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COMING
DOWN Jon Krakauer defends "Into Thin Air" R E C E N T L Y Mondo Weirdo
Tallest Tree epiphany
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While it's likely that no one will ever know for certain whether that second conversation happened -- whether Fischer told Boukreev to flee down the mountain before his teammates -- that fact hasn't prevented many climbers who were on Everest that day (and some who weren't) from taking sides on the issue of Boukreev's actions. Most of the big names have fallen in behind Krakauer. These include David Breashears, an accomplished climber and filmmaker who was on Everest that day making an IMAX film. Breashears and his crew were among many climbers who acted heroically on May 10; in his case, his crew immediately set back their own summit plans -- and threw a $5 million film into jeopardy -- in order to offer aid, including valuable oxygen canisters, to climbers in distress. Breashears refuses to criticize Boukreev directly, but he manages to make his beliefs clear. "I think Jon's book is a very honest account," Breashears says. "He is a good reporter, trained at gathering facts." Krakauer's book is "tough," he adds. "It tells a lot of hard truths. Climbers are not a group of people who are used to internal criticism. We're tribal. Jon wrote about things that people were uncomfortable hearing about, and that was traumatic for some." Two other climbers who back Krakauer's account are Neil Beidleman, who was a guide alongside Boukreev on May 10, and Beck Weathers, who climbed on Hall's New Zealand team. Beidleman declined to speak to Salon on the record, but he made it abundantly clear that he disputes many of Boukreev's assertions. Weathers concurs: "In general, I agree with the substance of the points Jon raises about Anatoli," he says. Peter Hackett, one of the world's preeminent experts on the effects of high-altitude climbing -- he lived in Nepal for six years, climbed Everest solo in 1981 and helped found the Himalayan Rescue Association -- is another critic of Boukreev's actions. "I think it's unwise for a guide to climb without oxygen," he says. "You've got to be at optimum levels. If there's a crisis, people without oxygen are much more susceptible to cold, hypothermia, frostbite. You can't spend time waiting for others. You've got to keep moving." Hackett says he told the same thing to an assistant of DeWalt's when she called him for an interview, but that his quotes did not end up in "The Climb." ("I interviewed a lot of people who weren't quoted in my book," DeWalt replies.) Hackett also points out that when Boukreev guided Everest again in 1997, the year after the disaster, he did indeed use oxygen. "He decided to change his style," Hackett says. DeWalt is more than happy to direct journalists to climbers who see things very differently. He also points out that, in December 1997, Boukreev was given an award for his heroism on Everest by the country's preeminent professional climbing organization, the American Alpine Club. Jim Wickwire, a climber and the author of a recent book titled "Addicted to Danger," chaired the five-member committee that bestowed the award on Boukreev. "We looked at all the information we could before making our decision," Wickwire says. "But we looked first and foremost at what Anatoli did that day. He went out into the storm three times before he brought back three climbers. We did not feel that what happened up to that point changed the analysis." That explanation, some Boukreev critics argue, is like praising the arsonist for putting out the fire. Krakauer says, "Why was Anatoli the only person to go back out? He may have been fearless. But he was also pretty goddamn motivated. He was having tea when a lot of people died. It wouldn't have looked too good." Krakauer sees low-level conspiracy in the Alpine Club award. "I've never been the darling of the American Alpine Club," he says, describing its members as "elitists" and "old farts" who like to tell other climbers what to do. "The American Alpine Club used to piss the shit out of me in the 1970s, when I was just starting to climb," he says. "To climb in foreign countries, they demand you have sponsorship from them -- you'd be denied permission without it. It reminded me of one of the things I hated about organized sports; you had to have a coach, you had to cut your hair. With climbing it felt different. You could hitchhike to a mountain on your own ... it had an anarchic, counterculture quality. And here were these guys with clipboards telling you what you could or couldn't do." A more compelling defender