Chapter 23 Chapter 21 Everest Base Camp

△Elevation 5365 meters, May 13, 1996 * Inevitably I am asked to offer a mature judgment on the expedition, but that is impossible while we are all too close to the event. On the one hand, Amundsen went straight for it, arrived first, and did not lose a single soldier. When the soldiers came back, they were doing the daily work of polar expeditions, and they didn't put too much pressure on themselves and their subordinates.Our expedition, on the other hand, took horrific risks, displayed a spectacle of superhuman endurance, achieved immortality, was quoted as a sermon in a solemn cathedral, and admired as a public statue, only to find us at the South Pole The horrific journey was superfluous, leaving our best players dead on the ice.It would be absurd to ignore the comparison, or to write a book without dismissing the expedition as a waste of time.

Cherigrad "The World's Worst Journey" Apsley Cherry︱Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World Scott's Disastrous Antarctic Expedition in 1912 □□□ On the morning of Monday, May 13th, I reached the bottom of the Khumbu Icefall, walked down the last slope, and found Zelin, Curt, and Caroline waiting for me at the edge of the glacier.Curt handed me a can of beer, and Caroline stepped forward to hug me, and when I came back to my senses, I was sitting on the ice, covering my face with my hands, tears streaming down my cheeks, like I had never cried in my life Weeping like that.Now that I am safe, the heavy pressure of the past few days has been relieved. I began to cry for my partner who lost his life. I cried for being grateful that I was still alive. I also broke down and cried for my own survival while others died.

Beidleman presided over the memorial service Tuesday afternoon at the Mountain Idiots' camp.Jiang Bu's father, Sakya, was a lama. He burned sandalwood and recited Buddhist scriptures under the iron-gray sky.Beidleman said a few words, Curt spoke, and Pokliffe mourned Fisher's death.I stood up, stuttering and recalling Han Sen.Peter wanted to cheer everyone up and urge us to look forward and not look back.But after the ceremony, everyone disbanded and went back to their tents. The atmosphere of the funeral still shrouded the entire base camp. Early the next morning, a helicopter arrived with Charlotte and Glenn, both of whom had frostbitten feet and needed immediate medical attention.Tusk, a doctor, also boarded the same plane to take care of the two.Shortly before noon, Kasisker, Hutchison, Fishback, and Caroline and I walked out of the base camp and headed home, while Helen and Curt stayed behind to supervise the dismantling of the camp by the Adventure Advisors.

On Thursday, May 16th, we took a helicopter from Frisia to the village of Champosa not far above Namche Bazaar.As we walked across the dirt tarmac waiting for our connecting flight to Kathmandu, three pale-faced Japanese men approached us.The first one claimed to be Soo Kanita (an outstanding Himalayan mountaineer who climbed to the summit of Mount Everest twice), politely explained that he was serving as a guide and interpreter for the other two, and introduced them as Yasuko Namba’s husband Kenichi Namba and her brother Souichi Tanaka.For the next forty-five minutes they asked many questions, most of which I could not answer.

By then Yasuko's death was making headlines all over Japan.Indeed, on May 12, twenty-four hours after Yasuko's death at the South Col, a helicopter landed in the middle of the base camp and brought in two Japanese journalists wearing oxygen masks.As soon as they saw someone (the American Dasne was the first they saw), they immediately went over to strike up a conversation and asked for information about Koko.Today, four days later, Muneo Kanita reminds us that there is a group of newspaper and TV journalists waiting for us in Kathmandu, also pursuing us. Later that afternoon we squeezed into a large Mi︱17 helicopter and flew through a gap in the clouds.An hour later, the helicopter landed at Tribhuvan International Airport. We stepped out of the door and were immediately surrounded by a dense array of microphones and TV cameras.As a journalist, I find it sobering to experience things from the other side's point of view.Hordes of reporters, mostly Japanese, wanted a coherent account of the disaster, full of villains and heroes.But the chaos and pain I have witnessed is not easy to put into words.I was tortured on the tarmac for 20 minutes. Fortunately, the consul of the American embassy rescued me and sent me to the Garuda Hotel.

More grueling interviews followed, first with other journalists and then with a few stern-eyed Tourism Ministry officials.On Friday evening, I walked through the alleys of Kathmandu's Thamer district, trying to escape a deepening depression.I handed a handful of rupees to a scrawny Nepalese teenager and took a small paper package engraved with the tiger's crest. When I got back to the hotel I opened the packet and rubbed the contents on a piece of cigarette paper.The pale green shoots are sticky and resinous and smell of ripe, rotten fruit.I rolled a marijuana cigarette and smoked it all. The second one was fat and I smoked almost half of it. I felt dizzy, so I put the cigarette out.

