The roof of the world

I got a really good night’s sleep last night and feel much better today. So the world is looking a better place already.

Anyway, I’m not sure this post will be of interest to anyone but myself, I’ll post it anyway though because it’s my blog and I can. I don’t think I have mentioned this before but I have a strange fascination with Everest. ‘Strange’ because I have no desire to climb Everest – after all I can’t even be bothered to join the gym at work let alone scale a mountain to reach the world’s highest point. But even so there is something that I find fascinating about those who climb Everest and have read many accounts of this, most notably the ones surrounding the events of the major disaster on Everest in May 1996 when a number of climbers were killed or left for dead on the mountain.

I think part of my fascination possibly comes from being interested in what makes people do something that is so extreme and risky, what drives people on when they are faced with the massive ascent that is ahead of them, and also the ethics of it all. How do you decide whether to leave fellow climbers to die – and if you were the one left behind would you think “that’s ok, that’s the way it works”? An oversimplified summation of it all but it touches on some of the things that fascinate me about it all.

Anyway, the other day I finished reading Beck Weathers’ book ‘Left for Dead’. He was one of the climbers in that trek that went so wrong back in 1996. Let me start with a few comments on the book. The beginning of the book is all about his ascent and subsequent rescue and that part is really interesting. Then the book looks at what led him to climb Everest in the first place and includes comments and input from his wife and others. Based on what his wife says, I am not surprised he headed to some of the most treacherous and unforgiving places on earth because it must have seemed like respite. It was an interesting book but the only parts that were particularly worth reading were the first few chapters about the May 1996 ascent. I wouldn’t recommend starting your reading with this book, Jon Krakauer’s book 'Into Thin Air' would probably be far better.

Some of the world’s most experienced climbers were killed on Everest on 10 May 1996 and there never has been any real explanation of how that happened (mainly because those who would know are dead). Beck Weathers was a fairly experienced climber although, by his own admission, perhaps not really suited to climbing Everest. He did not have a particularly well honed climbing technique, he did not have the body mass necessary to sustain you during an ascent and he had such poor eyesight that at certain times of day he was virtually blind – the last of those being the thing that nearly killed him (well that and the immense cold…).

During the ascent he realised that he was not going to make it to the summit and knew he had to turn back. As the others were still going to continue their ascent he agreed to await the return of their guide, Rob Hall. Rob Hall, one of the best and most experienced climbers in the world, turned out to be one of the people who never made it back. Beck Weathers waited and waited for Hall and in the end knew that it was futile and headed back down with some other climbers, but he was so weak due to having been stationery for so long that in the end he could go no further. Some of the others agreed to carry on and send help back when they could. During that long wait he got weaker and weaker, and by the time the rescuers returned he was so far gone that all they could do was leave him there to die. Because there was no doubt that he was going to die.

The thing is that several hours later Beck Weathers suddenly regained consciousness and stood up. Despite it being a driving storm he managed to walk directly back to the camp and raise help. The others knew that he was still going to die and so they put him in a tent and made him comfortable and then left him to finally die. Except that he didn’t. Instead, when the others were packing up their final belongings to move further down the mountain they suddenly realised that he was still alive and able to communicate and in fact was in the process of kitting up to join them. This man could not be killed. His wife had already been told that he was dead but subsequently was informed that news of his demise had been exaggerated. They did manage to descend further down the mountain with him and his wife arranged for him to be airlifted off the mountain by helicopter. The only problem with that is that the air is so thin at that altitude that it is impossible to get there by helicopter. Somehow they found a pilot who would try it though and in another absolute miracle flew to where Beck was and airlifted him down. When he finally received medical treatment (that would take years to complete) he had to have one of his hands amputated, his nose had came off so they had to grow a new one for him, his whole face was just generally a mess anyway (so bad that people stopped in their tracks when they saw him) and other parts of him just fell off of their own free will, such as a toe here and there. I give you brief highlights as it was actually much worse than that.

I think there is something miraculous that happened that day. There are so many reasons why Beck Weathers should never have made it back alive - he himself agrees that he should have been dead. But somehow he made it. For years arguments have raged about that day, about whether more could have been done to help those who died, the rights and wrongs of how things were handled. By coincidence there was an IMAX film crew filming there at the time and I saw that film a few years ago which helped to give yet another perspective on it all – and also to see the reality of the injuries sustained by Beck Weathers and (perhaps somewhat voyeuristically) to hear the last phone calls made by some of the people who died when they knew that there was no way to get back down. Quite heartbreaking stuff.

I don’t know what drives some people to such extremes, I don’t know what causes some people to survive the impossible, I don’t know what enables some people to carry on when all hope is lost, but there is something about Beck Weathers that deserves respect because somehow he did the impossible.