The Climb

by Anatoli Boukreev

  Krakauer’s dedication to discrediting Boukreev’s explanation for his descent is, I believe, what motivated him in his “Postscript” to call to his readers’ attention that “while doing research for his book, DeWalt instructed an assistant to call Peter Hackett, M.D., one of the world’s foremost authorities on the debilitating effects of extreme altitude, in order to solicit the doctor’s professional opinion about the oxygen-use issue. According to Dr. Hackett … he replied unequivocally that in his view it was dangerous and ill advised to guide Everest without using oxygen, even in the case of a climber as exceptionally strong as Boukreev. Significantly, after seeking out and receiving Hackett’s opinion, DeWalt made no mention of it in The Climb.”

  In point of fact, during the interview with Dr. Hackett that Krakauer references, Dr. Hackett went a bit further in his comments than Krakauer has reported. He went on to say, “In his [Boukreev’s] defense there is this school of thought that you’re better off without oxygen because then you can’t run out. I admit there is that school of thought. I don’t agree with that. And there have been cases of where people have run out of oxygen and gotten into deep trouble.”*

  I can understand Krakauer would have appreciated my including Dr. Hackett’s opinion—as presented by Krakauer—in The Climb, but I don’t think readers of the book were denied anything by my not including it. Krakauer’s critical opinion about Boukreev’s not having used oxygen, an echo of Dr. Hackett’s, was offered in The Climb. In retrospect, I wish the statement—in its entirety—had been included. The example of Dr. Hackett’s ready willingness to acknowledge another school of thought, even though he did not subscribe to it, might have encouraged Krakauer to honor that the “standard” against which he has been measuring Boukreev is not universally held.*

  THE BROMET STATEMENT

  In his “Postscript” Krakauer says that I “edited” a quote from Jane Bromet and, as a result of having done so, did “wrongfully suggest that Fischer had a predetermined plan in place for Boukreev to descend quickly after reaching the summit, leaving his clients on the upper reaches of Everest.” A review of the evidence, I think, will demonstrate that his allegation is not true.

  Before the manuscript for The Climb went to the publisher, I traveled to Seattle, Washington, to interview Jane Bromet, the Mountain Madness publicist who had trekked into Everest Base Camp with Scott Fischer and other members of the expedition, arriving there on April 8, 1996.† My primary purpose in interviewing her was to get background on the planning and promotion of the Mountain Madness expedition and to hear something of Jane’s day-to-day observations of Everest Base Camp activity. The tape-recorded interview with Jane went on for more than two hours, and several times she ventured into topics that were not at all a part of my research agenda. More than once I was taken aback by her candor and openness. She seemed eager to talk, to tell all.

  As the interview came to an end and I was preparing to leave her home, she took me by the arm and said, a nervous hesitancy in her voice, “You know there is something I want to tell you. I don’t know if I should or not, but …”

  Jane hesitated and it appeared that she might not continue, that whatever it was that she wanted to say was going to be swallowed and never spoken, but she continued, and I pursued the implications of what she revealed.

  BROMET (continuing): … what happened with Anatoli going-back up, that was, you know, one of the cards that got turned over; I mean, that was the plan.

  DEWALT: What do you mean “the plan”?

  BROMET: I mean Scott told me—you know, one of the scenarios—that if there were problems coming down, Anatoli would make a rapid descent and come back up the mountain with oxygen or, whatever.

  DEWALT: You’re telling me that Scott told you this prior to the final assault?

  BROMET: Yes, at Base Camp, yeah, several days before.

  DEWALT: Just so I understand. Scott told you if they got into trouble, he would send Anatoli down to prepare to resupply the climbers coming down.

  BROMET: Yes, that’s what he told me.

  DEWALT: When you were interviewed by Jon Krakauer, did you tell him this? Exactly what you told me?

  BROMET: Yes.

