Scott Fischer
Scott Eugene Fischer (December 24, 1955 – May 11, 1996) was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He was renowned for ascending the world's highest mountains without supplemental oxygen. Fischer and Wally Berg were the first Americans to summit Lhotse (27,940 feet / 8516 m), the world's fourth highest peak.[1] Fischer, Charley Mace, and Ed Viesturs summitted K2 (28,251 feet/ 8611m) without supplemental oxygen.[2] Fischer first climbed Mount Everest (29,032 feet / 8,848.86 m) in 1994 and later died during the 1996 blizzard on Everest while descending from the peak.
For other people named Scott Fischer, see Scott Fischer (disambiguation).Early life[edit]
Fischer was the son of Shirley and Gene Fischer and was of German, Dutch, and Hungarian ancestry. He spent his early life in Michigan and New Jersey.[3] After watching a TV documentary in 1970 in his home in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township, New Jersey, about the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) with his father, he headed to the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming for the summer.[4][5] While attending Ridge High School, from which he graduated in 1973, he spent his summers in the mountains with NOLS, eventually becoming a full-time senior NOLS instructor.[6]
Career[edit]
In 1977, Fischer attended an ice climbing seminar by Jeff Lowe in Utah.[7] A group of climbers scaled the frozen Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon.[7] During the climb, Fischer began to climb solo on the near-vertical ice formation when his ice axe broke, leaving him stranded.[7] The others managed to get him a new axe, but when he ascended again, the tool popped out, and he fell hundreds of feet.[7] He survived but injured his foot with his ice axe as he fell.[7]
In 1984, Fischer and Wes Krause became the second-ever team to scale the Breach Icicle on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa after Reinhold Messner and Konrad Renzler in 1978.[8]
In 1984, Fischer and two friends, Wes Krause and Michael Allison, founded Mountain Madness, an adventure travel service.[9] He guided clients in climbing major mountain peaks worldwide. In 1992, during the climb on K2 as a part of a Russian-American expedition, Fischer fell into a crevasse and tore the rotator cuff of his right shoulder. Against his doctor's advice, Fischer spent two weeks trying to recover and asked climbing partner Ed Viesturs to tape his shoulder and tether it to his waist so it would not continue to dislocate. He then resumed the climb using only his left arm. On their first summit bid, the climbers abandoned their attempt at Camp III to rescue Aleskei Nikiforov, Thor Keiser, and Chantal Mauduit. Fischer, Viesturs, and Charley Mace reached the summit on their second attempt without supplemental oxygen.[10] During their descent, they met climbers Rob Hall and Gary Ball, who were suffering from altitude sickness at Camp II. Hall's health improved along the descent, but Ball required subsequent help from Fischer and the other climbers to reach the base.[11][12]
Through Mountain Madness, Fischer guided the 1993 Climb for the Cure on Denali (20,320 feet) in Alaska which eight students at Princeton University organized. The expedition raised $280,000 for the American Foundation for AIDS Research.[13][14] In 1994, Fischer and Rob Hess climbed Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.[15] They also formed a part of the expedition that removed 5000 pounds of trash and 150 discarded oxygen bottles from Everest.[16] With the climb, Fischer had climbed the top of the highest peaks on six of the seven continents, except Vinson Massif in Antarctica.[17] The American Alpine Club awarded the David Brower Conservation Award to all expedition members.[18] In January 1996, Fischer and Mountain Madness guided a fundraising ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet / 5,895 m) in Africa.[19]