Jon Krakauer

How does DeWalt explain this away? Jane Bromet, the sole source of evidence for a predetermined plan, has stated (and continues to stand by her statement) that DeWalt distorted her quote in order to “mislead readers into a false conclusion concerning many of the most important factors that led to the accident. Because of this distortion … the reader may be misled into believing that Boukreev’s descent [ahead of his clients] was a firm plan.” In the final analysis, it should be obvious even to DeWalt that there was no predetermined plan, regardless of how DeWalt massages quotes or obfuscates to suggest otherwise. So why does he continue to harp on this point, and claim that my failure to report this plan is evidence of intent to sabotage Boukreev’s reputation?

Regarding DeWalt’s other complaint, this is what I know to be true about the conversation between Fischer and Boukreev atop the Hillary Step: Andy Harris, Martin Adams, Boukreev and I were waiting together above the step when Fischer arrived on his way to the summit. Both Adams and I — the only witnesses to that conversation who are still alive — recalled the conversation in exactly the same way: Boukreev clearly told Fischer, “I am going down with Martin,” and said nothing more. Much later, Boukreev insisted that a second conversation had occurred after Adams and I left the scene, in which Fischer gave Boukreev permission to descend ahead of his clients. In the weeks and months immediately following the disaster, Adams — Boukreev’s close friend and one of his fiercest defenders — told me, Neal Beidleman and others that he didn’t believe this second conversation actually happened. Adams subsequently changed his mind and now believes that the second conversation did occur. Fair enough. Everyone has the right to change his mind. But I continue to believe that the second conversation didn’t occur, for reasons that I have explained to DeWalt on more than one occasion. Apparently because these reasons don’t reflect well on Boukreev, DeWalt chose not to mention them in his most recent comments. In that same spirit, I will also refrain from explaining my reasoning here. The fact that I didn’t report a conversation that as far as I could determine never happened, however, hardly warrants DeWalt’s charge of character assassination.

I find it interesting that DeWalt is so outraged over my failure to report the alleged conversation described above, which is widely disputed, yet in “The Climb” he failed to mention the earlier conversation between Fischer and Boukreev atop the Hillary Step, about which there is no dispute: Boukreev told Fischer he was “going down with Martin.” Adams himself agrees this is what was said; yet in DeWalt’s version of events this conversation never occurred. It should be noted, moreover, that Boukreev’s failure to stay close to Adams during the descent, as he told Fischer he would, almost cost Adams his life.

In his book “Sheer Will,” Michael Groom — the only guide on Rob Hall’s team to survive the disaster — described the moment when he, Yasuko Namba and I encountered Adams as we made our way down toward the Balcony at 27,600 feet. Adams, according to Groom, “was in an uncontrolled tumble off to our left. From where I stood he looked out of control and in no hurry to regain it.” Lower down, Groom again encountered Adams, “only just getting to his feet … veering dangerously close to the wrong side of the mountain in a series of drunken flops into the snow, one of which could end up over the edge in Tibet. I detoured off my path to get close enough to speak with him. I could see that his oxygen mask had slipped off beneath his chin and clumps of ice hung from his eyebrows and chin. Lying half-buried in the snow, he was giggling — the result of oxygen debt to the brain. I told him to pull his oxygen mask over his mouth. In a fatherly sort of manner I then coaxed him closer and closer to the ridge crest … ‘Now, see those two climbers down there in red? Just follow them,’ I said pointing to Jon and Yasuko still visible in the gully below. He stepped off the ridge in such a haphazard manner, I wondered whether he cared if he lived or died. Concerned about his judgement, I decided to stick with him.” If Groom hadn’t happened upon Adams in the storm, alone without a guide, it seems likely that Adams would have mistakenly descended toward Tibet and died. None of this is mentioned in “The Climb.”

To answer DeWalt’s questions about Reinhold Messner, Messner couldn’t have been clearer when he stated, “No one should guide Everest without using bottled oxygen.” He was talking specifically about Boukreev, on the record, and his criticisms were extensive and withering. I did not quote Messner at greater length because I did not wish to hurt Boukreev unnecessarily. If DeWalt doubts any of this, I suggest he contact Messner and actually ask him about it, instead of trying to spin Messner’s words into something that is the opposite of what he believes.

Regarding DeWalt’s comments about Beidleman, I will simply repeat what Beidleman — who is widely respected for his quiet humility, his selflessness, his tremendous strength and experience as a climber and his unimpeachable honesty — wrote to DeWalt upon reading his book: “I think that ‘The Climb’ is a dishonest account of the May tragedy. [N]either you nor your associates called to fact-check a single detail with me.”

