[Editor's note: On Tuesday morning we spoke with Ed Viesturs from base camp. A friend and climbing peer of Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, Viesturs was on the mountain during the disastrous weekend, and was involved in the rescue effort.]

What's going on at base camp at this point?

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We helped people come down and stuff like that. And we just come down yesterday (Monday). Finally got everybody that was alive off the mountain. And so we are back at base camp, and we're going to rest for three or four days, and then go back up and try and climb the mountain.

Everybody is off the mountain now, everybody came totally off the mountain yesterday. Todd Burleson and Pete Athans went up the day before to help the people that were on the Col, to revive them. And then myself and some of our team, Robert Shauer, went up to about 25,000 feet to meet them, to help them come down off the mountain. And we kept pushing and so yesterday morning we brought everybody, everybody cleaned off the mountain. So the mountain is deserted right now for a while.

Some people were found, I guess, just 200 or 300 feet from camp. It was dark when they got down, and it was white-out, visibility was zero and they literally couldn't find camp. And some of them huddled there and eventually did find camp. And some of them didn't and ended up dying right outside of camp.

Could you describe the storm Friday that led to this disaster?

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Typically in the afternoons we get some sort of weather system, some storms or some clouds or some snow. But that day was quite windy and quite stormy above, let's say, 25,000 feet. So when they were coming down, visibility was about zero and the winds were very, very high and it was very, very cold. So it was a pretty nasty day later in the afternoon.

What then happened with the teams?

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Well, I think the groups had been climbing since about 11 p.m. (the previous) night. They were very tired coming down. It was late in the day. I think people were running out of oxygen and they were very, very tired. And so all those things combined--along with the fact that it was very windy, very cold, and visibility was zero--I mean, that just wreaked havoc. I mean people are that close to the edge and the weather gets that bad, it's really hard to control the situation.

What about Rob Hall? What was going on with him?

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He spent the night just below the summit with Doug Hansen who apparently was having a lot of problems. And so Rob stayed with him through the night and sometime during the night Doug died. And then Rob that morning (Saturday) found himself on the south summit and that's when we were in contact with him. But he was unable to move, he was so exhausted and hypothermic.

We talked to him on the radio and we tried to get him to move, and we thought he was moving, but after three hours he finally said, "You know, I haven't even packed up yet." And we were a bit shocked. We thought he was already working his way down the ridge. And at that point it might be better for him to just stay there. I mean, he couldn't move at all, he couldn't even get himself going even though we tried over the radio to get him motivated.

And so then we tried to get a couple Sherpa to go up to him with oxygen. But the weather was so bad that they couldn't reach him. And later in the day we had to tell him that the Sherpas had turned around and it was quite sad.

What happened with Scott Fischer?

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Well, the only indication I have was talking to the Sherpa that was with him (Lobsang Sherpa). And he said that Scott was having trouble going up. So he apparently had some sort of illness. We don't really know what was going on. If he was having problems going up--and then his Sherpa also then was assisting him coming down--whether he had pulmonary edema or cerebral edema, I mean it's really hard to tell, but he did have apparently some sort of illness that made him very slow and then caused him a lot of problems on the descent.

Now it was just tremendous winds and very, very cold. Anatoli Boukreev went out several times to try to find Scott. He finally, eventually did find Scott. Up till then the winds were very high and it was white-out so you really couldn't see 200 feet outside camp. But he finally was able to find Scott. But it was a bit too late.

Any sense what might have been going on within the groups as this was happening? Would it be hard for an assistant to question Scott Fischer's condition and decision to move up the mountain?

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Well, that's quite possible. I thought of that in my mind, too. As far as Rob (Hall), also. I mean, I wasn't there and I know if I would have been there. I've worked with Rob a lot and we always--when we're guiding together--have a lot of discussions as far as when to continue, when to turn around.

And perhaps with Rob or with Scott, having assistant guides that they hadn't worked with for that long, perhaps they were then just calling the shots on their own rather than having these discussions. But I really don't know, I mean, you'd have to talk to Neal or Anatoli about that. But I was thinking personally about what I would have done. If I was with Rob, I'm sure we would have had some sort of discussions as far as the conditions and weather, to continue or not.

