The Climb

by Anatoli Boukreev

  Boukreev and Beidleman stayed behind in Kathmandu to settle the business of the expedition, and according to Boukreev, most of the responsibilities fell to Beidleman, for whom English came easier. After their ordeal on the mountain both men were physically and psychologically spent, eager to leave Kathmandu, to put the mountain behind them. Boukreev, particularly, was eager to get away from the press that had been on their backs since they had come off the mountain and holed up in the Yak and Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu.

  The world seemed endlessly hungry for the story of what had happened. In my mountaineering career I had never seen so much interest in an event in the Himalaya. I wondered about this curiosity. What is it, this fascination with wrecks, wars, disasters, and catastrophes? I found it difficult to understand this.

  Most of the expedition members and I tried to avoid the press. We wished to be among ourselves. For all of us it was as if the world were now painted in more vivid colors, and we were feeling life’s simple pleasures with more clarity and meaning. For those of us who had been fortunate enough to come back alive, we were enjoying the moments of discovering life all over again.

  On May 24, Neal and I managed to finish all of our business in Nepal. We bid farewell to the Sherpas, concluded our business with the Ministry of Tourism, and made it to the airport, where we both were beginning a journey to Denver, Colorado, where Neal would transfer to Aspen and I would be met by friends. As we boarded the plane, I think we both thought that for a while the events of May 10 would be behind us.

  Boukreev and Beidleman had just settled into their seats on Thai Airlines, preparing for the first leg of their trip, which would take them to Bangkok and from there to Los Angeles and then on to Denver. As Boukreev was buckling in, one of the flight attendants approached and said that some friends had asked to see him before he took off.

  I did not know who could be looking for me and made some joke with Neal about Interpol seeking the Russian felon. I went into the waiting lounge and was immediately met by two journalists with television cameras who asked many ridiculous questions about my condition and about the “meaning” of my Everest experience. For fifteen minutes I spoke with those people. Insignificant, I thought. Insignificant.

  Boukreev was perplexed by the media interest and frustrated by the questions. What had happened on the mountain was a tragedy, impossible to explain in the few minutes he had to spend with the reporters. His first major encounter with the working press had been an inconvenience. In the weeks to come some of the encounters became incomprehensible.

  Between Bangkok and Los Angeles I slept, but was troubled by many dreams. I kept going to the summit on the brink of my strength or being called upon to rescue stranded climbers without the power to reach them. The dreams, always with different stories, had the same themes. Climbers in trouble who were barely within the reach of my ability to get to them.

  Finally arriving in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had been invited by a friend to rest and prepare for his fall return to the Himalaya, Boukreev slept most of the first several days he was in town, sometimes for as many as twenty hours straight, and the dreams continued.

  The dreams did not stop with my arrival in Santa Fe, and my sleep was fitful. When I would awaken and have breakfast, I would be tired from my dreams and return to bed, where the dreams would begin again. Always I was searching, trying to find people. Then the phone would ring, and I would be awakened. Somehow, although I thought I had found some privacy, the press had located me in the United States.

  The first journalist to find Boukreev was Peter Wilkinson, a contributing editor for Men’s Journal, who called the morning of June 4 as Boukreev was having breakfast. Wilkinson explained to Boukreev that he wanted to do an on-the-spot interview and led with a couple of pointed questions. Boukreev, taken somewhat aback by the rapid-fire questions and having troubling fielding them with his limited English, covered the mouthpiece and asked for advice. “What am I to do? I don’t know this person or what is his purpose.”

  Struggling to understand the questions, wanting to help Wilkinson, Boukreev continued with the interview and then gave up in frustration. His English was not good enough to keep up with the complexities of Wilkinson’s questions.

  I didn’t want to remain private about these matters, because I understood this journalist was working hard and trying to understand the story from my professional perspective, but I wanted to be understood clearly.

