My thanks again to Jon Krakauer for contributing his thoughts and to Salon for providing a venue for this dialogue. In keeping with Jon’s desire to bring this discussion to a close and because I have an interest in doing the same, I’ll restrict myself to those questions and issues that Jon raised in his last posting.
Was there a “plan” for Anatoli Boukreev to descend ahead of clients?
Jane Bromet on two separate occasions volunteered that Scott Fischer had a plan (see previous postings and “The Climb”) for Boukreev to descend ahead of his clients in the event of problems on the descent. The fact that Boukreev was not aware of a specific plan prior to summit day is no proof that there was not such a plan. In fact, Boukreev seems not to have been well informed about “what if” alternatives in the event the climb did not go as planned. In “The Climb” (page 159) Boukreev describes — on summit day — his falling back on the fixed-ropes above the Balcony in the hope of seeing Fischer, with whom he wanted to discuss his concerns about delays and what actions Fischer might want him to take.
Bromet was a trusted confidant, someone with access to Scott’s most closely held concerns and thoughts, and “the plan,” according to my March 1997 interview with Bromet, was but one of many things Fischer shared with her but withheld from the other members of the expedition. In saying this, I don’t mean to suggest anything duplicitous on Scott’s part, but to offer that he was a human being with a tremendous burden on his shoulders, someone who had legitimate concerns about the challenge ahead and who had a need, as anyone would, to discuss those matters with someone with whom he was close and in whom he had confidence.
I understand Jane Bromet’s need to send her October 1997 letter to St. Martin’s Press and, as I told her in Seattle in November 1997, I have no hard feelings; however, her communications with me, some of which I have quoted in this discussion, have left me with no doubt as to her intentions in offering her testimony, and I remain grateful for her courage in coming forward.
Was there one exchange or two between Boukreev and Fischer above the Hillary Step?
Boukreev has said there were two. Martin Adams has consistently said he heard one, but that there could well have been another. Krakauer has said he is 98 percent certain that only one conversation took place. Let’s consider their positions and their substance. (Page references are to the currently available paperback editions of “The Climb” and “Into Thin Air.”)
Boukreev’s account of his meeting with Fischer and their conversation about his rapid descent appears in “The Climb” (pages 177-178). Krakauer’s representation of those same events appears in “Into Thin Air” (pages 8 and 264-265). In the latter of the two accounts — which is interesting to contrast with that on page 8 — Krakauer has physically positioned himself (and all of the other climbers present) and timed the comings and goings above the Hillary Step in such a way as to make himself a witness to the first exchange between Fischer, in which Boukreev says to Fischer, “I am going down with Martin,” and to virtually preclude the possibility of a second exchange between Fischer and Boukreev.
Adams, with whom I spoke by phone a few days ago, said, “Yes, that’s what I told Krakauer when he interviewed me, that Anatoli told Fischer he was going down with me, but Jon and Andy Harris were above Anatoli and me, too far away to hear any of it. The conversation Krakauer reported between Boukreev and Fischer was something he got from me and quoted in his book. He [Krakauer] never said he had heard the conversation.”
In Krakauer’s Aug. 14, 1998, posting to Salon, he said, about the first Boukreev-Fischer exchange: “Both Adams and I — the only witnesses to that conversation who are still alive — recalled the conversation in exactly the same way: Boukreev told Fischer, ‘I am going down with Martin,’ and said nothing more.”
Krakauer’s claim — which Adams says is not true — to have been a witness to the first of the Boukreev-Fischer exchanges was the same one he made to me when I interviewed him on April 21, 1997. Krakauer offered, “There were five people present for that. Scott and Andy Harris are dead. Anatoli, Martin Adams and I all heard this conversation.” As the interview went on, Krakauer backed away from that position and said, “What I do know is what Martin told me.”
And the second exchange, the one in which Boukreev said that he and Scott agreed to the need for a rapid descent?