  The next morning, unannounced, Jane showed up at my hotel where I was having coffee with my research associate, Terry LeMoncheck, who had come to Seattle to meet with Scott Fischer’s wife.* Appearing somewhat distracted, Jane apologized for the intrusion and said she had come with a gift for Anatoli. From a sports bag she’d brought with her, she removed several pairs of trekking shoes. A sponsor, she said, would want Anatoli to have a pair. As we rummaged through the shoes, trying to guess what size Boukreev would wear, we talked. Jane said she’d been having some second thoughts about how forthcoming she’d been in our conversation the day before. Too, she said, she was concerned about how the public might respond to Krakauer’s not having mentioned in Into Thin Air the information she had given him about Fischer’s plan. “Jon is a friend, and I don’t want to embarrass him,” she explained.

  Jane and I talked for twenty or thirty minutes, and I agreed that those of her comments that were unrelated to the events of the climb would not see print, but, I explained, it was difficult for me to ignore what I considered to be the importance of Fischer’s conversation with her. If I saw fit, I was going with her statement. She did not protest.

  On April 15, 1997, Bromet sent me an E-mail reiterating what she had told me in Seattle. “I know that information I gave you is vital to your story—the fact that Scott told me that it was his plan to have Anatoli go down ahead of the group.” She went on to add that, if problems did arise with the climber-clients, Fischer wanted Boukreev in Camp IV “hydrated” and with “reserve energy” so that he could pull people off the mountain.

  Two days later I spoke with Jane by phone. She wanted to make certain that I understood that she knew only what Fischer had told her, but nothing of what he had told Anatoli prior to summit day. I told her that, of course, I understood, and she went on to wonder aloud why Krakauer had not mentioned in Into Thin Air what she had told him, that Fischer had a plan in mind for Anatoli. She said about Krakauer, “I don’t know why Jon didn’t use it.”

  Before submitting the manuscript for The Climb, I read through Bromet’s statement several times. I kept coming back to one specific exchange between the two of us.

  DEWALT: You’re telling me that Scott told you this prior to the final assault?

  BROMET: Yes, at Base Camp, yeah, several days before.

  What I had been looking for in my question to Jane was some clue as to where and when Fischer had made his comments to her. In responding, Jane had given me the where, but not the when. The where, I thought, was probably good enough to convey a sense of the timing of Fischer’s comments. I knew—and had mentioned in the manuscript for The Climb—that Bromet, along with Fischer and other Mountain Madness expedition members, had arrived at the Everest Base Camp (EBC) on April 8, 1996, four weeks before the final assault. But, I thought, perhaps I could more closely fix the timing for readers.*

  I went back through notes I’d made during conversations I’d had with Bromet, the transcript of my interview with her, and E-mails that she had sent me. In one of my notes I had recorded that Jane had remembered departing EBC about a week before the final assault. In an April 22, 1997, E-mail she had said, “I left base camp (EBC) approximately 10 days before summit assent [sic].” She said she was unable to come up with an exact date because she had been avoiding going back to her notes, wanting not to bring on a “tidal wave of memories.”

  Further on in that same E-mail message Jane said that her “days before” comment was referring to the days before she left EBC, but that she was not able to recall how many days before her departure Fischer had described his plan to her. She said, “Maybe it was seven days before,” but it was impossible for her to peg an exact date.

  Several, meaning more than two, but less than “many,” is a useful word when one can’t be spec
ific, but Jane’s use of it created problems for me in my effort to place Fischer’s comments in the flow of events leading up to summit day. Using Jane’s best recollections—that she’d left EBC between seven and ten days before the final assault and that Fischer had told her of his plan for Boukreev “maybe” seven days before that departure—I put Fischer’s comments to Jane as happening somewhere between April 23 and 26.

  Given the proximity of those dates to the date of the final assault which was on May 10, 1996, I felt comfortable in offering to readers of The Climb:

  DEWALT: You’re telling me that Scott told you this prior to the final assault?