  Boukreev negotiated a plan, agreeing to continue the interview if a Russian interpreter could be brought to Wilkinson’s office. Eager to get his interview, Wilkinson called back the next day, an interpreter on the line, and Boukreev tried again. Struggling as hard as he had the day before, but this time in his native language, Boukreev hung up the phone, exasperated. “They know nothing of the mountain. I speak better English than she speaks Russian!”

  Looking at a faxed transcription of the interview Wilkinson sent him for review, Boukreev threw up his hands. “This is impossible! This is no good! No good!” His answers to the questions had become garbled in their translation. Wilkinson was told that the interview was unusable, with so many errors that Boukreev could not allow it to be used.

  My retelling of the incident and my attempts to answer the questions aggravated my dreams, and I struggled to sleep without the story in my head.

  Wilkinson faxed his questions to Boukreev and asked him to respond when he felt comfortable that he had understood them.

  On the morning of June 7, I flew from Albuquerque to Seattle and went immediately to Jane Bromet’s house and continued my work for Pete Wilkinson. On the next day, just before I was to go to a public memorial service for Scott, I faxed what I was able to do, incomplete as it was.

  At the service, many people had come from all corners of the world to honor the memory of Scott. His family and friends were very kind to me even in their grief and thanked me for my efforts. I thanked them for their words, but it was difficult. I was devastated inside, disconnected from the reality of the memorial. I had done everything I could do, but I had been unable to save the lives of Scott and Yasuko Namba. For me this memory was difficult, and I stayed very much to myself on that day, having little desire to meet or talk with my many friends who were there.

  The next day there was another service, a private one dedicated to remembering Scott. His parents and friends spoke intimately of his work and life, and like the day before, it was difficult for me. I found it very hard to sit and found myself pacing and looking at an exhibit of some of Scott’s photographs. Scott and I were similar in many ways, different in others; we had our differences and misunderstandings, but I had much respect for him as a climber and as a man. In five years, perhaps even less, I thought, it may be that he will be remembered only by his family and closest friends, but I hoped that everything positive that he brought with him, that surrounded him, would live on in mountaineering. In his relationships with his fellow climbers and his clients, he brought an enthusiasm and an energy that captured people. He was perhaps more of a romantic than a businessman, and I appreciated that in him. His strength, love of life, and benevolence awoke something in me, and I hoped that in difficult times I could remember what he brought to climbing, that some of his ways could become more of a part of my own way of being.

  To Boukreev’s surprise and dismay, the memorial services for Scott Fischer did not bring any relief from the press. Several journalists attended, and Boukreev did his best to respond to their inquiries. Life and ABC’s “Turning Point” asked for interviews, and Boukreev, making his best effort to make himself understood, spoke with them, hoping that what he could contribute would somehow answer the question that everyone was asking: What had happened? Boukreev had only pieces of the story; he was still struggling to understand for himself what had gone wrong.

  Another interview in which he participated was with Jon Krakauer, who was buttonholing expedition members to get their stories. Boukreev, recalling the interview, said that he found it n
arrowly focused and that Krakauer had seemed frustrated by the limitations of his English. In an effort to better communicate his story to Krakauer, Boukreev gave him a photocopy of the answers he had offered to Pete Wilkinson’s questions. In that copy was Boukreev’s answer to a question that Wilkinson had asked about Boukreev’s meeting with Scott Fischer above the Hillary Step as Scott was ascending, making his way to the summit:

  “Scott came up and we talked. Up to the summit he had about one-half or one hour to go. I don’t know his speed. Scott was the boss and I felt he could make his decisions himself. He could stop and wait for clients or go on. What did I think? Scott was Scott. He was responsible for the expedition. He had great natural ability. He was very strong. No one feels very well at that altitude. He went on to the summit. I don’t know. When I asked him how he felt, he said not very well, but it was okay. One had to know Scott. Everything was always okay with him. He was a strong climber, one of the strongest in America, therefore it was difficult to foresee the situation with Scott. I had to think of the clients, of the people, but I never thought that something could happen to Scott, and I talked to him about the situation with the clients mostly and I told him they all felt good. I asked him, with my concerns and in my position, what did he want me to do?—What did he say?—We discussed the need to have support below. We talked about my descent. He said that he considered it a good plan. That everything was good at that moment. My position was I felt that it would not be good if I stood around freezing, waiting. I would be more useful if I returned to Camp IV in order to be able to take oxygen up to returning climbers or to go help them if some became weak in the descent. If you are immobile at that altitude, you lose strength in the cold, and then you are unable to do anything.”