In my April 21, 1997, interview with Krakauer, I asked him if he knew “for a fact” that a second exchange between Boukreev and Fischer had not taken place. Reflecting upon his suspicion that there had not been a second exchange, he said, “I could be wrong about that. I’m not — I didn’t — I was there. I left the step [Hillary Step] before Anatoli. Now Scott himself — I thought their conversation had ended by that point. Maybe I’m wrong. I wasn’t there. But I’d be surprised if it continued beyond the time after I left, by the nature of — well, anyway, I don’t know that.”
Adams’ position on the second exchange? Adams, since the tragedy of Everest, has been consistent in his accounting of the scene above the Hillary Step. He has said and continues to say that after the first exchange between Boukreev and Fischer, he (Adams) went to where Krakauer and Andy Harris were waiting — about 10 to 15 lateral feet from the top of the Hillary Step — and offered them the chance to be the first to descend, and with “gratitude” they took it. As Krakauer and Harris were descending the Hillary Step, Adams was peering over the edge, following their progress. Behind him were Boukreev and Fischer, doing what, he doesn’t know.
As to Krakauer’s claim in his Aug. 14, 1998, posting to Salon that Adams has told him and others that “he didn’t believe this conversation [the second exchange] actually happened,” Adams has said, “I can only recall, other than a general conversation with Jon about my descent, having discussed the Hillary Step business with you and another Mountain Madness team member, and that conversation was on a plane from Kathmandu to Bangkok right after Everest, and he asked me, ‘Did you hear Scott tell Anatoli to go down and make tea?’ My answer was, ‘No,’ just like I told you, just like I told [Dwight] Garner [author of the Salon article "Coming Down"]. So, what story is it that I’m changing?”
I would echo Adams’ question: What story is it that’s being changed — Krakauer’s or Adams’? In the two years that I have known Adams, I have never heard him waver from his explanation of what happened above the Hillary Step. Does Krakauer have any hard proof that Adams has doubled back on himself? And, if Adams is one of Boukreev’s “fiercest defenders” — as Krakauer says — I would think that he could do a better job of covering for Anatoli than saying that he has no idea what transpired between Boukreev and Fischer after Fischer passed him (Adams) above the Hillary Step.
Why didn’t I report the first exchange between Boukreev and Fischer, the one in which Boukreev says, “I am going down with Martin”?
I have never alleged that the first exchange “never occurred.” There was no ulterior motive in not reporting that exchange, because Boukreev’s position was that Fischer’s and his agreement, that Boukreev should descend as rapidly as possible, superceded his comment to Fischer that he was going down with Adams. Boukreev’s “failure,” as Krakauer has described it, to stay close to Adams, would be an admissible charge only if you believe, as Krakauer apparently does, that the second exchange did not take place.
It should also be remembered that when he did encounter Adams on his descent (“The Climb,” page 182) Boukreev saw a climber still on oxygen, in control, making his way down the mountain. As Adams has described it, “I’m going down the ridge, doing fine, and Anatoli comes by, sizes me up, sees I’m doing OK and keeps on going. For me, it was business as usual, Anatoli’s going by, and I had no problems with that.” (It might be worth remembering here that Krakauer himself was also without an attending guide from somewhere in the vicinity of the Balcony until he returned to his tent at Camp IV.)
Mike Groom’s description of Adams (made after
Boukreev had passed him and checked him out) — as quoted by Krakauer in his last posting — is something with which Adams takes exception. He said to me in a recent phone conversation, “Well, first, Groom describes me as having my oxygen mask hanging off my face, but fact is, at the point that Groom encountered me, I had already jettisoned my oxygen cannister and put my mask and regulator into my pack. And, second, the description of me in the Groom quote that Jon offered on Salon doesn’t sound very much like Groom’s description of me that Jon quoted in his book [pages 267-268]. Look, like I said in your book [page 187], I had run out of oxygen and was a little disoriented, and I sat down to try to orient myself and to wait for some other climbers to come along, and Jon walked past me, and then I saw Groom and Yasuko [Namba] behind him, and I followed them to the Balcony, and then Groom pointed me to a couloir [a gully] and I continued down the mountain.” To Adams’ observation I would add that under his own power, without being on supplementary oxygen, Adams was the first client-climber to return to Camp IV, and I’ve never heard him suggest for a second that he felt that Boukreev had abandoned him.