I lay naked in bed listening to the sounds of night drifting through the open window.The bells of rickshaws mingled with car horns, street vendors, women's laughter, and music from nearby bars.I lay on my back, too drunk to move, closed my eyes, and let the sticky pre-monsoon heat cover my body like sesame oil, feeling as if I was melting into the mattress.An elaborately etched array of pinwheels and cartoon characters with big noses floats past my eyes in neon light. I turned my head to one side, and my ears touched a wet spot, which was tears, and suddenly I realized that tears were running down my cheeks, soaking the sheets.I felt a gurgling, bulging wave of pain and shame rising from the depths of my being and up my spine.The tears kept gushing out from my mouth and nose, and I burst into tears, crying heartbroken.

On May 19th, I flew back to the United States, carrying two bags of Han Sen's things to return to his loved ones.His kids Angie and Jamie, his girlfriend Mary, and other friends and family met me at the Seattle airport.I was completely overwhelmed and powerless to see their tears. I breathed in the thick, tide-scented ocean air and marveled at the fertileness of Seattle’s spring, appreciating the city’s dank, moss-covered beauty for the first time in my life.Linda and I slowly tried to get to know each other again.The eleven kilograms I lost in Nepal quickly came back.Eating breakfast with my wife, watching the sun set over Puget Sound, getting up in the middle of the night and walking barefoot to the warm bathroom.But those moments were diluted by the long shadow cast by Mount Everest, which hadn't faded much even as the sun and moon shifted.

Wracked with guilt, I hesitated to call Harris' partner, Fiona, and Hall's wife, Jane, until they called me from New Zealand.On the phone, I couldn't say anything to assuage Fiona's anger and confusion. Talking to Jane, it was she who comforted me, not me. I always knew that mountaineering was a life-threatening hobby.I agree that danger is the main ingredient in this activity, and without it, mountaineering would be no different from a thousand other trivial pastimes.Getting close to the mystery of the disappearance of life and peeking at the taboo border of death are all exciting.I am a firm believer that mountaineering is a great activity, and that the inherent danger, far from detracting from its greatness, is what makes it great.

But I had never seen death up close before visiting the Himalayas.Damn, I hadn't even been to a funeral until Everest.Death is always a hypothetical concept, an idea of ​​abstract contemplation.Sooner or later this blessed innocence would be taken away, but when it finally happened, the shock was multiplied by the sheer number of dead.In the spring of 1996, a total of 12 people were killed on Mount Everest. Since the first time humans set foot on the summit 75 years ago, this is the deadliest mountaineering season1. Note 1: On April 18, 2014, a bigger mountain disaster occurred on Mount Everest: a major avalanche occurred in the Khumbu Icefall, killing at least 12 people, all of whom were Sherpas.Editor's note

