. Todd has led several expeditions to 8,000 meter peaks and he's climbed and guided on every continent. He has summited Mount Everest twice and will be the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice after completing Carstensz and Aconcagua later this year. He's led seven expeditions to Mount Everest.

MARK BRYANT: Let's start with the questions here. Jon Krakauer quotes Rob Hall as saying in base camp to his team in late April quote, "With so many incompetent people on the mountain I think it is pretty unlikely that we'll get through this without something bad happening." I'd particularly like to ask Ed and Todd and Charlotte who were there in the thick of things through all of this the first question. Why? Was Everest a time bomb waiting to happen?

ED VIESTURS: Well, I can start that. I think part of the reason this year that so many expeditions were there is the Nepal government decided to open up the permits to many, many more expeditions. For the last several years there was only one or two expeditions per route on the Nepal side of Everest but they had so much political pressures form other countries that were supporting Nepal, whether financially or by trade to give more permits. So, they felt a lot of pressure so they decided to open it up to a lot more expeditions. On this particular season I think there was at least twelve expeditions on the South side of Everest. And it's very difficult for that government to regulate or discern what teams are adequately prepared to climb Everest. For instance, a National Taiwanese team was there and, in my opinion, many of them were totally incompetent and should not have even been on Everest. But this was a National team representing Taiwan and they were in fact attempting Everest. The Nepal government has a really difficult time regulating who can come to Mount Everest, so I don't know how they can began to regulate that. So, that was one of the problems, in my opinion, this year.

MARK BRYANT: Would anyone else care to comment.

CHARLOTTE FOX: I'd like to. I believe the number that Jon pulled out of the hat, that the current number of one out of ten people are going to die on Mount Everest. You have some 300 people working out of Base Camp. Many of those people are support crew and stay in camp but many also are climbers. So just the sheer numbers leave the odds up to that.

AL REED: I'd just like to further comment in defense of the government of Nepal. That one of the reasons why they simply must recognize some of these teams and allow them to come is because as we discussed earlier many of these countries give aid to Nepal. Money which they desperately need and if they narrowed the number of permits that they gave out to a select few somehow -- because Everest is so prestigious in many countries on a national basis -- some of that money might be in jeopardy and turned off. So, they're really in a bind. Many people I've talked to have blamed Nepal for allowing too many people but they are caught between a rock and a very hard place.

MARK BRYANT: Let me ask this. Let's spend a little time talking about the guide client relationship. Do you think that Everest clients--Everest climbers in general have a realistic appreciation--because of what we talked about before, some of the kind of extraordinary success in the recent years, putting 39 people on the summit in a day. Do they have a realistic appreciation for the risks they take above 8,000 meters?

TODD BURLESON: I think a lot of them do. Also what happens is that many of my clients this year were actually repeat clients who have gone high on the mountain and have gone back to--again to assume the risk. Most of these clients have climbed with us on several mountains already and once you've climbed mountains like Denali they get an introduction to it. The big issue is altitude. The only place you really get that type of experience is in the Himalayas and it is a problem because most clients don't have the time to take off three months a year to prepare for this and so their first experience at high-altitude will be on Everest.

MARK BRYANT: Those of you who have been clients recent, Jon, Charlotte, from your perspective do you feel that your teammates had....

JON KRAKAUER: I thought perhaps no one on my team, including me, had an accurate perception of the risks. And I know as well as anyone on an intellectual level that the statistics. But I don't think you can appreciate it until you've been through something like this. I also think there's a lot of incentive for you to kid yourself and think you're going to be okay. I mean, climbing Everest is a very irrational act. It's not something you do for good reasons. You invent reasons to do it. And, if you're inventing reasons to do it it's easy to invent reasons why you're going to survive and others aren't. I think few climbers in general appreciate the risk and clients guided clients less so than most because they also are saying these are really good guides and they're going to look after me. I don't think that will change. Like I say it's not a rational thing.

AL REED: I also think that over the last few years, many people have been lulled into complacency because we read in the press 37 or 39, whatever it is, summitting Everest on a beautiful Spring day two years ago and for several years it's been that situation. People read about everybody getting up on Everest and many of these expeditions were guided and I think that although many of Todd's clients probably do well know the risks if they've been with him before, a lot of people just in general don't. And I sort of had an interesting experience when this was going on. People were calling our office in the middle of this tragedy that was unfolding around the 10th or 11th of May and asking how they could get on an Everest expedition. And there's a sort of lack of real consideration about what can happen to a person while doing that--to a person that needs to be guided.