Why didn’t I fact-check with Neal Beidleman?
As I explained in my previous posting, I did attempt to fact-check with Beidleman. To be more specific about that effort: I spoke with Beidleman on April 17, 1997 — three months before the submission of the manuscript for “The Climb” — and in the course of that conversation I asked him about a comment he had made during the audio-taped debriefing of Mountain Madness climbers at the Everest Base Camp on May 15, 1996. Beidleman’s comment: “I knew Anatoli had gone down. I had no problem with that. I knew that it would have been nice for him to stay, but at the same time it wouldn’t have necessarily facilitated our descent any better. I wasn’t aware of his instructions to go down immediately from Scott, but after hearing that, I support that. I think that’s a very good idea, and, in fact, had he not gone down, his efforts at the bottom collecting people wouldn’t have been possible.”
Because Boukreev’s descent, in “Into Thin Air,” had been made an issue, I wanted to make certain that Neal, who seemed to be waffling in his support of Boukreev, had meant what he’d said. I offered: “I would be more than happy, Neal, in the book, if you want to sit down and have an interview, if you now, after the fact, want to say that you think it was absolutely the wrong thing for Anatoli to have done, I am willing to put that in the book.” Beidleman responded, “No, I’m just trying not to pass judgment either way. I think that only Anatoli knows what Anatoli was doing, and it’s just not appropriate for me to get involved there. And maybe other people’s character lets them or compels them to do so, but not mine.” With that statement Beidleman went off the record. Despite a later effort to get him to go on the record, so I could cross-check facts and get his version of events, he refused.
Was there some confusion around the January 1997 date I assigned to the Linda Wylie-Krakauer exchange when Wylie asked Krakauer why Krakauer had not double-checked certain “facts” of his Outside story that were later proven to be untrue?
Yes, Krakauer is quite right. There was some confusion. In preparing my previous posting to Salon, I listened to a taped interview I had made with Wylie and she referred to her conversation with Krakauer as having taken place in Salt Lake City at the Outdoor Retail show. I had recalled that Wylie had attended only one Outdoor Retail show and that one was in January 1997, but, upon checking my notes, I realized she had also attended that same show held in August 1996. In my reliance upon memory, I made a mistake, and I correct it here. The conversation between Wylie and Krakauer took place in August 1996.
What are the “facts” offered by Krakauer that were not repeated in “Into Thin Air”?
If I limit myself to the subjects of Krakauer’s last response to Salon, one comes immediately to mind: Krakauer’s charge that Anatoli was inadequately dressed on summit day, a charge proven to be untrue after an examination of photographs taken on the summit of Everest on May 10, 1996.
Was I wrong in using the word “conspiracy” when referring to Krakauer’s concerns about my relationship to the American Alpine Club and that organization’s decision to award Boukreev the David A. Sowles Memorial Award for heroism?
I derived my use of “conspiracy” not so much from Dwight Garner’s use of it in “Coming Down,” but from a letter that Krakauer wrote — two days after Boukreev was awarded the David A. Sowles Memorial Award — to Jed Williamson, a former president of the AAC and a member of the David A. Sowles Memorial Award Committee, a letter in which Krakauer described my relationship with Jed Williamson as being that of a “confederate.” In my “Oxford English Dictionary,” a confederate is “a conspirator, an accomplice.”
To set the record straight on Jed Williamson and my relationship to the American Alpine Club and its granting of the David A. Sowles Memorial Award to Boukreev, I offer this:
Contrary to Krakauer’s assertion that it was Williamson “who first put DeWalt in touch with Boukreev,” the truth is I did not meet Jed Williamson until Aug. 31, 1996, a full three months after I met Boukreev for the first time. Anyone who has read the Prologue to “The Climb” knows that I met Boukreev on May 28, 1996, in Santa Fe, N.M., in the home of a mutual friend (Linda Wylie). Williamson had absolutely no connection whatsoever to my being put in touch with Boukreev.
The occasion of my meeting Williamson was a social one, and after that meeting, I never shared a word of the manuscript with him, and I never suggested that Boukreev should be a candidate for the David A. Sowles Memorial Award.