  In late July, Boukreev obtained his copy of the Krakauer article and, coincidentally, on the same day Martin Adams arrived in Santa Fe to visit with Boukreev. They hadn’t seen each other since Kathmandu. In the last hour of daylight on a summer evening, sitting on a patio around a large circular table with friends, Boukreev and Adams listened as the article was read aloud. When Krakauer referred to him, Boukreev leaned forward, trying to understand the words and their meaning: “Boukreev had returned to Camp IV at 4:30 P.M., before the brunt of the storm, having rushed down from the summit without waiting for clients—extremely questionable behavior for a guide.”

  Boukreev looked around the table, wondering if the people around him had heard the words as he had.

  Scott authorized my going down, to be ready to go back up. This was the plan. It worked. I don’t understand why he would write this.

  As Krakauer’s article continued, he implied that had Boukreev descended with clients, they might not have had the problems they did coming down, and that suggestion was devastating.

  I had no clear idea that the weather was a potential problem until I was well down the mountain. My concern, as was Scott’s, was that the climbers’ oxygen supplies were going to run out. I did the job Scott wanted me to do. If I had been farther up the mountain when the full force of the storm hit, I think it is likely I would have died with the clients. I honestly do. I am not a superman. In that weather, we all could possibly have died.

  Boukreev excused himself from the table and went into his friend’s house to retrieve his Russian-English dictionary. When he returned, he thumbed through it, looking up words as the reading continued: “Boukreev’s impatience on the descent more plausibly resulted from the fact that he wasn’t using bottled oxygen and was relatively lightly dressed and therefore had to get down.”

  This time Boukreev said nothing when he left the table, but he returned within a few moments, some photographic prints in his hand. As he laid them on the table amongst the wine bottles, Martin Adams picked one up, one of him and Boukreev taken on the summit. “Toli,” Adams said, “I don’t need the pictures. You were as well dressed on the mountain as anyone I know. I’m the one who gave you the climbing suit.” Taking a cigar out of his mouth, Adams shook his head. “This guy! This guy is so much smoke!” The picture that Adams had in his hand showed Boukreev in the climbing suit Adams had purchased as a gift for him when, just before the expedition, Adams had bought the exact same model for himself.

  On the issue of Boukreev’s climbing without oxygen, Boukreev was just as puzzled as he had been over the issue of how he was dressed.

  I have climbed mountains for more than twenty-five years, and only once on an assault of an 8,000er did I ever use it. Never has it been a problem for me, and Scott approved my climbing without it.

  As the article concluded, Krakauer offered a dramatic narrative describing how, just above Camp IV, he had encountered one of Rob Hall’s guides, Andy Harris, and had a conversation with him about the danger of an icy slope that stood between them and the safety of their tents. Harris had slipped and fallen down the slope, Krakauer reported, and then had presumably walked off the face of Lhotse and vanished forever. Adams, listening quietly as the section was read, interrupted and spoke, a measure of cynicism in his voice. “That was me. That was me he saw above Camp IV, and I’ve told him that.” In the weeks prior to Adams’s coming to Santa Fe, Krakauer had called Adams and asked if it could have been Adams and not Andy Harris that Krakauer, on his descent, had encountered above Camp IV. Adams hung up and reread an interview that Krakauer had granted shortly after the disaster. Considering again Krakauer’s physical description of events above Camp IV and drawing upon his own memory, Adams came to the conclusion that Krakauer had made a mistake. He called Krakauer back to say that he had become convinced that the person Krakauer had actually encountered above Camp IV had not been Andy Harris, that it had been him. When Krakauer seemed reluctant to accept Adams’s conclusion, Adams said, “Let’s make a bet. Ninety-nine to one. It was me.” Krakauer, according to Adams, wanted more evidence and did not take the bet.