JOHN COOLEY: I wonder too to the extent that we're all thrown so much information whether it's falling planes or exploding buildings that we get so use to tragedy that we think it won't touch us. We keep all of that at arms length and don't really believe--particularly because of our communications systems--that we really can put ourselves at risk. Until in fact it happens.

AL REED: You know when you hear that there's a phone in Base Camp, that there's a network link to NBC and a few other things like that, you forget that that is out of Base Camp which is--if any of you have trekked in Nepal and I know that a few of you have--it belittles really what's above and the consequences of what can happen and what really was waiting to happen in spite of successes and guiding successes of the past few years.

MARK BRYANT: Let me ask this of the guides here. When things do hit the fan and your assistant guides are tied up helping other people do you fell like your clients can actually take care of the themselves above 8,000 meters? How much babysitting really needs to be involved with these people.

ED VIESTURS: I think that begins when you first start guiding a client a lot of clients are use to being nurtured. Whatever expedition or trip they are on and it's probably the fault of the guide who maybe take care of their client a little bit more than they should. The client tends to lose that sense or that need to be self-sufficient and when they go on bigger trips they think the process is going to continue. And I think if anything on these high peaks we need to develop these clients into being much more self-sufficient. If that means being more critical of them during the ascent, assessing them every single day to prove to you and to themselves that they deserve a chance at going to the summit. If you nurture them to these high altitudes just to give them a shot at the summit and they're not ready for it and the shit hits the fan they you're in big trouble. So it's partially the guides I think that need to reeducate themselves and t have their clients be less needy of them and much more self sufficient and make them more team members rather than people that are being waited on hand and foot.

CHARLOTTE FOX: We saw that with Scott Fischer's team especially. The first time we did anything new, say go through the icefall, go to Camp I, we did it as a team. But after that we were given a lot of leeway in forming our own departure times, climbing with whom we wanted to, but basically a general plan that was adhered to loosely. I believe Scott's idea behind this was a sense of independence not only were we experiencing a little more adventure by not just following in his footsteps, but he had a lot of confidence in our crew which had a fair amount of experience to put this all together ourselves and think about what we were doing while we were out climbing. And I think the fact that in the end we all came out so well was because we had been so self reliant most of the time with fine leadership and guidance by Scott, Anatoli, and Neal.

JON KRAKAUER: I think it's worth pointing out that we're talking about "Clients" as if there is one kind of client. There's a huge range in ability. On Scott Fischer's team, whether it was by design or by luck, had a group of very strong clients which included Charlotte, who had previously climbed two 8,000 meter peaks. Not to mention Pete Schoening who didn't go for the summit. Pete Schoening is the only American to have made a first ascent of an 8,000 Meter peak. He climbed hidden peak back in the fifties. He was the guy who held his famous fall on K2. I mean this guy, who is one of the most experience climbers in the world, and he's a client on Scott Fischer's expedition. So, compare him to some of the people on say Rob Hall's team or Todd's team or other teams who have been up high and you have to be careful how you do that and it all comes down to how are these clients chosen or screened, or are they screened? It appears they aren't screened at all. I don't know how Scott got such a strong group of clients. I think it had a lot to do with luck and the fact that they were being recruited by sort of young strong climbers like Scott and Neal who recruited their friends. And that's not usually the case.

MARK BRYANT: Well what is usually the case? The cynics like to say, "What determines whether you get on an expedition? Whether or not the guy's check clears." Obviously, there's a lot more to it than that, we all want to hope there's a lot more to it than that. Obviously there's less chance to control the competency of climbers on non-guided expeditions, and I'm thinking for example this year obviously the Taiwanese and the South African teams. But let me ask about the process behind selecting people. How are they chosen? What are you as guides looking for from these people? When they're not a Pete Shoening when they're not a Charlotte Fox?

TODD BURLESON: It's a difficult question. Basically, the way I select my clients is I think I would say at least 85 percent of my clients have done at least two to three expeditions with me in the past.

MARK BRYANT: On smaller peaks?

TODD BURLESON: On smaller peaks absolutely. Some on technical terrain, but mostly involved with the Seven Summits. So they've climbed Aconcagua which is fairly straight forward but still high, 23,000 feet, and McKinley in Alaska which can be a very difficult endurance climb. But again it's not the altitude of Everest. What I look for--one set of client that I look for is that whose abilities and his expectations coincide. That means I will even take a man 60 or 70 years old to Mount Everest if he has competent skills but he doesn't necessarily expect to make the summit. It sounds like a lot of money to go and not to make the summit but there are a lot of clients that feel if they can go and test themselves in the lower camps and see how they do, they're comfortable with that. And they can retreat. We also have other clients that are very demanding. I think that one thing you have to understand is that after selection we actually spend close to two months on the mountain with these clients to test them at altitude. One of the flaws that's happened in the past few years is we have gotten very, very good at getting most people very very high, easily. In the past we have had harder tests for them partly because of lack of knowledge how to acclimatize individuals--but in general our clients are actually tested on the mountain also.