And the award? I was not aware that Boukreev was a nominee for the award until after a five-member committee (not three-member, as Krakauer has offered) had unanimously selected Boukreev as a recipient. At the award presentation — in Seattle on Dec. 6, 1997 — I stood in for Boukreev, who was then in Nepal preparing for his assault on Annapurna I. To the audience I said that Boukreev was appreciative of their consideration, but that it should not be forgotten that there were others who put themselves on the line on Everest on May 10 and 11, 1996, and I named specifically Klev Schoening, Tim Madsen and Neal Beidleman.
Beyond this, there is more to say, but I will honor Krakauer’s desire to end our exchange. Whatever our differences, I appreciate that he was willing to engage. A lesser person would not have come to the table.
I thank Jon Krakauer for his thoughts on my response to Dwight Garner’s “Coming Down,” and appreciate Salon’s invitation to respond to them.
On April 21, 1997, I interviewed Krakauer, and he said, “What I have trouble with — it seems clear to me that [Anatoli Boukreev's rapid descent] was a mistake. Whether Scott told him to or not, it seems like a mistake and it was a bad idea.”
Ignoring Boukreev’s explanation, that Mountain Madness expedition leader Scott Fischer had approved his descent, Krakauer — with great skill — walked backwards in the traces of the Everest story and created, in his Outside Magazine article and in “Into Thin Air,” a scenario that was consistent with his judgment, one that made it appear that Boukreev had acted unilaterally and in his own self-interest. With that act I think Krakauer attempted an assassination of character for which, after the fact, I do not believe there is a justifiable defense.
If I were a single voice, Krakauer could dismiss my words as those of a spoiler, but I’m not the only one these days who’s concerned with his rushes to judgment. Even David Breashears, the IMAX film director who led his own team up Everest during the 1996 tragedy, has questioned his seeming penchant for taking people down for questionable purposes. Breashears said in a magazine interview with Jennifer Jordan (in the Improper Bostonian, Sept. 24-Oct. 7, 1997), referring to what he thought in “Into Thin Air” was an unwarranted slashing of Mountain Madness client and journalist Sandy Hill: “It makes me very sad. It’s there in print forever. It’s part of history. People should be above taking someone else down. And for what? For money and egos people are willing to destroy other people to further their careers.”
Now, to Krakauer’s rebuttal and his talking points, many of which are a recycling of complaints that have been floated in other forums where they were duly addressed:
Reinhold Messner’s opinions: It seems, if Krakauer is accurately reporting his meeting with Reinhold Messner in February 1998, that Messner has had a change of opinion about the guiding of Everest without the use of supplementary oxygen. In Salt Lake City on Jan. 27, 1997, at an Outside/Fila Outdoor-sponsored lecture and slide show, Messner, referring to his own considerations of guiding Everest without oxygen, said, “I don’t think there’s a big difference between danger and not danger, using or not using oxygen.” As to Messner’s opinion about Boukreev’s rapid descent, I would want to hear the question that was posed to him. Was he responding to Krakauer’s characterization of Boukreev’s action, that Boukreev had made an independent decision, or to Boukreev’s account of his action, that he was authorized to descend rapidly? It would, obviously, make a difference.
Krakauer’s perceived differences in Boukreev’s accounts of his conversation with Scott Fischer about the need for a rapid descent: On April 21, 1997, Jon Krakauer and I discussed his feeling that Anatoli had offered “conflicting testimony” on the subject of his conversation with Scott Fischer, who approved his rapid descent. Considering the possible source of those “differences,” I suggested to Krakauer that Boukreev’s English may have contributed, and Krakauer responded, “The language problem admittedly is a real problem here. Anatoli is at a huge disadvantage. His English isn’t perfect, and that’s a problem.” I asked Krakauer if I could “take a look at the interviews,” because I wanted to share them with Boukreev and give him an opportunity to address Krakauer’s questions, but those interviews were never shared with either me or Boukreev, who was then very much alive and willing to respond.