Six members of the Hall Expedition made it to the summit, and only Glenn and I survived down the mountain. Four teammates who laughed, vomited, and talked intimately with me for a long time lost their lives.Harris' death was directly related to my actions (or failure to act).When Kang Zi was lying dying in the South Col, I was only more than 300 meters away from her, but I was huddled in the tent, ignorant of her struggle, and only cared about my own safety.The scars on my conscience will never be washed away by months of mourning and guilt. Cliff lived not far from my house, and I finally articulated my lingering unease to him.He said he, too, was sad that so many people had died, but unlike me, he had no survivor's guilt.He explained: That night at the South Col, I used all resources to save myself and those around me.By the time we got back to the tent, I had nothing left.I had frostbite on one cornea, which is equivalent to total blindness.I was hypothermic, delirium, and trembling uncontrollably.Although Kang Zi's death is uncomfortable, I have been able to face it calmly, because I know that nothing I can do will save her.Don't be so hard on yourself.That blizzard was terrible.Given your situation at the time, what can you do for her? Maybe nothing can be done, I agree.But unlike Cliff, I can't be sure.The calm in his mouth is enviable, but I can't ask for it. With so many minimally qualified climbers flocking to Mount Everest recently, many thought such a tragedy was long overdue.But no one expected that the expedition led by Hall would become the core of the mountain disaster.Hall's work on the mountain is the most rigorous and safest, and no one is better than him.He was methodical and carefully crafted a well-ordered system that should arguably have prevented such a catastrophe.What on earth happened?How to explain this matter to the loved ones and friends of the deceased, and to the eager public? Maybe it's too much pride.Hall may have gotten a little cocky about taking climbers up and down Everest with ease, regardless of their abilities.He boasted more than once that as long as he is still considered strong, he can reach the top of the mountain, and his records also confirm this statement.At the same time, he also demonstrated an amazing ability to turn danger into luck. Take 1995 as an example. Not only did Hall and his guides have to deal with Han Sen’s problems at the top of the mountain, but another client, Shanda, was a famous French mountaineer and had already climbed Mount Everest for the seventh time without wearing an oxygen mask. , but fell to the ground exhausted, they also had to try to deal with it.Ms. Shanda was unconscious at an altitude of 8748 meters. According to Curt, she was like a sack of potatoes that had to be dragged or carried all the way from the South Peak to the South Col.With everyone alive after the summit, Hall probably thought there was little he couldn't handle. However, before 1996, Hall was exceptionally lucky to always have good weather, which may have distorted his judgment.Bridgers, who has made more than a dozen expeditions to the Himalayas and climbed Everest three times, attests: Season after season, Hall's summit day has always been sunny.He had never encountered a snowstorm high on the mountain.In fact, although the strong wind on May 10 was not abnormal, it was a typical Everest storm.If the storm had hit two hours later, no one would have died.On the other hand, if he had come an hour earlier, he could have easily claimed eighteen or twenty lives, including myself. Time has no less influence on this tragedy than the weather, and ignoring time limits must not be confused with providence.Delays on the fixed line can be anticipated and prevented.They ignore the pre-determined retracement time too much. The delay in the return time may be more or less related to the competition between Fisher and Hall.Fisher had never been a Everest guide until 1996.In business talk business, he is under a lot of pressure to succeed, and he is obsessed with getting clients to the top, especially celebrity clients like Sandy. Similarly, Hall did not bring anyone to the summit in 1995. If he fails again in 1996, it will be extremely detrimental to his career, especially if Fischer succeeds.Fisher has great crowd charm, and Jen goes out of her way to promote that charm to her clients.Hall was well aware that Fisher was desperate to carve out his market.Thinking that the opponent's client was heading towards the summit, but he told the client to turn back, the feeling might be too uncomfortable and clouded his judgment. And I want to emphasize that Hall, Fisher, and we were all forced to make life-and-death decisions in the absence of oxygen.When we think about how this disaster happened, we must not forget that it is impossible to think clearly at an altitude of more than 8,800 meters. Hindsight is easy to do.Critics, appalled by the loss of life, were quick to propose policies and steps to prevent a repeat of this season's catastrophe.For example, someone suggested that Everest should set the ratio of guide and client as one-to-one, that is to say, each client climbs the mountain with his or her own personal guide and is tied to the guide with a rope at any time. Perhaps the easiest way to reduce casualties in the future is to restrict the use of bottled oxygen only for emergency medical use.Although it is inevitable that there will be a few reckless guys who attack the summit without oxygen and die, most inexperienced climbers are limited by their physical strength and will turn back early to avoid serious difficulties at high places.A side benefit of the oxygen ban is that it automatically reduces litter and crowding. If people knew they couldn't use supplemental oxygen, fewer people would go up