Regarding DeWalt’s comments about the veracity of my Outside magazine article, I will state once again that the piece was exhaustively fact-checked with Boukreev, face to face, by an editor named John Alderman. I’m not sure what DeWalt means when he says that my article contains certain facts about Boukreev that weren’t included in my book. The criticisms I make about Boukreev’s actions are substantially the same in both documents, although I will admit that in the book my criticisms are balanced by considerably more praise; I regret that I didn’t have space to balance my criticisms as fully in the article.

Regarding DeWalt’s comments about Lopsang Jangbu, I’m heartened to hear that DeWalt intended to interview him, and sorry that Lopsang’s death precluded such an opportunity (had DeWalt talked to Lopsang, as I did, he would have found the Sherpa’s comments about Boukreev to be very enlightening). But this begs a question: Why didn’t DeWalt interview Ngima Kale, or Ang Dorje, or any of the other Sherpas who played important roles in the disaster? Their views of Boukreev would have been equally revealing to DeWalt. Concerning Lopsang’s criticisms of my Outside article, interested readers will find the Sherpa’s comments posted on the Outside Online Web site; they are definitely worth reading.

Regarding DeWalt’s assertion about a conversation between Linda Wylie and me in Salt Lake City in January 1997, somebody must be confused. I was in Antarctica in January 1997, and did not go anywhere near Salt Lake for many months after that. Once again, DeWalt would have greater credibility if he checked his facts before going public with them.

Regarding DeWalt’s comments about some alleged conspiracy by the American Alpine Club (AAC), I have never used the word “conspiracy” in any letter to DeWalt or the AAC, as copies of my correspondence clearly show. Dwight Garner apparently came up with the term on his own while writing “Coming Down” after I mentioned to him in passing that Jed Williamson — past president of the AAC and a highly influential member of the three-man committee that gave the Sowles Award to Boukreev — is a longtime friend of DeWalt’s. Indeed, Williamson was the person who first put DeWalt in touch with Boukreev. All of which obscures the fact that, as I told Garner, I happen to agree that Boukreev deserved the Sowles award; my only complaint was that the AAC didn’t also see fit to give it to Beidleman, Klev Schoening and Tim Madsen, whose heroism on Everest was equally deserving of the honor.

Near the end of DeWalt’s comments, he repeats a quote from an interview with me that was posted on Outside Online. The quote is accurate, but DeWalt seems to have missed the point. I wasn’t praising Fischer’s “system” or Boukreev’s “system.” I was praising Boukreev’s heroism, and expressing my gratitude that, despite the chaos and confusion, those of us on the mountain benefited from a great stroke of luck when Beidleman and Schoening fought their way back to camp through the storm and managed to tell Boukreev where to find the others — and that when they did, Boukreev was brave enough and strong enough to go out and rescue Hill and Fox. As I explained in the interview, “as it happened, this time he was down, he just happened to be down and strong enough to save people when the time came.” As DeWalt must surely appreciate, if our luck had been just a little different, and Beidleman and Schoening hadn’t made it back to camp that bad night — and they very nearly didn’t — Boukreev would have been unable to save anybody. Instead, a great many more lives would have been lost, and his decision to descend ahead of all his clients would have been considerably more difficult to explain.

Regarding DeWalt’s concluding remarks, and contrary to his smug assertion, I remain deeply troubled by the possibility that my presence as a journalist, and Hill’s, may have directly contributed to the disaster. I have certainly never tried to steer the debate away from this topic. The fact is, I’ve brought the subject up myself in numerous interviews, as well as in my book. I suggest that DeWalt read pages 138-139 of “Into Thin Air” (pp. 177-178 in the paperback), where I devote a long passage to this very subject. I have not shied away from admitting the errors I made on Everest, however painful it has been to do so. I only wish that others had reported their versions of the tragedy with equal candor.

To comment further about DeWalt’s concluding remarks, my only “motivation for continuing to apply creative candlepower to the subject of Anatoli Boukreev” is to defend my reputation as a journalist, which has been unfairly sullied by DeWalt’s spurious and cynical claims. I have no desire to sling mud at Boukreev, or even at DeWalt. I just want the facts to be made known. Personally, I am sick to death of this whole debate, and have been sick of it for many, many months. The competing accounts of the Everest disaster are now out there to be examined by all — in my book, in DeWalt’s book, in Groom’s book, in Broughton Coburn’s IMAX book, in these recent Salon postings and elsewhere. Perhaps it’s time to bring this unsavory phase of the discussion to a close, and let readers decide for themselves where the truth really lies.