MARK BRYANT: If a client comes to you for the first time, you haven't climbed with them before, they want to go to Everest, they want to go to Lhotse. Do you know if they're competent enough to do it at that point based on a resume? Clearly you have the two months to basically examine them everyday and decide whether you're going to take them higher or not.

TODD BURLESON: What usually happens is that anyone who's competent enough to got to Everest and is a client --in general you have people who are clients their whole lives, who will have climbed with people like Alex. Alex will come to me and say "Look, I've got a really good client here. I think he can do it. If Alex tells me he can do it I will accept that. If he comes to me with a resume and I can't call ten people who he's climbed with obviously he doesn't have a lot of experience. So that's how I do it.

MARK BRYANT: Well in this case Rob Hall was arguably the most experienced, possibly the most successful guide on the mountain up to that point--he'd been doing it a number of years. Yet he had a, certainly relative to Scott's team, a weaker team.

TODD BURLESON: Absolutely he had a weaker team, but he also had --I shouldn't say this here necessarily--a stronger guide and a stronger organization. For example Charlotte was saying how they were turned loose more often and that was basically because they were more competent. If they're less competent and you watch them closer you can work with them. I've guided Everest seven times and have never lost a client. I feel comfortable doing it. Pushing to the summit is extreme, but I feel that my job on the mountain is--I'm not Hercules, I'm not going to pick them up and carry them off when the weather turns bad--my job as a guide is prevention. Now, if you say, "If I fall off the sidewalk and get hit by a truck what will happen to me?" You will die. The same thing will happen on Mount Everest, you have to prevent these instances by sufficient amounts of oxygen, turn around times, things of this sort.

MARK BRYANT: Let's talk about the responsibilities of the client. What do you expect from a client in terms of fitness preparation, attitude. It's a two way thing clearly as Todd said--he works on prevention but when the shit hits the fan there's a certain amount that can't be done.

ALEX LOWE: I think the ideal client is someone who understands that you can't guarantee them everything--complete safety. That's the responsibility of the guide to dispel the myth that you can pick them up and carry them off the mountain. For me personally I've made a personal decision to back away from guiding high-altitude peaks because I don't feel that I personally don't believe that I can give that to my clients. I've taken people to the summit twice successfully. But when I extrapolate forward in time I can see a point when I'd be in Rob's position and that I don't know if I could pick up a client and take them off and I'd feel professionally obligated and so stay with that client and perhaps die myself. That's a rough way to make a living. So, the answer to your question is I'm looking for someone who's realistic and looking for someone who understands that I'm possibly not going to be able to drag them off the mountain.

MARK BRYANT: In your experience in the past have people understood that? You mentioned this myth that you can drag them off. Do people not realize that you fly a plane enough times you're going to crash?

ALEX LOWE: I think it's my error that I don't know that about the clients that I guided to the summit. I'm not sure that I ever quite worked that out with the people I took to the summit. When I look back on it I think that I'm fortunate that the shit never hit the fan. I think for me personally it's hard to determine when you've stepped beyond the line over which you've lost control. I work for Al in the Tetons all summer. I feel like guiding people up and down the Grand Tetons is something I'm happy to continue to do because I can say to my clients, "I will take care of you". I'm far enough back from the line of being in control that I can say that, feel good about it and feel confident about it. On Mount Everest, I don't know. I don't know that and finding that out is for myself and for my clients pretty serious.

AL REED: I thin it is also--What is the definition of being guided? I think on Everest really especially above the South Col, there is some question of whether anyone can be guided in the traditional sense. Certainly if anything goes wrong there's no depth of climbing experience in most people--in a client that has not spent most of his life climbing or at least had climbed a number of very high mountains--there's nothing to fall back on. So, a disaster can occur very, very quickly and I just wonder if clients just really understand that if everything goes well they can be sort of guided let's say above the South Col or very high. But, if anything begins to go wrong, if it begins to unravel what can the guide really do for them. I wonder if any of these clients really understand that fully.

JON KRAKAUER: Few people this year, at least on our team understood that. I don't think guides intentionally mislead the clients but look it's a business, you're competing with other guide services, you're marketing. You're sort of implying promised success rates and promised safety. If you look at any of these brochures, read in between the lines, they're saying, "I'm going to guarantee your safety and I'm probably going to get you to the top." That's what marketing is all about, it's bullshit. And people forget that and that's fine, in most commerce, but this is different. I don't know how you're going to get around that. I don't think that's going to change.

