You’ve just stumbled into your flapping tent 8,000m above sea level. Worn out from your summit attempt, Camp IV, with its sprinkling of brightly-coloured tents, looked like the garden of Eden.
Anatoli Boukreev: The Hero of the 1996 Everest Tragedy
1996 Everest Tragedy
On 10 May 1996, Murphy stuck his cursed hands into the fate of two Everest expeditions. On this day, 8 people, including 3 experienced guides, Rob Hall, Scott Fischer and Andrew Harris, were killed above Camp IV. It could have been much worse but for the heroics of one Russian guide from the Mountain Madness expedition.
Anatoli Boukreev
“Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
Anatoli Boukreev was born in the southern Ural Mountains on 16 January 1958. After graduating from the Chelyabinsk University for Pedagogy with a Bachelor in Science, the 21 year-old moved to Almaty (formerly called Alma-Ata) in southern Kazakhstan. This city, located in northern fringe of Tien Shan, would allow Toli’s passion for the mountains to flourish.
Trained in the rigorous Soviet mountain climbing programs which emphasized teamwork, structured competitive training and disciplined acclimatization, Toli quickly became an accomplished climber.
Between 1988 and 1997, he summitted eleven of the fourteen 8000-meter peaks, including four in a single ninety-day period, establishing difficult technical routes as well as speed records. And he did it all without supplementary oxygen thus establishing him as the cream amongst the elite in the exclusive club of high-altitude climbers.
Forays into the world of commercial Everest expeditions
With the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became more and more difficult to secure fundings for climbing expeditions. To keep his passion alive, Toli ventured west and came in touch with the world of commercial Everest expeditions. This is a world where anyone with cash to burn can earn (pay for) the boasting rights of having summitted Everest by signing up with one of several companies in the business.
One can imagine that for someone like Anatoli Boukreev, for whom the mountains are sacred and high-altitude climbing is a professional discipline, this whole business of guiding people up the highest mountain in the world, where in many cases they had no reason to be, would seem cavalier.
“What is guiding Everest?” asked Toli in an interview given shortly before his untimely death in 1997. “I don’t know what being an Everest guide means. I am a coach, not a guide.”
This was one year after the ill-fated expedition and it was clear that his philosophy on guiding was still the same. Climbing any of the 8000ers is 80% training and 20% luck. Everest would eventually decide who to admit into its halls of conquerors.
Boukreev continued, “I am a coach, a coach to sportsmen. I offer my expertise and experience for hire in order to help a group of people reach the summit. But am I responsible for whether they live or die? I am not. I will advise them on how to reach the summit, I will show them how, and I will help them, but I cannot be responsible for their safety. They understand that.”
Controversies
The controversies created by journalist Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air would rage on. I suspect that most people who turned to Toli’s own account in The Climb would find his story more credible due to the fact that it’s free of the countless conjectures and innuendoes found in Jon’s account.
I for one felt that Toli’s actions on Everest that day were made based on what he thought was best at that moment. Unfortunately, his poor command of English hampered and prevented him from explaining why he did certain things during the expedition. This alone could have cast him in a bad light on everyone’s account of what happened.
Nonetheless one fact, the only one that really mattered, remained:
On returning to Camp IV and learning that something was amiss, Anatoli Boukreev stumbled from tent to tent looking for help. No other client, guide or Sherpa could summon the strength and courage to accompany him. So Toli made two solo forays into the dark, braving a blinding blizzard and 80-miles per hour wind before single-handedly bringing back Pittman, Madsen and Fox. They would have died but for his superhuman efforts.
Death on Annapurna
Sadly Anatoli Boukreev would die in an avalanche on Annapurna in late 1997.
Gary Weston DeWalt, who co-authored The Climb, said of this hero, “One of the pleasures of working with Boukreev was that he was a legend in the climbing community. Anatoli once described to me how he had nearly lost his life during the rescue of two fellow climbers in Manaslu in December 1996. He said, ‘There is not enough luck in the world. That night I got somebody else’s share.’ I think that it’s not that Anatoli ran out of luck on Annapurna on Christmas Day, but that he gave it to somebody who needed it more. I haven’t the words to express how much he will be missed.”
