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1996 Mount Everest disaster

The 1996 Mount Everest disaster occurred on 10–11 May 1996 when eight climbers caught in a blizzard died on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit. Over the entire season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest season on Mount Everest at the time and the third deadliest after the 23 fatalities resulting from avalanches caused by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake[1] and the 16 fatalities of the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The 1996 disaster received widespread publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.[2]

Date

10 May 1996 – 11 May 1996 (1996-05-11)

Mount Everest
Altitude 8,849 metres (29,032 ft)

8

Numerous climbers were at a high altitude on Everest during the storm including the Adventure Consultants team, led by Rob Hall, and the Mountain Madness team, led by Scott Fischer. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the latter were more widely reported. Four members of the Adventure Consultants expedition died, including Hall, while Fischer was the sole casualty of the Mountain Madness expedition. Three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police also died.


Following the disaster, several survivors wrote memoirs. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine and on the Adventure Consultants team, published Into Thin Air (1997)[3] which became a bestseller. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide in the Mountain Madness team, felt impugned by the book and co-authored a rebuttal called The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest (1997).[4] Beck Weathers, of Hall's expedition, and Lene Gammelgaard, of Fischer's expedition, wrote about their experiences in their respective books, Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000)[5] and Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (2000).[6] In 2014, Lou Kasischke, also of Hall's expedition, published his own account in After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy, One Survivor's Story.


In addition to the members of the Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness teams, Mike Trueman, who coordinated the rescue from Base Camp, contributed The Storms: Adventure and Tragedy on Everest (2015). Graham Ratcliffe, who climbed to the South Col of Everest on 10 May, noted in A Day to Die For (2011) that weather reports forecasting a major storm developing after 8 May and peaking in intensity on 11 May were delivered to expedition leaders. Hall and Fischer received these before their planned summit attempts on 10 May. Some of their teams summited Everest during an apparent break in this developing storm only to descend into the full force of it late on 10 May.

(35) – expedition leader; died near the South Summit

Rob Hall

(37)

Michael Groom

(31) – disappeared near the South Summit while assisting Hall

Andy Harris

[31]

Bottlenecks at the Balcony and Hillary Step, which caused an hour-and-a-half delay in summiting. These delays were in themselves caused by delays in securing fixed ropes and the sheer number of people arriving at the bottlenecks at the same time (34 climbers on 10 May).

The team leaders' decisions to exceed the normal turnaround time of 14:00, with many summiting after 14:30.

The sudden illness of two climbers at or near the summit after 15:00.

Unexpectedly severe oxygen deprivation sickness compromising both climbers' and guides' ability to make decisions or help others.

Insufficient stores of oxygen, forcing guides and rescue teams to carry bottles up to stranded climbers as the storm approached.

[32]

The 1996 season after this disaster[edit]

1996 is statistically curious as the fatality rates on Everest in the 1996 season were statistically lower than normal. The record number of 12 fatalities in the 1996 spring climbing season was 3% of the 398 climbers who had ascended above Base Camp—slightly below the historical average of 3.3% at that time. Additionally, a total of 84 climbers reached the summit that season, giving a fatality-to-summit ratio of 1 in 7—significantly less than the historical average of 1 in 4 prior to 1996. Accounting for the increased volume of climbers in 1996 compared with previous years, the fatality rates on Everest dropped considerably, meaning that 1996 was statistically a safer-than-average year.[39]

9 May – Chen Yu-Nan (陳玉男) – from the Taiwanese National Expedition, died after a fall down the Face[41]

Lhotse

19 May – Reinhard Wlasich – Austrian climber, died from a combination of and HACE at 8,300 m (27,200 ft) on the Northeast Ridge[42]

HAPE

25 May – Bruce Herrod – photojournalist with a South African team, was on the South Col during the 10–11 May storm and reached the summit two weeks later, but died descending the Southeast Ridge

[12]

6 June – Ngawang Topche Sherpa – Nepali Sherpa for Mountain Madness, developed a severe case of on 22 April while working above Base Camp; died in June in a Kathmandu hospital[43]

HAPE

(released 9 November 1997) is a made-for-TV movie based on Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1997). The film, directed by Robert Markowitz and written by Robert J. Avrech, tells the story of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.[47]

Into Thin Air: Death on Everest

is Anatoli Boukreev's account of the events that unfolded on the mountain. It is also in part a response to Krakauer's book.

The Climb

The IMAX film (1998) also documents the disaster, and the involvement of that film's crew and climbing team in the rescue effort.[48]

Everest

The Dark Side of Everest (2003), , discusses climbers' motivations, the ethics and challenges involved when climbers encounter trouble at high altitudes, and specific disasters, e.g. the 10–11 May 1996 Mount Everest disaster and Bruce Herrod's death on 25 May 1996.

National Geographic Channel

Remnants of Everest: The 1996 Tragedy (2007; released in the US as Storm over Everest and broadcast on the US PBS-TV series ), is a documentary by director David Breashears[49]), with music composed by Jocelyn Pook.

Frontline

- Into the Death Zone, 2012 TV documentary.[50]

Seconds from Disaster

The events inspired the feature film (2015).

Everest

's opera Everest, based on the events of the disaster, was produced by the Dallas Opera and premiered in 2015.[51]

Joby Talbot

' book Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000).

Beck Weathers

's book Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (first published June 9, 1999).

Lene Gammelgaard

List of 20th-century summiters of Mount Everest

List of deaths on eight-thousanders

List of media related to Mount Everest

List of people who died climbing Mount Everest

Ratcliffe, Graham (2013). A day to die for : 1996 : Everest's worst disaster : one survivor's personal journey to uncover the truth. Edinburgh.  978-1-78057-641-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

ISBN

The Website for the 2008 PBS Frontline television show titled Storm Over Everest.

PBS Frontline: 'Storm Over Everest' – washingtonpost.com

Climber Recounts Tragedy in 'Storm Over Everest'

Archived 24 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine

Ken Kamler: Medical miracle on Everest – TEDMED

(with Peter Hackett, M.D.Lincoln Hall, James H. Moss, J.D., and Jim Williams)

PBS Storm over Everest : Roundtable : The Ethics of Climbing