JOHN COOLEY: I say the change starts here. This is the outdoor industry--don't we have the responsibility to change the perception? There's an awful lot of power in this room and at this trade show. I think it turns on how we picture the experience of Everest and how we picture the seriousness of Everest and seriousness of an 8,000 meter peak. I think we can start here. We've romanced this to death. We've made it simple, we've made it accessible, we've made it safer with great gear.

JON KRAKAUER: The irony is by stressing the danger, as Al pointed out--amidst this tragedy he had people calling him up who never knew you could be guided up Everest say, "It sounds like a great idea."
I don't think being realistic about the dangers is going to scare away many people. I think we're all pretty much in agreement that this tragedy is going to draw more people to Everest. It's human nature. It's perverse but that's the way it is.

ALEX LOWE: I think the difficulty of addressing these questions is that we're attempting to assign a rightness or a wrongness to the whole guiding of Everest and that's impossible to do. There's nothing right or wrong about it. It's a risk that a client is justified to accept if he can find a guide who will accept it with him. In some capacity buy into this project and it's neither right nor wrong.

MARK BRYANT: Good point. We're working the gray areas here, kind of like the rest of life.

ED VIESTURS: I think it's the guides that need to police about this. The clients aren't going to be able to do that. If anything we now have to be twice as conservative, twice as safe, and twice as critical of anyone who comes with us on one of these expeditions. The main goal is to have a great journey and to get them back home alive and then perhaps, if things go right, get them to the summit. I think that we're the ones that are going to have to be selective and pick the people and not have them pick us.

CHARLOTTE FOX: By the same token, I believe perspective clients also need to check out their guide. Do you have the same goals as your group and as your guide. What credentials does your guide have and his assistant guides. How much money are you paying? Are you getting good value for your trip? Or are you going to be cooking in your tent for two months while everyone else is watching MTV? There's a lot of factors to figure out for someone who's browsing the Outside directory for an Everest trip.

MARK BRYANT: What are some of those factors. If I'm going to believe the marketing in the ad?

ED VIESTURS: It's really hard to say. You're going to call all these guide services that are listed in the back of one of the climbing magazines. The prices are all listed and you call the guide services. Of course they're going to tell you they're the best and they have great success and they do things safely. It's very difficult for a client that doesn't know any of the guide services to just simply shop around. And I know that there's many people out there that money is a major factor. When they see one guide service listing a trip for $65,000 and the other listing the trip for $10,000, what's the obvious choice? If you don't really know you're going to pick the--well, you're going to save the $55,000. In the end, if you don't know, you're going to get on a glorified camping trip. But on the other hand, Rob had a great success record and he was considered on of the best Everest guides. But, this year, even though he had that record, things fell apart. So it's very hard to predict what's going to happens so it's a totally difficult thing for anyone to evaluate from beginning to end. It's a really hard thing. Because, mountaineering is so changeable. The conditions change the guides change the way you think up at altitude. You're running out of oxygen, things fall apart and different people react in different ways. So it's a really hard thing to quantify.

AL REED: Guiding trips on Everest obviously isn't going to stop, it's going to expand in the future one way or another. And we're already seeing guiding of other very high Himalayan peaks and that's going to expand. I think guiding all over the Himalayas and the Karakorom in ten years is going to be pretty commonplace--ten or fifteen years. Considering the very wonderful equipment that's being made now which allows people to do this much more easily than that done in the past. But also people's interest in it, expectations, and sense of adventure. But the only thing about these companies is that they cannot take the adventure out of it and adventure means risk. In this particular part of adventure it's a very, very high risk.

ALEX LOWE: I think clients need to understand that there's always been risk in mountaineering. Experienced mountaineers have been perishing for a long, long time now. If they're going to buy this adventure they get the whole package. They get the potential to parish as well and that has to be emphasized.

CHARLOTTE FOX: Everest is so unique in so many ways because it's the big prize to a lot of people. They're not really out there to go into uncharted territories, they want to improve their chances of getting up this big prize. So their sense of adventure, though personal--being up high is very adventuresome--they're not willing to hang it out so far that they're out on another small unnamed peak on a hard route really exploring territory. These people, a lot of them, interested in getting this mountain because it looks good. I think people should understand that there's still a lot of adventure out there. Maybe it's time to get away from some of the big names, the big seven, and start exploring again some more because you love being in the mountains. Most people that have climbed for a while started out that way just hiking getting out and exploring. And there's still a lot out there to do. This was a prime example I think of people being drawn to this mountain because it's the big one. You just get all kinds of people there for all kinds of reasons beyond a sheer love of mountaineering. So let's get some more adventure out there. Listen to me I was out there. We need to expand our horizons.