What are the climbers saying at base camp? Any thought about limiting access to the mountain, or the perils of commercial expeditions?

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Yeah, I mean it's all varying opinions and it's all dependent on how you guide and how conservative you are and how many people you have in your group and how strong the people are in your group. I mean, every guide that comes up here does things in a different way.

And I did talk to (guide) Todd Burleson a little bit and I'm sure things are going to change. Whether the Nepali government is going to restrict permits now, or hopefully the people that come up here and guide are going to be a lot more conservative and maybe do things a little differently, choose their clients to be a little stronger, it's really hard to say. Like I said, every guide has different parameters and different criteria as far as what their clients are like and how they are going to climb the mountain. Personally, if I'm guiding up here I'm always ultraconservative. As I said, I wasn't up there so I can't really speculate on what was going through their minds at the time, particularly Scott and Rob.

What was going on with Makalu Gao, and how did he end up roped with Scott on the mountain?

Well, you know, we heard different stories, too. My guess would be that Scott perhaps was helping him down. That's the only thing I can think of. We heard that they were roped together. We heard that they weren't roped together. I really don't know. There are so many different stories going around camp. And sometimes it's really hard to get the correct story from the Sherpas because some of them don't speak English that well. So I really can't tell you on that one.

Wasn't the first death on May 9 a climber from Makalu's team? What's going on with that group?

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Apparently (Chen Yu-Nan of Taiwan) was at Camp III and he was outside his tent without crampons and he slipped and fell into a crevasse. We believe it was in the morning. They got him out and he didn't have any apparent injuries. Apparently he probably had some internal problem because then Makalu took off toward Camp IV and then later in the day this Taiwanese man developed problems and our Sherpa then started helping him down the Lhotse face, and two-thirds of the way down the face he then died. And then the Sherpas left him there. And then myself and David Breashears and Robert Shauer went up then to retrieve his body. So it was kind of a weird situation where nobody really knew--he himself didn't really know that he was fatally injured, probably some internal problem, and then he died later.

What are your plans now? How many expeditions are still planning to make a summit bid?

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I think there's still about four expeditions: ourselves, Todd Burleson's group, Mal Duff's group, and then there's a Swedish climber, Goran (Kropp) He's also planning on going back up. It wasn't like a situation where the mountain, where there was an avalanche or something that killed all these people. It was just judgment, human error, that type of thing. I mean, we feel confident that if we have good weather we can still go up and climb this mountain safely.

And Manaslu? Are you still thinking about making an effort to climb it after Everest?
Vaguely. We have to rest for about three or four days and then go up and probably by the time we're down it's going to be the end of May. I'll have to assess my situation then and also how close we are to the monsoon. I haven't totally counted it out, but it's getting more vague all the time.

I have heard from Carlos Carsolio's brother yesterday (Tuesday) that the day before (Carlos) did summit on Manaslu. So he's now climbed all 14 8,000-meter peaks.

In general, have you come to any conclusions about this accident and what it means?

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Well it's all personal opinion, that type of thing. I think there's just too many people on Everest. A lot of people who are here that probably just shouldn't be here. I mean, even some national teams, it's not just guided teams, that are just marginal. I mean they are competent mountaineers but Everest is a whole 'nother ball game and a lot of times it is very borderline on that summit day and if just one thing goes wrong, I mean, you can lose control of the entire situation. You're really hanging it out up there. In my opinion, I think there's too many people here. A lot of inexperience, and then people that are experienced end up getting caught in the middle of all these situations and helping people down. I mean, that's all part of it but I don't know if there is any way you could restrict or assess the ability of the climbers that are here.

Is that what happened to Fischer and Hall? Victims of their role as guides?
They were guiding, they were the leaders and they were definitely taking care of their clients and trying to help them before they helped themselves. So that is quite possibly why they themselves died and their clients survived.

-- Ed Viesturs