EVEREST Expedition Team Recalls Treacherous Route and Infamous Tragedy

Climbing Mount Everest

Publication Date: June 1998

The EVEREST team set out to climb the mountain via the classic South Col route - the same route used by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Beginning at Everest Base Camp, the route winds through the legendary Khumbu Icefall, a steep, stark glacial landscape of ever-shifting ice that tests a climber's mountaineering skill and inner mettle.

The Khumbu Icefall moves three to four feet a day - and the constant motion can be heard as splintering cracks and heart-stopping shudders all around the climbers. Great towers of ice, some as large as small mountains themselves, can break free at any moment and crash down without warning. The Icefall is also riddled with deep, yawning crevasses that must be spanned with slippery metal ladders. Adding to the technical difficulty of the Khumbu Icefall is the knowledge that many climbers have lost their lives in this dangerous and surreal terrain.

At the top of the Icefall is Camp I. But the climbers cannot just proceed from here to the top of Everest. They must move slowly - climbing higher each day but returning to Base Camp to sleep - taking time to acclimatize their bodies to the sudden drop in life-sustaining oxygen. Moving too high too fast at these altitudes is deadly even to the fittest of athletes. So camps are established one by one, painstakingly, as the climbers strengthen the bonds of friendship, trust and confidence and come to respect the mercurial nature of the mountain.

Mountains, like weather systems and emotions, are capricious by nature. Stunning vistas, sparkling sun, joyous camaraderie and cerulean skies can give way instantly to black clouds, skin-blistering cold, survival mentality and fierce, angry blizzards. A certain equanimity must be maintained in all conditions, calling for a constancy of human spirit - and, in the case of Araceli Segarra, lots of chocolate!

After ten grueling days on Everest, the EVEREST team had already seen many of the mountain's moods. They had established Camp I above the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, Camp II in the midst of the lonely Western Cwm (Cwm is a Welsh word meaning valley), Camp III on the icy slopes of the Lhotse Face, and Camp IV, a desolate, freezing, wind-riven patch of ground just below the South Summit. Returning one final time to Base Camp, they were now ready to begin their bold attempt on the peak.

It was a time of intense personal focus and commitment - but when tragedy struck, the EVEREST Expedition climbers were immediately drawn out of their reverie and into action to help their fellow climbers.

On May 10, 1996, more than 23 people from four expeditions set out to summit Everest. With so many people on the mountain's steepest slopes, the ascent was slow. Too slow. As evening began to fall, climbers were still hovering in the aptly named "death zone," where oxygen is scarce, and freezing, screeching, 80 mph winds pose a constant danger of hypothermia. From out of nowhere, one of Everest's massive storm systems moved in, trapping climbers high on the mountain. Now the men and women on the mountain's highest reaches were blinded by darkness and whipping snow, shivering in triple-digit negative temperatures, confused and fatigued from thin air and surrounded by glacial wilderness of unyielding rock and ice incapable of sustaining life for long. The situation was dire. With each passing second, the climbers were losing more strength and the night was growing more savage.

The EVEREST Expedition got word of the emergency at Camp II, where they had decided to wait for a different summit day due to the high winds on May 10. David Breashears immediately began coordinating a rescue with the ten other teams spread out on Everest. A field hospital was established at Camp II, commandeering the services of a physician from another expedition. Oxygen and other supplies stowed away for the EVEREST team at the South Col were made available to the rescue effort.

Meanwhile, the EVEREST Expedition moved up to Camp III to provide further assistance to the troubled climbers descending. Ed Viesturs was one of several people who got on the radio attempting to compel Rob Hall, an experienced New Zealand guide stuck high on the mountain with an ailing client and now succumbing to cold and lack of oxygen, to begin moving towards rescue. It was to no avail - Hall remarkably survived a night of raging storms in 100 degrees below zero weather at some 28,700 feet but his strength was too depleted. A rescue effort was turned back by the continuing bad weather. Unfortunately Hall did not survive a second night and the mountain claimed another victim.

The rescue team moved into gear as Beck Weathers, a Texas pathologist who had earlier been given up for dead, miraculously reached Camp IV. He was severely frostbitten and near death. With help from the rest of the team, Breashears and Viesturs guided Weathers down the difficult Lhotse Face, with Breashears taking the front and Viesturs tethering him from behind to control his descent. Five Sherpas from the EVEREST Expedition also assisted frostbitten Taiwanese climber Makalu Gau in a similar fashion.

At Camp I, however, the rescue effort faced a perilous impasse: the infamous Khumbu Icefall. It was unlikely that the deteriorating Weathers and Gau would survive the rigorous technical climb through the glacier - and such an attempt would further endanger the lives of everyone involved. Then, news came that a daring Nepalese Air Force Lieutenant had agreed to attempt an unprecedented high altitude chopper landing to ferry the injured climbers to the hospital.

With the rescue of Beck Weathers successful, the EVEREST team finally had a chance to recuperate and take stock of the harrowing events that changed not only the expedition, but their lives. In the end, eight climbers died - and, like all climbers who lose their lives too high on Everest for rescue, their bodies remained where they fell in the snow, both a tribute to and a stark reminder of the power of the mountain.

Saddened and exhausted, the expedition members nevertheless refused to succumb to pessimism. They replaced the 25 bottles of oxygen used during the rescue, restocked their supplies and gathered their spirits to prepare once again for the summit. Finally, the winds died down and the team made their way back up to Camp III on May 21.

On Wednesday, May 22, just before midnight, the EVEREST climbers sipped their last hot drinks and piled on their down suits to begin the final push towards the summit. In the best of conditions, the trek to the summit takes at least ten hours - ten hours of constant struggle to stay moving over steep, rock-strewn ridges fighting for every breath.

At 10:55 a.m., David Breashears and Ed Viesturs reached the very top of the world, followed shortly after by Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Araceli Segarra, cinematographer Robert Schauer and five Sherpas.

The emotions were as high as the snow-capped peak on which they stood. For each member of the team, the triumph carried intense personal meaning. For Jamling Tenzing Norgay it was a poignant moment of connecting with his father's spirit. He placed photographs of his father, his family and the Dalai Lama on the summit, as well as one of his daughter's dolls. Forty-three years earlier, Tenzing Norgay had also placed a doll there given to him by his daughter, Jamling's sister. For Ed Viesturs, the journey to the top was also an emotional reckoning, a difficult journey in the wake of losing close friends in the tragic storm just a week before. And for Araceli Segarra it was a historic moment of achievement as she became the first woman from Spain to climb Everest.

"We have performed a miracle today," said ecstatic David Breashears from the top.

Indeed, in the wake of the deadly May 10 tragedy, the summiting EVEREST team paid homage to the undying spirit and insatiable thirst for knowledge and adventure that brings men to the very edges of the world and the very limits of human achievement - in other words, to the beauty, wonder and mystery of life itself.

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