MARK BRYANT: If there was more of an emphasis away from Everest could climbing parties commercial or non-commercial expect to be drawing more serious climbers? In other words are less serious climbers drawn to Everest because it is the trophy to be bagged? Related to that has the proliferation of guiding companies on Everest--that there are so many opportunities for a hack like me to decide that they want to get a shot at an Everest trip--has that also diluted essentially the climbing talent on the peak.

JOHN COOLEY: I think Jon said it most eloquently, that with the great resume in climbing he went to Everest not to climb it in the sense of a climber but to climb it in the sense that it was Everest. An emphasis on smaller peaks, more technical routes, more distant explorations still don't address Everest. There's only one and I think people will be drawn to it. We're not going to effect that, it won't decrease.

ED VIESTURS: If we decide not to guide Everest, other people will. You're either in the group or you're out of it. It's going to always continue. Everest is the highest peak in the world and it always will be and there's always going to be people generation after generation of people that are going to want to climb Mount Everest.

CHARLOTTE FOX: I can say it was an incredible experience too. Since I'm standing here I can say it was worth it right.

MARK BRYANT: Let me ask something to do with ethics in specific situations. Traditionally, there's always been an implicit understanding among climbers that we're all there together and if anybody gets in trouble we're going to go help them. If we're in agreement that the average climber on Everest today, in the last few years or so, is not what it was perhaps at one time. Is this still a valid ethic? Or should the responsibility be on the less competent climbers to fend for themselves? Clearly as I recall in Jon's story he writes about Guy Cotter on a neighboring peak radioing Rob Hall at a certain point and saying, "Rob, your responsibility for your client is over, save yourself."

ED VIESTURS: I agree with that. I think there's a point and you can realize the fact, that you've done everything you can for your client. Rather than both of you dying you should know when to say "Okay there is nothing more that I can do for you at this point. I have to go down to save myself and then perhaps get somebody else to come up here and help you." It's really hard for me to justify staying there and dying also because I stayed to help a client who was beyond help at that point.

MARK BRYANT: Or someone else. I don't mean to keep picking on clients here by any means. Whether it's someone on the Taiwanese team...

ED VIESTURS: Well, you have to make the decision if you're going to go help someone that probably wasn't with your group or if you're going up to get somebody are you also then putting yourself in danger? If you're not and you can handle the situation and the weather's good and you feel you can assist that person yeah then go and assist that person and forget about what you're doing for the time being. But if the weather is bad and it's just suicidal then to go and attempt to help that person then I wouldn't consider doing that.

JON KRAKAUER: I should point out that it's not just the fear of loss of life. This year people get in trouble they call for help. The other expeditions have to decide whether this is a serious call for help--am I going to jeopardize--these clients have paid sixty-five thousand bucks. Am I going to wreck their chance by going to help someone who maybe doesn't need help? It really gets complicated. This year to the credit of the Imax team and Todd's team they came to assist the climbers in trouble knowing that they might have jeopardized their expeditions. That's admirable but at the same time Mark's point is, can this continue this way? At the same time this year on the North side some Ladakhi climbers these Indians who were in trouble didn't make the summit, thought they had, pushed too far, were stupid. Three of them died. Two of them might have been saved by a Japanese team going up the next day who saw them continued to the summit, ignored them and went down. That Japanese team has drawn a lot of criticism and maybe justly so. But maybe more criticism should be directed at the poor Ladakhi who died. They deserve the ultimate criticism--Like what were they doing up there? These are difficult questions.

ALEX LOWE: I think they're personal questions. I think every guide has to answer that for themselves. For me personally it's really black and white. My obligation to my client is to the bitter end if you will. And for that reason it's a bigger commitment above 8,000 meters than I want to make. I think when push comes to shove it's pretty hard to not help somebody. Last year on Mt. McKinley I actually dragged off a good part of the Taiwanese team while they were training for Everest. They of course went on to Everest. That's not something I was obligated to do, but when asked to do it by the Park Service there's no way I could say no. I think the same thing applies on Everest.

ED VIESTURS: Saving someone's life is much more important than going to the summit. I mean if you can save somebody's life, go home and come back. That's a lot better than letting that person die and going to the summit. I remember they interviewed one of the Japanese climbers and he said, "Well on Everest there's no real time for morality." I think that's ridiculous.

