I hope that the Nepali government finally announce that Mt Everest is banned from all but serious climbers. Clear all the ladders & rubbish left behind by tourists who think it’s a fun experience. I wish that the world would make up the loss of income that the Sherpas lose by banning this awesome Mountain from being used by totally selfish individuals like Sandy Pittman
I've come to the conclusion after reading Boukreev's The Climb and Gammelgaard's Climbing High that no one should take Krakauer's account too seriously. Krakauer basically did his own climb, moving fast, didn't help with fixing ropes as claimed, blamed Pittman for slowing the climb down when she didn't, and blamed Harris for his own stupid decision not to wait at the south summit for his third bottle of O2, which is what actually slowed his team down, and then ran out of Os at the top of the step. Andy was the only climber to try and rescue Hansen and Hall, and paid with his life. That puts him in the hero column, in my opinion. Harris' jacket was found near Hall's body when it was located by the Imax team. Rob said Andy was with him the night before on day 2, so Krakauer's story of Harris walking off the mountain near the huddle was pure fiction. Krakauer wasn't even with the huddle group, having made camp 4 with Boukreev.
I know its bad to say it but I blame doug to what happen to rob, because of his stubborness to climb the everest two more other lives was lost, think of the families the kids left behind..
When I read Into Thin Air, I could not understand the relationship with the Author and Anatoli. John K almost never mentions him in positive terms. So, I went out and bought the climb, however, Anatoli was not in attack mode. Anatoli is an absolute legend, not to mention the 1996 Everest drama. John K and other folk stayed in the tents and Anatoli went out to look for people, not client, but for people who needed help. A True mountaineer and a legend. Also, people who are paying to climb Everest should be banned. WB Yeats once said, A Terrible beauty.
Very well done sir. That was a lot of information about Terich Mir. I am planning for the base camp of Terich Mir and would hopefully push a little bit up. A truly wonderful site to visit
I'm here after your other documentary about the K2 2008 tragedy. I must say yours are much more informative about all climbers who took part in each of the events. And objectively presented as well. I'm sure this took more time than the average for such documentaries, and it has definitely been noticed by lots of viewers.
It would be safer to get a guide and do a technical rock route to the summit in my opinion. You would have a rope, a helmet, an expert guide and protection keeping you on. No way would I do that ridge and I am climber with plenty of scrambling and knowledge of foot and hand placement and checking rock quality. People often think of rock climbing as an "extreme danger sport". With the right knowledge and care, it is safer to do than drive to where you are climbing, because you can control everything except random Act of God rockfall above you.
Pressure makes diamonds - they say. This is definitely true for Polish mountaineers in the 1970s and 1980s. Polish people lived under great adversity during Kukuczka's times. These difficulties are depicted in Kukuczka's own book: My Vertical World published in 1989, and also in Bernadette McDonald's recent two books, Freedom Climbers about Polish mountaineering in general, and Art Of Freedom about another Polish climbing ace, Wojtek Kurtyka. Actually Kurtyka himself tells us what really made Polish climbers so incredibly tough in Greg Child's book, Mixed Emotions: > “It is something in our nationality,” says Voytek. “Under the Germans and the Russians we’ve lived between the hammer and the anvil. Because of the struggle in Poland for freedom at home, most Poles feel a sense of being tough. The sense of defeat on a mountain is greater for a Pole, so the last thing a Pole wants is to fail on an expedition. In the end, we are better at the art of suffering, and for high altitude this is everything.” < In Nicholas O'Connell's book Beyond Risk, Kurtyka elaborates more on this issue: >...the history of Poland encouraged a kind of tough behavior. We lived in very hard political conditions for centuries. We had problems all the time, either with the Germans or the Russians. For over a hundred years we lost our independence, from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. And for generations the Poles behaved in a patriotic way, and one of the first duties was to be strong, to be tough, not to step down, not to let yourself be beaten. Even Polish kids were taught to be tough. If you were not tough, you were weak and you were a bad boy. In Poland this attitude developed because we had to be ready always for another uprising, for another hard struggle. This attitude was shifted to the mountains so that the Poles would think three times before coming down. And if they did come down without success, defeated, they were totally different people from a French or American expedition coming down defeated. The Poles came down with a bad conscience, as though they had done something wrong. They came down with a psychological hangover. “You were beaten. You are weak. You are not strong enough. If you lose, you are something inferior. You’re not really a man.” < Last but not least Kurtyka added a few words in Beyond Risk about Kukuczka: > Jurek was taking too many chances, definitely. I did not think it was proper. And the basic proof is that he lost something like five partners. While he was climbing with me, we never had a problem. We were quite lucky. But later, when we parted, he started losing partners one after another. He was very confident in what he was doing. I think it had to do with his religious