the mountain. But Everest guiding is a loosely regulated industry, run by ill-equipped and inflexible Third World bureaucrats who vet the qualifications of guides or clients.Moreover, Nepal and China, the two countries that control the access to Mount Everest, are astonishingly poor.The governments of the two countries are eager for a strong foreign currency. As long as there is a market, they are willing to issue a few more expensive mountaineering permits. It is unlikely that they will formulate any policy that will severely limit annual income. Analyzing what happened on Mount Everest is of great interest and may prevent some of the impending deaths.But it would be wishful thinking to think that dissecting the tragedy of 1996 will actually reduce future mortality.Generalizing mistakes in order to learn from them is at best an exercise in denial and self-deception.Once you tell yourself that Hall died from a string of stupid bad decisions, and that you're smart enough not to repeat them, it's easy to take on Everest, even if someone presents strong evidence that climbing Everest was wrong. In fact, the fatal outcome of 1996 seemed unusual in many respects.Although the number of deaths in the Mount Everest climbing season that spring hit a new high, there were 398 climbers who climbed above the base camp, and only 3% of the 12 died, compared with 3% in history.Three percent is slightly lower.Looking at it from another perspective, a total of 144 people died between 1921 and May 1996, while Mount Everest was summited a total of 630 times, a ratio of one to four.In the spring of 1996, 12 people died, and 84 people climbed to the summit, the ratio was 1:7.Compared with the historical average, 1996 was actually a relatively safe year. Let's be honest, climbing Everest has always been, and always will be, dangerous, whether it's for a novice Himalayan being brought up by a guide or a world-class alpinist climbing with a peer.We must remember that Everest has destroyed many elite mountaineers, including Boardman (Peter Boardman), Joe Tasker (Joe Tasker, Marty Hoey) before killing Hall and Fisher. , Jake Breitenbach, Mick Burke, Michel Parmentier, Roger Marshall, Ray Genet and Mallory. When it comes to guided beginners, I quickly discovered that few of the clients on Everest in 1996 (myself included) really understood the magnitude of the dangers we faced as humans at an altitude of 7620. The odds of surviving above a meter are very low.Adventurers with Everest dreams must remember: if things aren't right in the death zone (sooner or later they will be), the best guides in the world may not be able to save their clients' lives.In the events of 1996, the world's strongest guides were sometimes unable to save their own lives.Four of my teammates died, not so much because Hall's system was flawed (in fact, no one had a better system), but because any system can easily collapse on Mount Everest. Amid all the aftermath, it is easy to overlook that mountaineering can never be a safe, predictable, and rule-bound activity.It's an activity that idealizes adventure, and celebrities in the industry have always been the characters most unafraid of hanging by a thread and managing to escape it.Mountaineers are a species not known for their prudence, and Everest climbers in particular.History has proven that if given the chance to climb the highest mountain on Earth, humans would quickly lose their heads.Thirty-three years after climbing the West Ridge of Everest, Hornbein warns that what happened on Everest this season will surely repeat itself. To prove that the mistake of May 10 taught no lesson, we need only look at what happened on Mount Everest in the following weeks. On May 17th, two days after the Hall team left the base camp, an Austrian named Reinhard Wlasich and a Hungarian teammate climbed the northeast side of Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. In the alpine camp at an altitude of 8,300 meters, we lived in tents left over from the unfortunate Indian expedition to Ladakh.Rashih complained of feeling unwell the next morning and then lost consciousness.A Norwegian doctor who happened to be there concluded that he had both pulmonary edema and cerebral edema.Although doctors gave him oxygen and medicine, Rasih died at midnight that day. At this time, on the side of Mount Everest near Nepal, Brixels' IMAX expeditionary force is regrouping and considering various options.With a total of $5.5 million invested in their filming project, they have a very strong reason to stay on the mountain and try to get to the top.This team consisted of Bridgers, Westers, and Shore, and was without a doubt the strongest and brightest team on the hill.Although they sent half of the oxygen cylinders to assist rescue teams and climbers who desperately needed oxygen, they later collected enough oxygen cylinders from various expeditions that left the mountain to make up for most of the losses. When the disaster struck on May 10, Westers' wife, Paula, was listening to the radio as the base camp manager for the IMAX team.She was a friend of Hall and Fisher's, and one can imagine how hard she was hit.Paula thought that after such a terrible tragedy, the IMAX team would automatically pack up their tent and go home.Later, she happened to overhear a radio conversation between Bridgers and another climber, in which the IMAX leader nonchalantly announced that the team intended to rest briefly at base camp before heading out for the summit. Paula admitted that with all the things going on, I couldn't believe they were actually going back to the mountains.I heard radio conversations, completely incomprehensible.She was so disturbed that she left base camp and walked down to Tianpozhai for five days, trying to regain her composure. The IMAX team arrived at the South Col on Wednesday, May 21. The weather was perfect and they set out for the summit that night.Westers, who starred in the film, reached the summit at 11 a.m. Thursday morning without supplemental oxygen. 