AL REED: I would say I tend to believe that's true. But there is a different climbing ethic among certain different nationalities. Specifically including the Japanese, or certain groups of Japanese, with respect to their care of each other or their response to other expeditions. I've seen this quite a bit in the Himalayas. Really just ignoring other members of their team when there's been real problems or other people, like this incident on Everest with the Ladakhies. It's true also with the Chinese to some extent and I don't know about the Taiwanese. But there are different ethics that operate among different nationalities in mountaineering. It's all not the same sort of, I wouldn't say wholesome, but more conservative ethic that we generally have, or more wanting to help others ethic. Our value of life, let's put it that way, over glory in some sense or over achievement or over success or victory, whatever you want to call it.

MARK BRYANT: If we could jump to this matter of success. Getting people to the summit or getting them at least high enough. Todd you've talked in the past about delivering a great experience to people whether they get to the South Col the South Summit or the Summit. That definition of success for many people is happily different, it doesn't mean getting to the top. However, if we're talking about getting people up beyond the South Col. Acclimatization seems to have been handled quite well. Jon said earlier it seemed as if Rob Hall had it down to a science. Presently, most clients undergo this fairly accelerated acclimatization schedule, it seems to be reasonably safe and effective under normal conditions. But this whole accelerated schedule is predicated on the assumption that clients start using bottled oxygen at Camp III which is 24,000 feet and I believe sufficient oxygen above Camp III beyond that. Based on the events this Spring does it make any sense to think that when things go wrong maybe there isn't enough oxygen on the upper mountain. Might climbers be better off--Ed I think your team did this--didn't use oxygen until you reached the South Col.? By requiring clients or teammates to go to the South Col before you start giving them the gas would you weed out the weaker climbers who are inevitably get themselves in trouble anyway? And help the stronger climbers better acclimatize?

ALEX LOWE: I think there's several answers. My feeling about it is, for me personally as a mountaineer, when I was guiding Everest, I didn't want to go try to make the summit bid until I felt really good--as good as you can feel at the South Col without oxygen--which I did. My reasoning there is that if something happens to your oxygen and you run out, you're a complete fish out of water when you're above the South Col if you haven't at least acclimatized to that point. So what you're doing, as a guide service, if you require that of your clients is you're giving your clients to the guide that doesn't require that.

TODD BURLESON: The real question is, is it necessary? Yes it's a good idea. It's a good idea for safety effects that only the very best climbers in the world go to Mount Everest who have a lot less chance of dying. The question is, should it be a requirement? I don't have the answer to that. I know that as Alex said if I did that with my clients they would not make the summit. I would lose most of them. Partly because of the acclimatization, but a lot of the times if you got that high and you come back down the chance of a respiratory infection, something of this effect, is much, much higher. You'll lose a lot of clients that way. Some of the issues that can be paid attention to, again talking about safety, is turn around times and things of this sort. You really need to have an extreme safety--the largest safety margin you possibly can. We've seen times when complete expeditions have turned around at appropriate times and come back safely. It's not always the case, but that to me is as important to me as forcing the client to his limits before to wipe him out so he can't have his summit bid.

MARK BRYANT: Clearly the turn around times were blown off by both clients and guides. And non-commercial climbers as well right...

AL REED: I'd just like to say, if Todd will forgive me. Todd turned around last year at the appointed time on a beautiful day and one of the clients that had to turn around, I understand, is now suing Todd because he didn't make the summit. Todd's expedition did absolutely the right thing, adhered to protocol and he's having to fight this now. And it's just disgusting. It shows the feeling of some clients that they're paying for the summit. That for this money Todd is going to guarantee them the summit. If Todd is doing the right thing or Todd's expedition is doing the right thing why he's going to get in trouble for it.

TODD BURLESON: It's very difficult to educate the clients on this. I could run the lousiest expedition in the world and get them all to the top and they think you're God. I could run the best expedition and if I don't get them up then I'm the bad guy. There are extremes in that. Several of those clients that didn't make it last year many of them have come back this year. And they were very happy, they weren't happy they didn't make it, but again it took an accident like this to justify what we did last year. I'm hoping people will learn from it. Everest is a high risk. People need to know this. We need to educate the climbing population of this. There's been a lot of articles that say, "It's the Big Easy. Anyone that's got $65,000 can do it." It's not the case, it never has been the case. I think most of the guides up here can tell you that that's the truth.

MARK BRYANT: If a client is putting his absolute faith in you. He hasn't heard the things that you've been telling him all along about his responsibilities, your responsibilities, where some stop and so forth. Money aside, whether I paid $65,000 or $10,000, how tough is it to order somebody around? Deny them their dream. Doug Hansen had failed last year very near the summit. Rob had turned him back. This year was very important to Rob to give Doug another chance. Is that the kind of thing that leads any well meaning person to bend his rules a little bit and give that person that chance.

TODD BURLESON: I think it's possible.