  Boukreev was stunned and offended by the article, but more, he was baffled. What possible motive could Krakauer have for representing him as he had? Boukreev had given Krakauer a copy of the answers he had offered to Wilkinson, and in those responses was an explanation for his descent ahead of the clients. Had Boukreev misunderstood Krakauer’s questions? Had Krakauer misunderstood him? Moreover, when Boukreev had been invited to the office of Outside in early June to discuss the potential use of some of his expedition photographs to illustrate Krakauer’s article, he had provided the editorial department of Outside a copy of the same Wilkinson interview that he had given to Krakauer.

  According to Boukreev, no one at Outside fact-checked with him the details of his discussion with Scott Fischer above the Hillary Step or the manner in which he was dressed on summit day. On July 31, Boukreev, with the help of friends, wrote a letter to Mark Bryant, the editor of Outside.

  July 31, 1996

  Mr. Mark Bryant, Editor

  Outside

  400 Market St.

  Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

  USA

  Dear Mr. Bryant:

  I am writing you because I think Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air,” which appeared in your September, 1996 issue, was unjustly critical of my decisions and actions on Mount Everest on May 10, 1996. While I have respect for Mr. Krakauer, share some of his opinions about high altitude guiding, and believe he did everything within his power to assist fellow climbers on that tragic day on Everest, I believe his lack of proximity to certain events and his limited experience at high altitude may have gotten in the way of his ability to objectively evaluate the events of summit day.

  My decisions and actions were based upon more than twenty years of high-altitude climbing experience. In my career I have summited Mount Everest three times. I have twelve times summited mountains of over 8,000 meters. I have summited seven of the world’s fourteen mountains over 8,000 meters in elevation, all of those without the use of supplementary oxygen. This experience, I can appreciate, is not response enough to the questions raised by Mr. Krakauer, so I offer the following details.

 
; After fixing the ropes and breaking the trail to the summit, I stayed at the top of Everest from 1:07 P.M. until approximately 2:30 P.M., waiting for other climbers to summit. During that time only two [Mountain Madness] client climbers made the top. They were Klev Schoening, seen in the summit photograph (here–here) taken by me, and Martin Adams, both of them from Scott Fischer’s expedition. Concerned that others were not coming onto the summit and because I had no radio link to those below me, I began to wonder if there were difficulties down the mountain. I made the decision to descend.

  Just below the summit I encountered Rob Hall, the expedition leader from New Zealand, who appeared to be in good shape. Then I passed four of Scott Fischer’s client climbers and four of his expedition’s Sherpas, all of whom were still ascending. They all appeared to be all right. Then, just above the Hillary Step, I saw and talked with Scott Fischer. He was tired and laboring, but said he was just a little slow. There was no apparent sign of difficulty, although now I have begun to suspect that his oxygen supply was, then, already depleted. I said to Scott that the ascent seemed to be going slowly and that I was concerned descending climbers could possibly run out of oxygen before their return to Camp IV. I explained I wanted to descend as quickly as possible to Camp IV in order to warm myself and gather a supply of hot drink and oxygen in the event I might need to go back up the mountain to assist descending climbers. Scott, as had Rob Hall immediately before him, said “OK” to this plan. I felt comfortable with the decision, knowing that four Sherpas, Neal Beidleman (like me, a guide), Rob Hall, and Scott Fischer would be bringing up the rear to sweep the clients to Camp IV. Understand, at this time there were no clear indications that the weather was going to change and deteriorate as rapidly as it did.