2Blixes arrived 20 minutes later, followed by Xigala, Shaw and Nogai the Sherpa. He was the son of the first climber of Mount Everest, and the ninth member of the Nogai family to climb to the top of Notre Dame. peak members.All told, a total of 16 people climbed to the summit that day, including Kropp, a Swede who rode a bicycle from Stockholm to Nepal, and Anlita, a Sherpa who climbed to the top of Mount Everest for the tenth time. Note 2: Westers previously climbed Mount Everest without oxygen in 1990 and 1991.In 1994 he climbed for the third time, with Hall.That time he used cylinders of oxygen because he was a guide and thought it irresponsible not to use oxygen cylinders.author note On the way up the mountain, Westers walked past the frozen bodies of Fisher and Hall.He said with shame: Qin and Jane, I'll take some personal items back to them.I knew Fisher had a wedding ring around his neck, and I wanted to take it down the mountain to Jean, but I just didn't have the guts to dig around his body.I just can't muster the courage.He didn't pick up any souvenirs, but sat next to Fisher on the way down the mountain, and spent a few minutes alone with him.He sadly asked his good friend: Hey, how are you?What's the matter, man? On the afternoon of Friday, May 24th, IMAX walked from Camp No. 4 to Camp No. 2. On the yellow belt, they met the remaining members of the South African team, Woodall, O'Dowd, Herod and three Sherpas. Go to the top of the South Col.Bridgers recalled: Herold looked strong and had a good complexion.He shook my hand hard, congratulated us, and said he felt great.Woodall and O'Dowd were half an hour behind him, holding the ice ax exhausted, looking miserable, really miserable. Bridgers went on: "I made it a point to stay with them for a while.I know they're inexperienced, so I say, please be careful, you've seen what happened here earlier this month.Remember that climbing to the top is easy and going down is difficult. The South African team set off to attack the summit that night.O'Dowd and Woodall left the tent 20 minutes after midnight, and the Sherpas Tandi, Dorji 3 and Jiangbu carried the oxygen tanks for them.Herold seemed to leave the camp a few minutes behind them, but crawled farther and farther away.At 9:50 a.m. on Saturday, May 25th, Woodall called Conroy, the radio operator at the base camp, and said he and Tammy were at the summit, and that O'Dowd would be with Dorjee and Jangbu in 15 minutes. Climb together.He said Herold didn't have a radio and was some distance down there. Note 3: To remind everyone: the Sherpa named Dorje in the South African team is not the same person as the Sherpa named Dorje in the Hall team.author note I had seen Herold several times on the mountain, a stocky, kindly man of thirty-seven.No high-altitude experience, but amazing art, having lived eighteen months as a geophysicist in the freezing Antarctic desert, the best of the rest of the South African team.He has been working as a freelance photographer since 1988, working hard and hoping that reaching the summit of Everest will bring necessary help to his career. As a result, when Woodall and O'Dowd reached the summit, Herold was still struggling to climb the southeast ridge far below, and his pace was worryingly slow.At around 12:30, he passed by Wu Daal, O'Dowd and three Sherpas who were going down the mountain.Dorje gave Herod a radio and explained where to put the spare oxygen, and then Herod continued to attack the summit alone.He didn't reach the summit until five o'clock, seven hours behind the others, by which time Woodall and O'Dowd were back in their tent at the South Col. Coincidentally, when Herold radioed to base camp to report that he had reached the summit, his girlfriend Sue happened to make a satellite phone call from her London residence to base camp to find Conroy.Conroy told me Herold was at the summit, and I said, "Damn it," she recalls.It's impossible for him to be at the summit so late, it's 5:15!Things are not good. After a while, Conroy passed Miss Thompson's phone number to Herold at the summit of Everest.She said: "He sounded healthy and normal.He knew it took him a long time to get there, but he took off his oxygen mask to talk, and his voice was normal enough at that altitude.He didn't even look particularly out of breath. But it took Herold seventeen hours to climb from the South Col to the summit.There was no wind, but clouds and mists now hung over the mountains, and darkness was falling fast.Alone on the roof of the world, he was so exhausted that he must be running out or almost out of oxygen.His former teammate De Clarke said: "He was up there so late, with no one around, it was crazy, unbelievable. Herold stayed at the South Col from the night of May 9th to May 12th, experiencing the ferocity of the blizzard firsthand, hearing desperate radio calls for help, and seeing Withers staggering from the severe freeze.He walked past Fisher's body on the May 25 ascent, and must have stepped over Hall's lifeless legs a few hours later on the South Peak.But he was obviously indifferent to those remains, despite the slow speed and it was getting late, he still proceeded to the summit despite everything. After Herold called from the summit at 5:15, there was no news.O’Dowd explained in an interview in the Johannesburg Post and Guardian: We waited for him with the radio on in Camp Four, and eventually fell asleep because we were so tired.I woke up the next morning around 5:00 and still had no radio from him, and I knew we had lost him. Herold is now pronounced dead, the twelfth death of the season.