ED VIESTURS: I think that's probably what happened this year to a certain extent. I mean Rob probably felt very close to Doug. I was on the trip last year where we turned around 300 feet below the summit. Doug was a great man and he struggled to save his money to go to Everest. Rob gave him a break and I'm sure seeing him so close to the summit this year Rob literally nurtured him to the summit without sensing or seeing the signs that Doug was going to be in dire straits. He was using all of his energy just to get to the summit. So I can see definitely how that can occur. It's at those times where we can't let those things effect us. We have to stick to our rules and not let our emotions or other factors effect the rules that we laid down even before we left for the climb.

AL REED: The desire to please in guiding climbing is lethal. Because if the desire to please interferes, as I think it perhaps did this time, with climbing judgment. Simply an overzealous desire to please automatically leads to an error in judgment, it's already compromising judgment. This desire to please, causes this error in judgment, which is the most important part of climbing, which directly leads to the accident. All starting with this desire to please. It's true not only in Himalayan guiding but in any kind of guiding. Treat the clients well but the thing that the guide is really offering is judgment and you can't compromise that.

MARK BRYANT: How difficult is it to exercise judgment even for someone whose been to the summit three or four times, of Everest? How tough is decision making at really high altitudes?

ED VIESTURS: Well I think if you're the leader of an expedition and you have an assistant with you who's equally competent the decision making is a lot easier because you can bounce ideas off of each other. You have a bit of a control factor. The one guide might be going off further than they should and the other guide can real them in. If the leader of the expedition is the most experienced and he has some assistant guides who've never been so high on Everest for instance and haven't experienced these altitudes then it's very, very difficult. Then they feel that they can't call, make a call, on the leader of the expedition. So that's part of the problem and that might have happened this year a little bit.

MARK BRYANT: Jon mentioned during his slide show he raised or alluded to the question of the debate among people as to whether clients should be expected to do more. Should they be expected, or encouraged at least, to do more load hauling, more camp preparation? Now there's more reliance on greater quantities of fixed ropes. I'm wondering does all this give people too much of an illusion of a safety net? A false sense of security. Do these things increase safety or do they decrease safety?

TODD BURLESON: One thing that we've done in the last few years. In the early nineties we had a higher requirement for acclimatization. Most people would have to go to 24,000 feet at least twice and sleep there. That is going from Camp II to Camp III on the Lhotse face and they'd have to do it in a reasonable amount of time. What's happened is we've done that and we go, "wow, we had good success with that, we got people up and things were good." But, some people got sick, because it took a lot out of them. So we lowered that requirement or maybe we allowed nine to ten hours to get to Camp III. I think those should be looked at, they should be more strict. When clients start carrying heavy loads on mountains like Everest, I'm not sure it does them any benefit. The honest to God truth of it is very few guides carry loads on Everest, I think Ed can vouch for that and Alex. It is a very, very hard job. When you breath very rapidly for long periods of time the chance of irritating your Bronchia and getting a respiratory infection is great. So, I'm more not so much into load carrying but maybe harder restrictions on acclimatization and faster times between camps.

MARK BRYANT: How about the fixed ropes up at the top?

TODD BURLESON: I think those are requirements, even for guides. Just because no one knows when the wind is going to start blowing. If that wind starts blowing you need a line to get down quickly.

MARK BRYANT: Not so much up high, as I understand it there are more fixed ropes lower down now is that right?

TODD BURLESON: Well the mountain almost always been fixed all the way from Base Camp to the South Col. That's basically for safety for Sherpas also. Because again Sherpas are carrying most of the loads for us.

JON KRAKAUER: The whole question I raised about should climbers participate in more of the work. Guides who guide Denali, people who've been on Denali. On Denali clients share in the load hauling they share in the camp preparations. It makes them cohere as a team more. There's a real sense of team on guided trips on Denali. On Everest, at least in our group, there was no sense of team. We were all just individuals sort of being pampered to a certain degree. And I found that spiritually un-satisfying but also I think there's a level of safety that's missing from that. So that's the point about when you do more work together, you help each other over these months. It's a very different thing than just sort of getting your own butt up there. That was very unssatisfying for me on Everest. I probably couldn't have summited if had to haul my own loads. Since I did summit I sort of felt like I do on a rock climb when I have to pull on gear or cheat somehow. It sort of taints the whole things.

AL REED: I'd just like to make a comment about the Sherpas. We're talking about guiding clients over the past five, six, seven years but the Sherpas of course do the lion's share of fixing, of load carrying and of getting people into the situation where they can actually do a summit bid. I know that in the seventies and eighties and perhaps even in the sixties, there were a lot of climbers who were virtually guided by Sherpas. Sherpas have never given really any credit for this. The only difference is that when things went wrong--when the Sherpas were really acting an awful lot like some of the guides today--at least when things began to unravel they were still with people who could summon reserves to help out and get down. Whereas with many of the clients today they simply just don't have those reserves, both of judgment and knowledge.