No less baffling was DeWalt’s failure to interview Lopsang Jangbu, Scott Fischer’s head climbing Sherpa. Lopsang had one of the most pivotal and controversial roles in the disaster. It was he who short-roped Sandy Hill Pittman. He was with Fischer when the Mountain Madness leader collapsed during the descent; Lopsang was the last person to talk to Fischer before he died. Lopsang was also the last person to see Rob Hall, Andy Harris or Doug Hansen before they died. Yet DeWalt never made any attempt to contact Lopsang, even though the Sherpa spent much of the summer of 1996 in Seattle, and was easy to reach by phone.

The reason for such conspicuous reportorial lapses can only be guessed at. Perhaps it is related to the fact that DeWalt is not a climber and had no prior knowledge of mountaineering, had never visited the mountains of Nepal, and had very limited experience as a print journalist before writing “The Climb.” In any case, Beidleman was sufficiently disenchanted when he read the book that in December 1997 he wrote a letter to DeWalt stating, “I think that ‘The Climb’ is a dishonest account of the May tragedy. [N]either you nor your associates once called to fact-check a single detail with me.”

Although DeWalt’s failure to interview Groom, Beidleman and Lopsang Jangbu constitute his most puzzling oversights, he also failed to interview any of the other Sherpas involved, three of the eight clients on Boukreev’s own team and several other climbers who played crucial roles in the tragedy and/or ensuing rescue. Maybe it is merely coincidence, but most of the key people he neglected to contact have been highly critical of Boukreev’s actions on Everest.

As Dwight Garner pointed out in “Coming Down,” errors of fact abound in “The Climb,” most of which can be attributed to DeWalt’s haphazard research. Some of the inaccuracies, however, appear to be deliberate distortions intended to discredit my reporting in “Into Thin Air.” For instance, DeWalt reports in “The Climb” that important details in my Outside magazine article weren’t fact-checked, even though he was aware that an Outside editor named John Alderman met with Boukreev at length and in person at the magazine’s offices in Santa Fe, N.M., to confirm the accuracy of my entire manuscript before publication of the magazine article. Additionally, I, personally, had several conversations over a period of two months with Boukreev in which I made every effort to discern the truth.

The Boukreev/DeWalt version of events does indeed differ from the version that I found to be true, but Outside published what the editors and I believed to be the factual version, rather than Boukreev’s version. Over the course of my numerous interviews with Boukreev, I discovered that his account of certain events changed significantly from one telling to the next, forcing me to doubt the accuracy of his memory. And Boukreev’s versions of certain important events were subsequently proven to be untrue by other eyewitnesses. In short, I found many of Boukreev’s recollections to be singularly unreliable.

Perhaps the most troubling misrepresentation in “The Climb” concerns the conversation between Scott Fischer and Jane Bromet alluded to in the notorious quote by Bromet on pages 222-223 (pages 255-256 in the paperback edition). DeWalt edits Bromet’s quote to wrongly suggest that Fischer had a predetermined plan in place for Boukreev to descend quickly after reaching the summit, leaving his clients on the upper reaches of Everest. DeWalt also insinuates that my failure to mention this purported plan in “Into Thin Air” was a nefarious attempt to destroy Boukreev’s reputation.

Actually, I didn’t mention this so-called plan in “Into Thin Air” because I found compelling evidence that no such plan existed. Beidleman told me that if such a plan were in place, he definitely wasn’t aware of it when the Mountain Madness team went to the summit on May 10, and he is certain that Boukreev wasn’t aware of it, either. During the year immediately following the tragedy, Boukreev explained his decision to descend ahead of his clients numerous times — on television, on the Internet, in magazine and newspaper interviews. Yet never during any of those opportunities did he indicate that he had acted according to a predetermined plan. Indeed, in the summer of 1996, Boukreev himself explicitly stated during a videotaped interview for ABC News that there was no plan.

In writing “The Climb,” DeWalt chose to ignore the fact that the only evidence to support the existence of a predetermined plan was Bromet’s recollection of a single conversation with Fischer. Furthermore, contrary to what DeWalt asserts in his remarks in Salon, Bromet herself emphasized to both DeWalt and me that it would be a huge mistake to assume that Fischer’s comments indicated that he had anything resembling an actual plan in place. Well before publication of “The Climb,” Bromet sent an angry letter to DeWalt complaining that he had doctored her words in order to make it appear as though the relevant conversation between Bromet and Fischer had occurred several days before the summit assault, when in fact it occurred some three weeks before the summit assault. This is not a minor discrepancy.