of Boukreev's actions on Everest is Sandy Hill Pittman, a paying member of Fisher's team and one of the climbers Boukreev dragged to safety on the evening of May 10. (Now divorced, she goes by her maiden name, Sandy Hill.) As most people who read "Into Thin Air" or other articles about the Everest climb are aware, Hill became a frequent target of satire shortly after the tragedy. Although she's an accomplished climber -- when she summited Everest in 1996, she became only the second woman to climb each of the "Seven Summits," the highest peaks on each continent -- her penchant for carting the appurtenances of her luxurious lifestyle (gourmet food, laptops, fashion magazines) along with her rankled hard-core climbers. "I wouldn't dream of leaving town without an ample supply of Dean & DeLuca's Near East Blend and my espresso maker," Hill burbled in one often-quoted dispatch to an NBC Web site. Krakauer was fairly hard on Hill in "Into Thin Air." Among other things, he was critical of her desire to have expensive (and very heavy) electronic equipment hauled with her up the mountain, thus exhausting a Sherpa who should have been attending to more important matters. ("Sandy wasn't to blame for that," Krakauer says now. "Fischer is, for letting her climb with it. He wanted the publicity her online dispatches would provide.") In the two years since the tragedy, Hill has kept a low profile and has rarely given interviews. She is now a graduate student in architectural preservation and restoration at Columbia. Hill declines to talk about Krakauer's book, which she claims she has not read very closely. But she is keen to talk about Anatoli Boukreev. "I was a person he rescued," Hill says, "and so I really understand the magnitude of his effort. He and he alone came out. He said the others wouldn't come. He did try to muster support, and I envisioned him going tent-to-tent asking people to come out, and no one would." (Among the climbers who had returned to the tents at Camp Four by this point was Krakauer, who said he collapsed into a profound, exhausted sleep.) "Things would have turned out very differently for me if Anatoli hadn't come back out. From my perspective, if Anatoli had done anything different that day -- even tied his shoelaces differently -- the outcome would have been different. I think that every single action he took that day was in the best interests of his clients." Hill says she was saddened at the way that everything was "fouled and examined and spun" in the wake of the tragedy. "It made it very difficult to do the business of grieving for Scott Fischer. I'm very resentful. There was no respect paid to the grieving period. Everything was blown wide open and sensationalized." Hill also defends Boukreev's decision not to use oxygen. "I understand his reasoning," she says. "Oxygen is fine, but when it runs out you hit a wall. Having experienced that myself, I can say that for me -- and I am not in Anatoli's league -- the false sense of security oxygen gives you can be a dangerous thing." Peter Hackett, the high-altitude climbing expert who was critical of Boukreev's decision to climb without oxygen, concedes that Hill's point has some validity -- although he remains convinced that Everest guides shouldn't climb without it. While Hill did indeed come perilously close to dying on Everest in 1996, the story of Beck Weathers is perhaps even more striking and poignant. Weathers was nearing the summit on May 10 when, due to a preexisting condition, his eyesight began to fail. Weathers, who was climbing with Krakauer on Hall's New Zealand team, was ordered by Hall to sit down on a balcony above the South Col for a while to see if his vision improved. If it didn't, he was to stay planted where he was and wait for Hall to retrieve him on the way down. As it turned out, Weathers would sit and shiver on that balcony for several hours, until darkness was descending and conditions on the mountain had turned grim. By then he couldn't move on his own. Later that evening, a guide named Mike Groom would attach himself to Weathers (a procedure called short-roping) and help him further down the mountain. Along with a small group of other climbers, Groom and Weathers became lost on a lower portion of the South Col and couldn't go on. The group huddled together to keep warm, but when Boukreev showed up to help them later in the night, Weathers, along with climber Yasuko Namba, appeared to be dead. (Namba later did die.) Weathers was left behind, and spent a night utterly exposed to the elements. To the astonishment (and deep shame) of many of the climbers on the expedition, he regained consciousness