This lack of interest on Krakauer’s part to resolve his questions was a puzzlement not only to me, but also to Linda Wylie, Boukreev’s girlfriend, who, in January 1997, had a conversation with Krakauer in Salt Lake City. In the course of their exchange, Wylie asked Krakauer why, before the publication of his original Outside article, he had not double-checked with Boukreev to discuss some of the “facts” of his story that were later proven to be incorrect. Krakauer, according to Wylie, responded, “He’s so hard to understand. His English is so bad! It’s very frustrating to talk with him.”
Inexplicable reasons for not interviewing Mike Groom or Neal Beidleman: Boukreev’s intention in “The Climb” was to offer a personal account of his involvement with the Mountain Madness expedition, not a “codex catastrophical” — an objective that he thought would be presumptuous to take on, like “playing God,” he said. Mike Groom, a guide on the Adventure Consultants team, appears just a few times in “The Climb,” and the accounts of his activities are consistent with eyewitness testimonies offered by others.
My research coordinator did interview Lou Kasischke of the Adventure Consultants team because: 1) he had turned around on his summit bid and I was interested in getting the perspective of someone who had come down the mountain earlier in the day of May 10, 1996; and 2) I’d heard he had some opinions about Krakauer’s characterizations of Boukreev that I was interested in hearing. In the end I went with a quote from Kasischke on the thought process that led to his decision to turn around, but I chose not to discuss Kasischke’s disagreement with some of Krakauer’s characterizations of Boukreev, because, while interesting to me personally, I felt they were not relevant to the purposes of “The Climb.”
And Mountain Madness guide Neal Beidleman? These days Beidleman seems to be something of an ATM, an automated telling machine from which only Krakauer can make quotable withdrawals. Dwight Garner and I both got: “Access Denied.” My attempts to interview Beidleman go back to April 1997, three months prior to my submission of the manuscript for “The Climb.” Then, to my frustration, Beidleman declined (as he did with Garner in July 1998) to go on the record, to answer the many questions I had for him. Why? I could guess. [Beidleman declined to comment.]
As Krakauer, a friend of Beidleman’s, is most probably aware, there are a number of unresolved questions relating to Beidleman’s activities on Everest in 1996. Among them are: 1) his role in the decision to have Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa take the SAT phone to Camp IV at the South Col; 2) the delay in his getting Mountain Madness clients off the summit for 40-plus minutes after the last client-climber summited; and 3) the discrepancies that exist between published accounts of Beidleman’s actions on May 10 and May 11, 1996, and the accounts of those same actions as they appear in his testimony and that of other Mountain Madness climbers in the audiotaped, May 15, 1996, Mountain Madness debriefing. [Beidleman declined to comment.]
And fact-checking? It was at a particular and critical point of fact-checking with Neal Beidleman on April 17, 1997, that he refused to talk any further with me on the record. Beidleman’s assertion that nobody connected with “The Climb” made an attempt to fact-check with him is therefore untrue.
It should also be noted that in October 1997, Beidleman did not respond to my request for changes or corrections that he might want to see made in “The Climb.” His claim, made in a letter to me dated Dec. 17, 1997 (11 days after Boukreev won the American Alpine Club’s David A. Sowles Memorial Award, 10 days after “The Climb” was favorably reviewed in the New York Times and nine days after an irate Krakauer wrote a letter of complaint to an executive of the American Alpine Club suggesting a conspiracy against him), that “The Climb” was “dishonest” seemed then and seems now suspicious in its timing and indefensible in light of the opportunities Beidleman had to contribute his point of view.
Outside’s fact-checking efforts: If Outside did the fact-checking of his article that Krakauer alleges, how does one account for the “facts” that were included in the article that were not included in “Into Thin Air” because they were proven to be untrue?
Failure to interview Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa: It was my plan, stated in writing to potential publishers of “The Climb,” that I would interview Lopsang in Nepal in the winter of 1997. As Krakauer knows, Lopsang was killed in an avalanche before I had the opportunity to interview him. Had I been able to do so, I hope that I would have reported his story more objectively than Krakauer did in Outside. After the publication of Krakauer’s article, Lopsang wrote a letter to the magazine’s editor and complained that Krakauer had misrepresented his actions on Everest and asked why Krakauer had not bothered to fact-check certain details with him.
