Mt Everest 1996

Journey Themes and Attitude….

Attitude is everything when it comes to reaching the summit of Mt. Everest. There was not a climber that I met that was not positive that they would get to the top successfully. Even guides were willing to risk their lives so that their clients would get to feel the thrill of getting to the top. Rob Hall was leading me as my guide and inspiration. He was very well respected in the climbing world. One of the climbers in our expedition was Doug Hanson. Hanson was a postal worker who had two jobs just so he could pay to summit Mt. Everest. Just the year before, Hanson had been turned around just below the summit because it was unsafe to keep going. He was very disappointed and so was his guide Rob Hall. After many phone calls that next year, Hall convinced Hanson to try again. Hanson was having a hard time reaching the summit, but he never gave up. Hall wanted him to reach the summit so desperately that he ignored the time deadline for getting to the top and waited for Hanson to reach him. Even though Hanson was very weak, Hall grabbed him and pulled him up the last few yards so that he could touch the peak. However, Doug died before he could get far enough down to reach Hall. Rob just sat and waited until Doug came down, which was never, so Rob Hall passed away sitting very close below the summit as the storm came into full power.

Communication was also an important key for surviving the climb on Mt. Everest. The main way we communicated at the top was with radios. The problem was that we did not have enough radios, the connection was bad only for our expedition, and it was hard to hear exactly what was going on. The storm did not help this and neither did the softness and the infirmness in each clients voice because of fear. A perfect example is the struggle Scott Fisher had during his descent of Everest. Beck, a client, was at a place where there were oxygen canisters available for climbers who had run out. For certain climbers if they ran out of oxygen, this could mean death. Beck had lost some of his mental awareness and told Fischer that all of the canisters were empty. It was later realized that the oxygen canisters were full. If someone had questioned Beck or have tried an oxygen canister on, Fischer may have survived. If more people had radios, lives may have been saved.

The mental and physical awareness of the climber is also important. The climbers knew that they were at risk of developing serious illnesses during their climb. The altitude is a major obstacle. This is why we took so long to get up. We have to acclimate our bodies by going slowly. HAPE is one illness that can occur. This is High Altitude Pulmonary Edema and comes from climbing too high and too fast. Your lungs fill with fluid and it can cause death. The only real cure is to rapidly descent. HACE is High Altitude Cerebral Edema, which is a severe (frequently fatal) form of altitude sickness. This causes swelling in the brain tissue from fluid leakage. These both impair your judgment and make it hard to make very important safety decisions when climbing. It makes you do things you would not do in different circumstances. There are also problems with hypothermia; frostbite and fatigue that can make it hard to accomplish your summit goal. This may stop whole teams of getting to the top because of their respect to help out an ill climber.

In our case, it was the power of nature that made everything that happened close to the summit even more dangerous. With the risk of avalanches and the hurricane that swept late in the day on May 10, 1996, we were overcome with helplessness. With the windstorm, there was no visibility and once darkness set in, it was hard to tell where the missing people were.