4:30am, May 11, 1996
South Col, 7,906m (25,938ft)
Yasuko Namba and Beck Weathers were dead. In less than 48 hours, 7 more would fall. Yasuko Namba, aged 47, was a diminutive woman. She was also only the second Japanese woman to have scaled all the Seven Summits. The Seven Summits are the highest mountains on each of the 7 continents. Everest, the highest of them all, was her 7th summit.
Now, all she could do was lie on the ice. 70 miles per hour wind ravaged her body, blowing snow into her hood. Her right hand, fingers curled so tightly together that they couldn’t be straightened, was bare. She had dropped her glove somewhere – but it no longer mattered to her.
The 1996 Everest Tragedy
I’m talking about the 1996 Everest tragedy which claimed the lives of 9 climbers. Beck Weathers would eventually stagger back to safety amidst blinding snow and howling wind. A miracle because he was left for dead at South Col hours earlier.
South Col lies in what mountain climbers call the Death Zone. At this altitude, the amount of oxygen is 30% that at sea level. Your body starts to shut down. Your breathing increases as your lungs struggle to wring what little oxygen there is from the air. More and more red blood cells surge through your blood even as your heart beats faster. All these are your body’s desperate attempts to bring life-sustaining blood, depleted of oxygen, to your vital organs before they are permanently damaged.
With each step, you stop, stoop over and gasp for air. Step by step, panting and wheezing, you trudge up icy slopes, hoping that you’ll be one of the lucky few to reach THE summit and more importantly, come down alive.
That is if you were not already struck with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) or High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). These are extremely severe forms of high altitude sickness. Basically, your brain and lungs are flooded by fluid from blood vessels. If you don’t descent immediately, you die.
The formula for death on Everest is simple.
Into Thin Air
I would not have learnt about the tragedy and the hazards of climbing Everest if not for Jon Krakauer. In 1996, Jon was assigned by Outside magazine to join an Everest expedition. He was supposed to write about the exploding commercialization of Everest. Never did he imagine that out of 5 team mates who reached the summit of Everest on May 10, only he would return alive.
Into Thin Air, written 6 months after the tragedy, is the definitive account of what happened on that fateful day. Jon weaved his narration of the team’s journey to the Everest Base Camp and subsequent acclimatization climbs with little vignettes of his team mates. Thus this story not only reads like a thriller but also an intimate memoir. In the book, Jon’s guilt for his perceived role in causing the death of expedition guide Andy “Harold” Harris would also surface again and again. Jon felt that he had to tell the world what happened.
“Several authors and editors i respect counseled me not to write the book as quickly as i did; they urged me to wait 2 or 3 years and put some distance between me and the expedition in order to gain some crucial perspective. Their advice was sound, but in the end i ignored it – mostly because what happened on the mountain was gnawing my guts out.”
I’m no mountain climber but this story is so compelling and well-written that i read it in one day. After reading it, you, like me, will feel compelled to surf the internet, thirsty for more information on Everest and what happened on May 10/11, 1996.
If you’re still not convinced, check out Jon’s Outside article on this tragedy.