Jane Bromet’s testimony: On April 15, 1997, after my late-March interview with Bromet, who considers herself a friend of Jon Krakauer, she sent me an unsolicited e-mail confirming what she had told me in Seattle: “I know that information I gave you is vital to your story — the fact that Scott told me that it was his plan to have Anatoli go down ahead of the group, get hydrated, reserve energy cause [sic] if the shit hit the fan, Anatoli would be the one to ‘pull the people off the mountain’ indeed he [Fischer] said this. I told perhaps 10 people, maybe more, I don’t know.” (Note: It was Bromet who said, both in March and in April 1997, that Fischer had a plan. “Plan” was her word, not mine.)
In October 1997, shortly after publication of “The Climb,” Bromet wrote St. Martin’s Press and said she felt that, in the first hardcover edition, the timing of when Fischer made his comment to her — not the statement she offered to me — was “absolutely wrong.” When it was concluded that the timing had been based on misinformation originally supplied by Bromet, a change was made in “The Climb” to conform to Bromet’s latest recollection of that timing.
On Nov. 14, 1997, Boukreev and I gave a lecture and had a book signing at the REI flagship store in Seattle, and Jane Bromet attended. Prior to the start of Boukreev’s and my presentation, Bromet took me aside and asked if I was upset about her communication with St. Martin’s Press. When I explained that I wasn’t, she said, “You understand why I had to write the letter? No hard feelings?” I said, “None, absolutely none; I understand Jon is a friend.”
Krakauer’s subsequent attempts to devalue Bromet’s testimony, the importance and implications of which Bromet clearly understood and communicated to me, are pathetically transparent.
To conclude the matter of the Bromet testimony, I would ask Krakauer, in the midst of his effort to make the Fischer-Boukreev exchange disappear, to consider the testimony of an Adventure Consultants’ client who, on May 20, 1996, in Outside Online, expressed an appreciation for the “system” that Fischer and Boukreev employed on Everest in 1996: “Early in the trip, I thought Scott’s [Fischer's] system was fucked, and it ended up being better than our system, and that shows you how little I know. I remember thinking Anatoli’s this great strong guy, but he’s terrible with people. He’s never around — he’s always up front with his Sherpa. … I thought they [the Mountain Madness expedition members] were looking for trouble. … Some of us [on the Adventure Consultants team] were smug — that our group was sort of the safest, that it was more conservatively guided. And we worried about Scott’s group and his laissez-faire, let people do what they want. And, in the end, all Scott’s clients survived. … Anatoli is who he is. He’s going to be always up front. And, as it happened, this time he was down, he just happened to be down and strong enough to save people when the time came.” The member of the Adventure Consultants’ team who offered this testimony within days of the Everest tragedy and before the media began to seriously hunger for someone to blame? Jon Krakauer.
In closing, I would like to suggest that Krakauer’s motivation for continuing to apply creative candlepower to the subject of Anatoli Boukreev may, in part, be motivated by his desire to keep the spotlight from settling on a question that began to loom in the weeks after the Everest tragedy of 1996: Did Krakauer’s presence on the Adventure Consultants expedition contribute to the tragedy that unfolded? That question, which has kicked around in pubs and at the crags for more than two years, surfaced three weeks ago in a more than credible forum, the 1998 edition of the American Alpine Journal. In that publication, mountaineer and writer Galen Rowell, who has met in Nepal with several of the players in the Everest tragedy and who favorably reviewed “Into Thin Air” for The Wall Street Journal, says in a review of “The Climb,” “The reader senses that the presence of an Outside journalist as a client on the most fatal commercial Everest venture was no coincidence.”
It is a matter worth considering, I think — not for the purpose of placing blame — but for inquiring into what it means to have a high-profile, participatory media presence in high-risk, extreme sports. Maybe there is something to learn in considering the question. Maybe there are lives to be saved.