  BROMET: Yes, at Base Camp, yeah, several days before [the final assault on May 10, 1996],

  The words added in brackets, by referencing the final assault, helped maintain a continuity with the preceding question and, I thought, fairly represented Jane’s best estimates of when Fischer’s comments to her had been made: fourteen to seventeen days prior to the final assault.

  A few weeks before The Climb began to appear in bookstores, Bromet sent a letter to St. Martin’s Press.* Its formal construction and wording struck me as odd, an extreme departure from her informal, off-the-cuff style. In the letter Bromet was critical of my use of her quote.† She felt, she said, that the quote was “grossly misleading” and that “too much credit was given” to the quote because Fischer had never mentioned his plan to anyone else but her. Frankly, Jane’s attempt to distance herself from a statement she had willingly offered, that she had considered “vital” to the Everest story, and whose implications she had clearly understood I found mysterious.

  Three weeks after receiving Bromet’s letter I received a fax from Krakauer. Quoting extensively from Bromet’s letter, he complained about my inclusion of the Bromet quote in The Climb.* My impression was that its publication had embarrassed as well as angered him.†

  In his “Postscript” Krakauer used the Bromet letter as a platform from which to issue a fusillade of questionable arguments, an effort, I suspect, to diminish, if not to destroy, the possibility of the Boukreev-Fischer exchange during which Boukreev’s descent was approved. Krakauer argued; I respond:

  1. “… DeWalt chose to ignore the fact that the only evidence to support his conjecture about a predetermined plan was Bromet’s recollection of a single conversation.” (Krakauer, “Postscript,” Into Thin Air: The Illustrated Edition)

  My belief that Scott Fischer had a “plan” as Bromet put it, “a method for achieving an end” as the dictionary has it, is predicated upon Bromet’s testimony and upon Scott Fischer’s having told at least four people of whom I am aware that one of the primary reasons he hired Anatoli was to bring aid to climbers in the event of problems during the expedition.

  2. “… it would be wrong to assume that Fischer’s comments indicated that he had anything resembling an actual plan in place.” (Krakauer, “Postscript,” Into Thin Air: The Illustrated Edition)

  I have never argued that Fischer had a plan “in place,” but I have never doubted that he had one in mind. His statement to Bromet is more than ample proof. What Fischer did have in place was Boukreev, who was able and prepared at Camp IV where, it turned out, he was needed.

  3. “Before The Climb was published, Bromet sent a letter to DeWalt and his editors at St. Martin’s complaining that DeWalt had edited her quote in a way that significantly changed its meaning.” (Krakauer, “Postscript,” Into Thin Air: The Illustrated Edition)

  Bromet, in her October 8, 1997, letter, never said that I misquoted her. What she did say was that the bracketed words that had been added—”the final assault on May 10, 1996”—would mislead readers into thinking that Fischer’s conversation with her had taken place in the days immediately preceding the final assault. She went on in her letter to recall what she had not been able to remember previously—that she had left Everest Base Camp “weeks before the climb.”

  Considering her most recent recollection as to when she had departed EBC, St. Martin’s Press and I discussed the matter, and we decided to remove the bracketed words “the final assault on May 10, 1996” from Bromet’s statement and replace them with words that better reflected the reality of her situation at the Everest Base Camp as she was now representing it. The question became: What words? Bromet, in her letter, had not provided an exact date for either her departure from EBC or the date of her conversation with Fischer.

  I looked to the pages of The Climb to consider the more than a dozen references to Bromet that had been included, thinking there might be a way within the text—before the reader got to the “Mountain Media Madness” chapter where Bromet’s statement was included—to add a sentence or two to indicate her general recollection as to when she had departed EBC.

  Examining the text, I discovered something I had overlooked when, in the last days of manuscript preparation, I had struggled with how to time Fischer’s comments to Bromet. I noted a sentence in The Climb (p. 91) that referred to Bromet’s having departed EBC by the early morning of April 23, 1996 (in Nepal), late afternoon of April 22 (in Seattle).* I was dismayed that I had overlooked this reference to Bromet’s return to Seattle when trying to figure the date she had left EBC, because, had I noted it, it would have raised a flag. Despite her reluctance to revisit the events of Everest, I would have encouraged Jane to reconsider her guesses at when she had returned to Seattle.