As Bromet stated in her letter to DeWalt, the edited version of her quote that appears in “The Climb” is “absolutely wrong!” Bromet wrote: “The distortion will mislead readers into a false conclusion concerning many of the most important factors that led to the accident. Because of the distortion … the reader may be misled into believing that Boukreev’s descent [ahead of his clients] was a firm plan … As this quote is written, it runs the risk of coming across as (part of) a calculated and distorted analysis of the accident whose sole purpose is to absolve Anatoli Boukreev of fault by attempting to lay blame on others … Too much credit was given to this quote in constructing the events of the accident … Scott never once mentioned this plan again. Moreover, Scott was a very communicative person. If it were Scott’s ‘plan’ he would have talked it over with Neal and Anatoli. (In subsequent conversations with Neal, he told me that Scott communicated no such plan.) I feel this quotation as stated is grossly misleading.”

What has largely been lost in the debate over whether or not Boukreev acted with Fischer’s approval is that Boukreev’s decision to guide without bottled oxygen preordained his subsequent decision to leave his clients on the summit ridge and descend quickly. Having elected to climb without gas, Boukreev had painted himself into a corner. Lacking bottled oxygen, his only reasonable choice was to get down fast on summit day — whatever Fischer did or didn’t give him permission to do.

In June 1996, less than two months after the tragedy, David Breashears told me, on the record, “I’m sorry, but it was incredibly irresponsible for Anatoli to climb without gas. No matter how strong you are, you are right at your limit when you climb Everest without oxygen. You aren’t in a position to help your clients. Anatoli is dissembling when he says the reason he went down is that Scott sent him down to make tea. There were Sherpas waiting at the South Col to make tea. The only place an Everest guide should be is either with his clients or right behind them, breathing bottled oxygen, ready to provide assistance.”

In his comments published in Salon, DeWalt scoffs at the large number of people who have provided what he calls “celebrity endorsements” for “Into Thin Air.” I would remind him that many of the widely respected mountaineers who have publicly vouched for the accuracy and integrity of my book are not merely well known, they were actually present on Everest when the tragedy occurred (something that cannot be said for DeWalt).

Moreover, DeWalt himself resorts to a “celebrity endorsement” by suggesting that Reinhold Messner — the most accomplished and respected mountaineer of the modern era — approved of Boukreev’s actions on Everest in 1996. DeWalt did this in his comments in Salon, he did it on page 231 of “The Climb” (page 265 in the paperback edition) and he has done it numerous times in the course of promoting his book. Like so many other assertions he made in print and elsewhere, however, this is a conscious fabrication.

In February 1998, during a meeting with me in New York, Messner stated into a tape recorder, without equivocation, that he thought Boukreev was wrong to descend ahead of his clients. Messner speculated on the record that had Boukreev remained with his clients, the outcome of the tragedy might have been quite different, then declared, “No one should guide Everest without using bottled oxygen.” Messner also said that he thought “Into Thin Air” was “a very honest book” and “a very important book.”

I have no doubt that Boukreev’s intentions were good on summit day. Even though I have written critically about some of his actions, I have always been quick to emphasize that he performed heroically when disaster struck in the pre-dawn hours of May 11. He saved the lives of Sandy Pittman and Charlotte Fox, at considerable risk to his own safety — I have said as much on many occasions, in many places. I admire Boukreev immensely for going out alone in the storm, when the rest of us were lying helpless in our tents, and bringing in the lost climbers. But some of the decisions he made earlier in the day and earlier in the expedition are nevertheless troubling, and simply could not be ignored by a journalist committed to writing a thorough account of the disaster.

I was sent to Nepal on assignment specifically to write about guided expeditions on the world’s highest mountain. It was my professional obligation to assess the qualifications of the guides and clients, and to provide the reading public with a discriminating, firsthand look at the reality of how Everest is guided. I also believe quite strongly that I had a duty — to the other survivors, to the grieving families, to the historical record and to my companions who did not come home — to provide a full report of what happened on Everest in 1996, regardless of how that report would be received. And that’s what I did, relying on my extensive experience as a journalist and a mountaineer to provide the most accurate, most honest account possible.