I want to thank Dwight Garner for “Coming Down” and his effort to convey some of the prevailing issues in the “Into Thin Air” vs. “The Climb” controversy. It was a bold start. There were, however, some loose ends in the article, so this letter. I shall restrict myself primarily to the issue of Jon Krakauer’s characterization of Anatoli Boukreev’s actions on Everest in 1996, and will not discuss Krakauer’s suspicions of conspiracy among members of the American Alpine Club; his backing away from Martin Adams, whom he has previously described as seeming to have an “unusually reliable memory”; or the differing memories of Beck Weathers and Krakauer as to their exchange at the Balcony on summit day. By ignoring them I do not mean to suggest that they are not worthy subjects for consideration.
On the matter of the use of O’s (oxygen) by high-altitude guides and Boukreev’s not having used it on summit day, I would point out that there is not universal agreement among professional mountaineers that a commitment to oxygen use guarantees that a guide will always be able to outperform a guide who does not use it. Witness the events of Everest, 1996. Consider the testimony of Reinhold Messner, one of the world’s most highly regarded high-altitude mountaineers who, when reflecting upon his considered use of oxygen as a potential guide on Everest has said, “I don’t think there’s a big difference between danger and not danger, using or not using oxygen.”
Also, to say that Anatoli was not climbing with supplementary oxygen on summit day is to state a fact, but not to offer the whole picture. An emergency reserve of oxygen for Anatoli was on the mountain on summit day — cached at the South Summit — in the event he chose to use it. As it turned out, Anatoli did not use the canisters that had been deposited for him, and, undoubtedly, they were used by Mountain Madness clients who did not leave the summit until 3:10 p.m. and were running short of oxygen.
To Peter Hackett, whose experience and contributions to the question of oxygen use at high-altitude I appreciate, I need to say that Anatoli did not “change his style” when he used O’s on Everest when climbing with the Indonesian National Team in April 1997. Anatoli, as he explained in “The Climb,” chose to use oxygen on that occasion because he did not feel comfortable with his acclimatization or his physical condition, which had been aggravated by some emergency oral surgery he’d had just before summit day.
And the matter of Boukreev’s rapid descent of Everest on May 10, 1996? Yes, this has been a matter of debate since July 31, 1996, when Anatoli wrote to Outside magazine in response to Krakauer’s published article, “Into Thin Air.” In that letter and another written on Aug. 2, 1996, Boukreev explained, as he had to Krakauer prior to the submission of his article, that his descent had been approved by expedition leader Scott Fischer.
Now, two years later and after Anatoli’s tragic death, Krakauer steps out of the shadows and says he is “98 percent convinced” that Anatoli’s rapid descent was not authorized. Why wasn’t that belief put forward in Krakauer’s original article or subsequent book? How courageous and professional — now — is it to assail a man who is no longer present to counter the claim?
In defense of his characterizations of Anatoli Boukreev, Krakauer has trotted out a number of people who support his book, “Into Thin Air,” but to my mind, celebrity endorsements of his book, “general” agreements with his book’s content or behind-the-veil, off-the-record criticisms of “The Climb” are not a substitute for a critical analysis of the manner in which Anatoli was represented in “Into Thin Air,” an analysis that Steve Weinberg provoked with the publication of his Columbia Journalism Review article, “Why Books Err So Often.”
Weinberg has begged a question: Was Krakauer’s account of Boukreev’s actions on Everest distorted? If it was, he argues, “It is a far greater error than simple factual inaccuracy since it undermines a person’s reputation.”
In the hope that Weinberg will pursue the questions he raised about “Into Thin Air,” I have supplied him with an exact duplicate of the more than 70 pages of documents and personal narrative that I delivered to Dwight Garner in support of my opinions that: 1) Boukreev was wrongfully maligned in “Into Thin Air”; and 2) Krakauer, by ignoring Boukreev’s explanation for his descent offered more than two years ago, and not discussing it in either his article or his book, foreshortened the field of inquiry and denied his readers the opportunity to come to their own conclusions.