  As dismayed as I remain at having overlooked the reference to Jane’s Everest Base Camp departure, I see one benefit in my having done so. Krakauer, in his “Postscript,” suggests that I might have had some ulterior motive in my choice of words to bracket in the Bromet quote, that I may have attempted to mislead readers. I suggest, if I had chosen the words to bracket so as to purposely misrepresent the timing of Fischer’s comments, it’s hard to imagine that I would have left in The Climb a reference that would have so clearly betrayed the dark intention Krakauer thinks I might have had.

  My annotation of the exchange between Bromet and myself with which Jane had taken issue was revised to read:

  DEWALT: You’re telling me that Scott told you this prior to the final assault?

  BROMET: Yes, at Base Camp, yeah, several days before [I left Base Camp].

  The new annotation—”[I left Base Camp]”—makes Jane’s statement consistent with the fact that she had departed Everest Base Camp for Seattle by April 22. This change was made in the third printing of the hardcover edition of The Climb and was included in all of its subsequent printings as well as in all printings of the paperback editions that have followed it.

  4. “As Bromet stated in her letter to DeWalt, the edited version of her quote that appears in The Climb is ‘absolutely wrong!’ ” (Krakauer, “Postscript,” Into Thin Air: The Illustrated Edition)

  In Jane Bromet’s letter to St. Martin’s Press of October 8, 1997, she complained about the addition of the bracketed words “the final assault on May 10, 1996.” She said, “The way in which this was put into words implies that this conversation was immediately preceding the climb (a few days). This is absolutely wrong!” What Krakauer did in his “Postscript” was to pirate Bromet’s expression (“absolutely wrong!”) to suggest that my original annotation of Jane’s statement had, in Krakauer’s words, “significantly changed its meaning.” In fact, it did not change the “meaning” of either what Scott had said to Jane or what Jane had said to me. It changed only the timing of Scott’s comments to Jane. The fact remains: Scott Fischer told Jane Bromet he had a “plan” for Boukreev to descend ahead of climber-clients.

  On November 14, 1997, five weeks after I had received the letter she had written to St. Martin’s Press, I saw Jane Bromet in Seattle in the REI meeting room where Anatoli and I were preparing to give a lecture. She came out of the assembling crowd, and we talked for a while. She was apologetic about the letter that she’d sent and asked me if I had been upset. She offered, “You understand why I had to write the letter? No hard feelings?” Thanking her for coming, I said, “None,
absolutely none. I understand Jon is a friend. I understand.” Jane did not respond, but smiled and turned to take a seat in the front row of the audience. Despite other demands on her schedule, Bromet stayed for Anatoli’s and my presentation, contributed to the Q&A session that followed, and was at all times supportive of Anatoli.

  For Jane Bromet’s courage in stepping forward I have always been grateful. From the moment she offered me her statement I have understood, as she did, that it was “vital” to the story, and it was for that reason I included it in The Climb.

  THE IN-CAMP SHERPA ARGUMENT

  In his “Postscript” Krakauer quotes David Breashears of the IMAX expedition as questioning Boukreev’s descent ahead of Mountain Madness climber-clients and wondering why Boukreev would have needed to descend to “make tea,” given that “there were Sherpas waiting at the South Col” for that purpose.* It may be that Breashears, when he made his statement, was not aware that on summit day Boukreev believed that no Sherpas—nor any other expedition personnel—were at Mountain Madness’s Camp IV (see p. 154, The Climb). Boukreev knew that Scott Fischer had given all seven of the expedition’s climbing Sherpas permission to make a summit attempt. Boukreev thought they had all headed to the top. What he did not know at that time was what Krakauer revealed later in Into Thin Air: “In the end, Lopsang went behind Fischer’s back and ordered one Sherpa, his cousin ‘Big’ Pemba, to remain behind.”†