The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999 (2nd. Edition); ISBN: 0-312-20637-2; Pp. 372, maps, photos.

When I read Mr Krakauer's Into Thin Air, little did I know that I would be hungrily devouring an ever increasing number of pages dedicated to Everest in general and the 1996 disaster in particular. Naturally, after Mr Krakauer bad-mouthed and vilified the Russian climber Anatoli Boukreev, the first thing I was going to do was read Mr Boukreev's own account of the events, de-Russified by Mr DeWalt in this book. Sadly, Mr Boukreev is no longer with us and I am now tempted to read his other book about climbing that was recently published through the good offices of his American girlfriend. This is the second edition of the book, which includes Mr DeWalt's response to Mr Krakauer's additional attacks in the second edition of the other book, along with a transcript of the discussion of events by Mountain Madness team members two days after the tragedy.

It seems that everyone has heard one account or another about what happened in May 1996 on the top of the world. It looks like every surviving member of the expeditions have written at least one book with her or his version. Mr Krakauer's has the virtue of being the first and, by most accounts, the most readable of the bunch, mostly because the author is less intensely interested in himself and because he has the good sense of observing solid rules for writing engaging stories. The unfortunate upshot of all this is that his version has been swallowed by the readers and as a result one great Russian climber may go down in history as the world's biggest jerk whose irresponsible behavior as a guide directly contributed to the deaths.

It is a bit odd to have written that last sentence. First, Mr Boukreev was not part of Mr Krakauer's team led by Rob Hall but was instead a guide on the Mountain Madness team lead by Scott Fischer. Hence, Mr Boukreev can only be held responsible for the fates of the members of that team. Second, none of the client members of Mountain Madness died or were permanently injured. All the deaths and gruesome amputations resulting from severe frostbite were in other teams, most notably Mr Krakauer's very own which lost its leader (Hall), its guide (Harris), two of its clients (Namba and Hansen), and in which one man lost his hands (Weathers). In contrast, Mountain Madness lost its leader, and the clients were all saved by Mr Boukreev, who came darn close to rescuing Mr Fischer as well. It is worth noting that Mr Boukreev was awarded the American Alpine Club's highest award for his efforts during these days.

So who is right? It looks to me that with the present book Mr Boukreev has completely and convincingly redeemed himself by making his behavior---made to look menacing and uncaring by Mr Krakauer---comprehensible to unbiased readers. The book is a meditation on commercial climbing of Everest (the subtitle, Tragic Ambitions on Everest, is quite revealing) but make no mistake, it was written in response to Mr Krakauer's popular account, so it must be excused if it sounds a bit too defensive and contrived (the authors sometimes go out of their way to address minute details to buttress their position). It is not as lively or engaging as the rival account, and it is not nearly as gossipy, which some will probably fault it for by saying it is dry. For example, nobody, not even Ms Pittman, comes off looking badly in Mr Boukreev's book. There are no villains here, only people with impossible dreams making less than optimal decisions against the good advice of more experienced ones. The one gossipy part emerges in the appendix, a transcript of the taped conversations a few days after the events at the Mountain Madness camp. One person who comes off as thoroughly self-engrossed and unlikable is Ms Gammelgaard, and I hear people complaining that her book is also marred by the same amount of bellicose self-absorption.

The picture of Mr Boukreev that emerges from the climb has little in common with the caricature in Mr Krakauer's book. This is not a Russian who is blinded by his ambition to climb without oxygen even if this would mean impaired judgment as a guide. Mr Boukreev, an experienced climber who had summitted many of the highest peaks without oxygen, explains his reasons, which I find persuasive: if one climbs with oxygen, then losing it deals a much more severe blow to one's capacity to reflect and act than climbing without. The innuendo about Mr Boukreev was not even properly dressed and therefore had to descend quickly is dispelled by several of the pictures taken on summit day, where he appears dressed as well as anybody else. And the story about his talk with Fischer has the ring of plausibility: after all, nobody knew a storm was approaching, and Boukreev at South Col ready to go to the rescue of stranded climbers sounds eminently reasonable, after all, it was precisely this that made the resulting rescues possible. Let us not forget that Mr Boukreev went out in the whiteout when nobody else was willing (or able) to help him. That after trying unsuccessfully several times, he managed to locate the stranded climbers, and then walked two of them, on two separate occasions, back to the safety of the tents. All of this made possible by his rapid descent and time to recuperate.

Even Mr Fischer's rather odd decisions are briefly mentioned (for example, his continued insistence on being OK even after climbing back and forth to resolve problems with various client-members, something that must have exhausted him, rendering him incapable to descend on summit day). In fact, Mr Boukreev never faults anybody and explains away many apparently bad decisions as simple matters of agreeing to disagree. One wonders if following Mr Boukreev's acclimatization strategy would have enabled the clients to do a bit better. In the end, the only person Mr Boukreev truly faults is himself, for not saving Yasuko Namba, the Japanese woman on Rob Hall's team who perished after the storm. Mr Boukreev was not aware of Mr Weathers, the person left for dead twice by his team-mates only to miraculously survive both times, and so could not have done anything to help him. But Ms Namba was another matter: it is impossible to imagine how he would have done it, no human effort was possible after what he had already done, but I understand how he would still feel responsible. Much more so than Mr Krakauer and his team-mates who voted to abandon Ms Namba and Mr Weathers to their destinies even while they were still alive.

I said in my review of Mr Krakauer's book that I did not feel qualified morally to render judgment on these actions with respect to their fellow climbers. I still do not, but now I have heard from witnesses who surely can. Mr Weathers, in an interview available on the IMAX Everest DVD, sounds bitter (with good reason) and although he never says it outright, it is very clear where his heart is: he spent more time talking about the Nepalese helicopter pilot who came to his rescue than about his team-mates who left him to freeze. Mr Boukreev delivers an even more damning verdict indirectly through his own behavior that provides a stark contrast to that of Mr Krakauer's team, which not only made no attempt to rescue anyone but actually walked over to see the breathing bodies, and then decided to leave them where they lay. Mr Krakauer said that he wrote the book to get Everest out of his system. Well, it's not Everest that he is trying to exorcise, and the thing will never go away.

In the end, we will never know what precisely happened in May 1996 on Everest. But whatever it was, Mr Boukreev had a decisive role to play in it, and that role no doubt was positive. That the man lost his life in an avalanche barely a year and a half after that should close the chapter on the life of that remarkable, if often misunderstood on account of his poor English, man. (One example is Mr Boukreev's references to "saving himself" which sounds bad in English but is actually a literal translation of a Russian expression meaning to "conserve one's energy.") This book should serve as a good epitaph for the man who wished that we "do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from the summits."

September 30, 2004