As to the matter of Jane Bromet’s testimony — that Scott Fischer, in April 1996, at the Everest Base Camp, told her that it was his “plan” that, if “there were problems coming down,” he would have “Anatoli make a rapid descent and come back up the mountain with oxygen, or whatever” — I do not consider that testimony (quoted in “The Climb”) a red herring. Bromet gave this same information to Krakauer prior to the publication of “Into Thin Air.” She has never disavowed her statement and, herself, has wondered why Krakauer did not choose to use it in his book. Reflecting on the potential value of her statement to an understanding of Boukreev’s explanation for his descent, Bromet has said, “Anyone, any idiot who has followed the climb, will put two and two together quickly.”
The point which I attempted, but perhaps failed, to convey to Dwight Garner, was that, yes, of course, Bromet’s statement, in and of itself, does not prove that the “authorizing” conversation took place between Boukreev and Fischer as Boukreev represented it. But, as I told Krakauer when he first became aware that I had the quote and intended to use it: I think it clearly demonstrates that Fischer was predisposed to the idea of a rapid descent; I think it is consistent with Scott’s previously expressed reason for having hired Anatoli (to provide back-up and rescue efforts); I think the statement, in the absence of an eyewitness to the Boukreev-Fischer exchange above the Hillary Step, should be seriously considered; I sleep OK at night.
Perhaps the most disturbing of Krakauer’s contributions to Garner’s piece was his suggestion that Boukreev was “pretty goddamn motivated” to go out into the storm to bring in stranded climbers, because, if “he was having tea when a lot of people died, it wouldn’t have looked too good.” Boukreev went out into a raging storm for the same reason he had risked his life on previous expeditions: People’s lives were in danger. While he was out on the South Col in the early morning hours of May 11 — in the maw of the storm — and while he was ascending Everest later that same day in a last-ditch effort to save Scott Fischer, there were climbers sipping tea (or sleeping) who had their chance to contribute to the effort to save lives, to tend to the injured or bring comfort to the dying, but they didn’t. That doesn’t look so good.
And, Beck Weathers’ characterization of Anatoli as having stepped over his body? I don’t know what to make of that, and I hope Beck will elaborate upon that statement. Anatoli has said publicly and in print that, yes, he saw Yasuko Namba when he went onto the South Col in the storm in the early hours of May 11, 1996, but he has always said that he never saw Weathers until later that afternoon when he stumbled into Camp IV. To that I would add that Anatoli to the day of his death, felt remorse over not having been able to save Yasuko Namba’s life. His failure to enlist her Adventure Consultants’ team members to assist him in a rescue effort he took personally. His inability, after having led three other climbers to safety, to return to her, haunted him — so much so that the next year on April 28, 1997, while descending Everest with the Indonesian National Team, he constructed a cairn of stones around her body to protect her from scavenging birds. A few days later he sat in a teahouse on the trekking trail to Everest and in tears apologized to Yasuko Namba’s husband for not having been able to save his wife’s life. Despite the inability of the Adventure Consultants’ team to rally and come to Yasuko’s aid, Anatoli never blamed her death on her teammates.
And last, the matter of Krakauer’s claim that, at the November 1997 Banff Mountain Book Festival, he and Boukreev agreed to disagree about matters relative to the events of Everest. It never happened. After Krakauer’s outburst in Banff, which he repeats in Garner’s article, but for which he never apologized to Boukreev, he did chase after Anatoli and his girlfriend Linda Wylie and suggest to Anatoli that they agree to disagree. Linda Wylie has said, “Toli didn’t agree to disagree. He put his hand on Jon’s shoulder and said, ‘I am not angry with you, Jon, but you do not understand.’”
Krakauer suggests now that “if he [Boukreev] had only lived, I think we could be sorting this thing out.” I would ask Krakauer to remember that in the last paragraph of his first letter to Outside (July 31, 1996), Anatoli said: “I know Mr. Krakauer, like me, grieves and feels profoundly the loss of our fellow climbers. We both wish that events had unfolded in a very different way. What we can do now is contribute to a clearer understanding of what happened that day on Everest in the hope that the lessons to be learned will reduce the risks for others who, like us, take on the challenge of the mountains. I extend my hand to him and encourage that effort.”
Anatoli’s hand was not taken. It never happened.