MARK BRYANT: Do many of you experience a different relationship with your clients I guess. Observing your clients on your expeditions, do they sort of gel as a team as much? Do they even need to?

TODD BURLESON: Jon made a really good point. It's true--it is a fact that clients do not participate in the work near as much. It's hard to explain why that is. You're much better off when you build a team. But 17,000 feet is hard on people. Quite often they don't feel like getting up and participating and setting loads together and things like this. I think it should be emphasized more I really do.

ALEX LOWE: I agree with Jon. I think that was a really poignant comment about the lack of team work. It's one of the things that sort of turned me off to guiding on Everest. I found it very dissatisfying that I was guiding a bunch of very disparate individuals with very individual ambitions. And when push came to shove sort of jockeying for who was going to be on the first team or the team that had the biggest chance of success. There was very little humility. It was just an individual ambition sort of battle for position.

MARK BRYANT: Did that have to do with the fact that these people are strangers and hence don't have that bond to begin with?

ALEX LOWE: I think so. I feel like I developed more of a feeling of teamwork amongst five clients in two days guiding them up the Grand Tetons than I did with the clients that I spent two months with on Everest. When push came to shove, this is on summit day, I think that there are some strong egos involved. It's a unique individual who will scrape together the cash and has this strange pathological desire to climb Mount Everest. There's some strange things that go on that mountain. There's some things that go on Everest that are unique. I don't see them anywhere else in the world because Everest is a unique mountain and it draws people for very unique reasons.

JOHN COOLEY: I think the distinction is almost moral. Particularly for some of us older and wiser people here. Al and I, growing up in the sixties and seventies, mountaineering was the moral equivalent of war. It was a team effort. As a team and as a group you had a objective and you didn't know what part you would play from the beginning, in the middle or even at the end. That ethic carried you through the decision making process. Much of your judgment and the process of getting up the mountain. If some got weak you were there to help them. If they got weaker you got them down. You would only make it if you worked as a group. I think keeping in mind that that morality goes away when it becomes a commercial enterprise. Right or wrong, as Alex suggested, that isn't the issue. It isn't either right or wrong, it's a combination of both--that morality goes away. And you have a different animal--it's a brave new world.

MARK BRYANT: Let me ask one last question of everyone on the panel. Many climbers out there and I think probably many in this room think that no one should be guided to the roof of the world. The mystery, the challenge, the romance of Everest, you know the whole idea of more power to you if you can get up by any means aside. That that romance, that challenge has been diminished even debased by the throngs of people who now seem to be summiting. Is there something to that?

TODD BURLESON: Yes there is. We talk about guiding Everest. Half the people that aren't guided should be guided. The Taiwanese. One thing I honestly believe would have happened this year, and this may be a little bit off the side. But if that accident hadn't happened with Rob Hall, which for me there was a lot of irony because he was one of the very, very best. But if that accident hadn't happened that day, those expeditions that were ready to go the next day would have had even a much, much greater disaster. I truly believe that. I think the level of Everest client and climber has gone down. In the older days only the very best went. Through access, through exposure in the media saying it's easier. All of the sudden, you have all these expeditions alongside of us who have no leadership and they have no experience. I guess that the level of climber has dropped so low that there is an ethical issue there. These people are going to Everest with no knowledge of what they're undertaking at tremendous risk to their lives. Should we allow them to risk their lives? I think that's the real question.

AL REED: I wish Everest could not be guided. I respect the people that are guiding Everest. But I just wish from a romantic point of view that Everest was not guided. But it is and it will be in the future and that's reality.

ALEX LOWE: My personal decision is that I'm not going to guide it. I don't believe that I can guide it, honestly promising my clients that I can take care of them. I'm not ready to say that I think it's wrong to guide Everest. I can't see the distinction between feeling perfectly good about guiding people up the Grand Teton and feeling wrong about guiding people up Mount Everest. But it does illicit a very visceral response in most individuals. People are not ambivalent about it. They feel like Everest, I think, is a grand human achievement that is somehow diminished because housewives and inexperienced people are guided up it all the time. I don't buy it, I don't see that.

JON KRAKAUER: I think it's beside the point. Everest will be guided, it will continue to be guided. You just have to recognize this is Everest, it's like the West Buttress. This is the way it is. It's a circus. It's dangerous. If you don't like that there's plenty of other mountains to go to. And those who go there will presumably will come to some understanding of the way it is and go. But others won't.