background. He believed in God. He thought he was fair in his life, that he was just in living, that he was following the general principles of religion. And so, since he was fair, he expected God to be fair with him. This is what he told me. So if he was defeated on the mountains he would ask God, “Why? What did I do wrong? Why this treatment?” We called him “The Knuckle” because in Poland there is a dish made of pig’s feet called knuckle. And he just loved pig’s feet. So we called him that for fun. Maybe it’s an excellent nickname in English too, because he was really incredibly tough. I’ve never met a person who was so incredibly tough and so psychically motivated. He was a phenomenon. I doubt there was anybody else like him in the mountaineering world. After two months of extreme danger, of extreme doubt, of extreme bad weather, he would still go for the summit. Everybody else would be fed up, and he was ready always to take another huge portion of risk and another huge portion of suffering. He was always ready to take a lot of suffering. Jurek was the astrological sign of the ram, and Alexander the Great was also the ram. These are people who without discrimination hit an obstacle with their head. And they hit it until they break it or they break their own neck. He was this kind of animal. He was just pushing. He was just hitting something until he would crush it-without consideration, without thinking, just pure energy pushing on. I knew him very well and I was afraid of him. He was personally very lucky, but the people who were with him were not lucky; they were dying. He was luckier, but you suspected that one day he would end up like them. And, of course, you know how he died. It was a typical dead-end situation. He was on a single, very thin, six-millimeter rope, pushing up a very high part of the south face of Lhotse. There was no way down. As long as he could make the next step, he would continue. However, there was always another step of unprotected ground, practically without belay. So after something like sixty or seventy meters of this he fell off, and of course the rope broke. There was no retreat for him. Retreating for him was the worst imaginable disaster. He would never back down. He was this kind of person. <
There were no heroes on Everest that day. They were doomed from the start. The leaders failed to lead. Anatoli included. It was a proper shit show and a lesson on how not to attempt a summit.
Once you abandon IFR and revert to VFR you are on your own regarding terrain clearance, therefore it is essential that you properly determine your actual position before you descend below MSA
He was a hero on that day in 1996. People say he was irresponsible to not use bottled oxygen because it meant that he could not wait at the summit for the clients due to getting colder faster but I think the clients and guides who allow bottled oxygen are irresponsible and shouldn’t be there
Most people focus on the negative but these were real people. I love how you have shown him. Any body that follows everest nos this story. This a breath of fresh air
I think the altitude affected Rob Hall's decision making skills. Friend or not, there was just no reason to stay and die next to Doug Hansen. Yasuko Namba was just naive as many Japanese are.
Hansen never fell off the mountain. He was tangled up with Rob and buried under 1m of ice under Rob. They moved Rob I believe, but Doug Hansen is still there on the South Summit.
Can’t Boukreev be both - a hero who made an astonishing rescue and also a guide who to a certain extent f**ked up in his role to responsibly get his clients up and down the Everest safely? If you had read Into Thin Air, that’s all Krakour was saying in his criticism of Anatoli…
I just finished reading mountaineer Andrew Lock's book Summit 8000, and he has nothing but praise for Anatoli. Anatoli was a remarkable climber and lived to climb and ultimately died for it, too. The courage is must have taken to go back out into that storm was something else. Personally, as someone who is going through the very expensive, time consuming, uncomfortable and totally awesome process of learning to climb mountains proper (full rope skills, climbing skills, alpine travel skills, wilderness first aid and survival skills and summiting small before even thinking about summiting big), it baffles me that people think a Sherpa is your ticket to protection on a mountain. You can be separated from your Sherpa for myriad reasons (he gets hit by an avalanche, you don't and vice versa; one of you falls while a new anchor is being tied and the back up anchor fails. One of you suffers an injury or your Sherpa must participate in a rescue. One of you is literally blown off the mountain. One of you falls into a crevasse and that figure 8 knot or clove hitch didn't actually go through the right hole becuase Jetstream-force winds were smashing you and your fingers are frozen solid. Rock fall hits one of you and not the other. This is a normal day on K2 and Annapurna 1). Sherpas are not your protection against the finger of God. To go to altitude without a full arsenal of skills, experience, risk assessment and full analysis of mountain terrain and weather is simply asking to die. It is to turn from the truth and lie to yourself so casually you then put others at risk. I respect Anatoli so much becuase he was a man that did the hard yards, put in the hard work, dedicated himself to his passion. He lived and died on his own terms.
Yasuko was recovered!! , Rob Hall's body, ( south summit ), moved down, after years, and is not viewable, anymore! Scott Fisher, is still up, by the balcony, actually, below it, and was moved, out of sight!
As an audio tech, I must say that you did a great job in your narration. The noise gate was a good choice to cut out all unnecessary sounds while pausing👍