the following morning and staggered into Camp Four. Earlier, up higher on the mountain, before the bad weather set in, Krakauer had been among those who climbed past Weathers on the balcony. Some of Boukreev's defenders have accused Krakauer of not being completely honest about what transpired between the two. And there are indeed differences between Krakauer's account and a version Weathers later provided. In "Into Thin Air," Krakauer writes that he implored Weathers to come down to Camp Four with him. "Come with me," Krakauer reports he said. "It will be at least another two or three hours before Rob shows up. I'll be your eyes. I'll get you down, no problem." Krakauer then berates himself for mentioning that Groom would be coming along shortly. Weathers elected to wait for Groom, and Krakauer admits he was secretly relieved. He was worried about being able to drag his own ass down the mountain. In a taped lecture that Weathers gave not long ago -- a tape that has become a hot bootleg among the anti-Krakauer contingent -- Weathers offers a slightly different, if not entirely irreconcilable, version of this encounter. Here's a relevant excerpt:
It gets to be about 5 o'clock and I see a lone figure coming out of the what is now beginning to be a little bit of blowing snow and a little bit of dropping temperature ... and it's Jon Krakauer. Jon says, "Beck, what are you doing here?" And I tell him my sad little tale. And I said, "Jon, I don't think I can wait any longer. I think Rob's going to have to understand, but it's starting to go south on us. And I'm going to need somebody to act as my eyes. And it's not a big deal. We'll just go a little bit slow ..." And Jon was clearly not happy with this idea. His body language and ... his first reaction was to say, "Beck, I'm not a guide." I said, "I know that, Jon. But I can't see well enough to walk off of this thing." In all credit to Jon, I have no doubt that had I pushed the point with him, he would have done it. But he told me at the same time, you know, Mike Groom is 20 minutes behind. He has a radio. I said, "Not a problem, I'll wait for Mike." In an interview with Salon, Weathers claims that Krakauer's account doesn't bother him. "There is nothing in Jon's book that offends me. He did say, 'I'm not a guide.' He did not say, 'I'm not a guide so I won't help you down the mountain.' I took it as him saying, 'I have no special skills.'" He adds: "Anatoli Boukreev certainly did not play a role in getting me off the mountain. The only role he played was stepping over my body." Krakauer responds by saying, "I don't get why [Boukreev's defenders] are making such a big deal about this. It's just another part of their effort to discredit me." Krakauer says he has no doubt that Weathers' description of his body language is correct, but he says he was more than willing to help him. He adds: "I didn't just tell Beck that I wasn't a guide -- I told him I didn't have any rope. And in order to get him down the mountain, he would have had to be short-roped to another climber. That's what Groom eventually did." Strangely enough, Boukreev and Krakauer had a final, unexpected, encounter about a month before Boukreev's death on Annapurna. Boukreev was sitting on a panel discussion about climbing at the Banff Mountain Book Festival in Banff, Alberta, and Krakauer happened to be in the audience. Boukreev spent a good portion of the evening attacking Krakauer's book, and when question time rolled around Krakauer was the first in line. "Anatoli," Krakauer said, fuming, "I think your book is so dishonest." It's something Krakauer now regrets saying, calling it an "embarrassing mistake."
Afterward, however, Krakauer caught up with Boukreev and his girlfriend
outside the building. "We talked for about a half hour," Krakauer says. "I
admitted that my depiction of him in my original Outside article wasn't as
balanced as it could have been. He admitted a few things, too. It wasn't
exactly a rapprochement. We agreed to disagree about some things. But if
he
had only lived, I think we could be sorting this thing out."
Remembering an Everest hero Despite his recent death in a Himalayan avalanche, controversy still swirls around mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev.
Pitons are served After last year's Mount Everest tragedy, Sandy Hill Pittman has become the socialite everyone loves to hate -- again.
"Into Thin Air" A personal account of the Mount Everest Disaster (excerpt)
Coronation Everest A participant remembers the first ascent of mount Everest -- and a lost age of mountaineering.
"Into Thin Air"
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