A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (25 page)

Soon I was back in the hot and dusty embrace of a bustling city. Everywhere I looked in Thamel the shops were selling photographs of the Himalaya. What had happened seemed inescapable. The instant availability of modern comforts, the noise of humanity, was such a contrast to the last two months on Everest that it felt as though they had been in a different lifetime. It gave the bizarre sensation that I’d joined an expedition to a different existence and had just returned. In many ways, that was exactly what I’d done. I was back in the ‘real’ world.

I booked myself into the familiar surroundings of the Gauri Shankar Hotel. It was while enjoying a long-awaited cold beer at the hotel bar that I met the Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio. Aged 33, with neatly trimmed black hair, he was square-set with a strong physique reminiscent of a rugby player. On reaching the summit of Manaslu, he’d recently become the fourth, and youngest, person to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains, whose summits are over 26,000 feet. Both Rob and Scott, along with Ed Viesturs from the Imax team and the Finnish climber Veikka Gustafsson from Mal Duff’s team, had planned to join Carlos on Manaslu straight after they’d completed their commitments on Everest. Although they expected that Carlos might have completed his climb before they got to Manaslu, they were going to make use of his permit. He’d included their names on the application. These four were going to climb this second mountain as a team, giving themselves a tight schedule to keep. Their self-imposed pressure, particularly in the case of Rob and Scott, seemed endless.

Veikka was a good friend of Rob and Ed, and had climbed with these two on another 26,000-ft peak, Makalu, the year before. The friendship between Rob, Scott and Ed went back further.

Carlos, like the rest of the world, had heard about the deaths of Rob and Scott through the media. He wanted to know why the climb had gone so terribly wrong for his friends. Having been on the South Col during the night of the storm, and through the conversations I’d had with some of the survivors during the trek back to Lukla, I tried to piece together for Carlos what had transpired. I didn’t attempt to cover the mistakes that had been made by the teams, the basic errors. Carlos sat astounded as I recounted the events. Almost every question he asked started with the words ‘How?’ or ‘Why?’

It was while talking with Carlos that I became aware of a young man, about 5 ft 6 in. tall, aged around 25, standing at the end of the bar. During a momentary pause, the young man seized his opportunity and asked, ‘How is Andy Harris?’

Without stopping to think, I turned to him and said, ‘He’s dead.’

No sooner had I spouted these words than I regretted the blunt manner in which I’d answered his question. The young man stood there with a look of horror on his face that I will never forget. Stunned into silence by what he’d heard, his eyes filled with tears. He looked at Carlos and me for a second or two, then turned and ran, his grief completely overwhelming him. To this day, I deeply regret breaking tragic news in such a thoughtless manner. I should, at the very least, have enquired first whether he was a friend or relation of Andy Harris so I could have measured my answer more sensitively. Unfortunately, I’d answered his question in a factual way, in the same way I had been answering those from Carlos. Judging by his reaction, he was a good friend of Andy Harris and may well have been a close relative. If that young man now, more than 14 years on, happens to read this book, I would like to extend to him my sincere apologies.

To this day, no one really knows what happened to Andy Harris other than that he disappeared on Everest somewhere near the South Summit on the night of 10 May. A fall seems the most likely explanation.

I can’t recall who it was from Scott’s team that invited me to an afternoon gathering in the well-manicured gardens of the Yak and Yeti Hotel: most likely it was one of the clients with whom I’d trekked down. This get-together had been organised, I was told, by the lady with whom I’d exchanged a smile over breakfast in the lodge at Pheriche, the one who could afford to charter helicopters and was, as it turned out, a person of considerable wealth; her name was Sandy Hill Pittman.

I hadn’t been sure what to expect, but looking back I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dressed in no more than casual clothes, I passed through the dimly lit reception area of the Yak and Yeti Hotel and exited via a large pair of glazed doors into the rear garden. There on the lawn I was confronted by what I could only describe as an afternoon cocktail party. Waiters wearing immaculate white shirts, black trousers, bow ties and highly polished shoes were placed at strategic points holding trays of chilled margaritas. Tables of carefully prepared buffet delights, which seemed alien after the month and a half we’d spent at Base Camp, had been painstakingly laid out to tempt even the most particular palate.

Sandy Hill Pittman was hardly recognisable. She was wearing a tight-fitting black cocktail dress that sparkled with beads and sequins, complemented by matching black high-heeled stilettos. Her hair was tied back and enhanced with long extensions decorated with red-beaded cords; confidently, she drifted amongst the invited guests.

Both the formality of the gathering and the mode of dress seemed inappropriate. People were dressed up, but for whom? Possibly for some of the world’s press who’d also been invited. Hardly a week had passed since their fellow climbers had died so tragically in such terrible conditions.

I shuffled my way to the fringes of the throng, away from the hub. Something low key would have seemed more fitting in the circumstances. A final farewell to friends they’d lost.

My instinct was to leave, but incredulity about what I was witnessing welded me to the spot. I stood alone in quiet disbelief. I was shaken from my thoughts by a hand placed firmly on my left shoulder. A hand that was accompanied by the familiar voice of Anatoli: ‘Graham, you and I do not belong here.’

Little could I have known this would be the last time I would ever see Anatoli. I did, however, receive two postcards from him during the course of 1996. The first was from Nepal dated 22 October. The card read:

The second was a joint card from Anatoli and his partner Linda Wylie, each writing half. It began:

Sadly the Khan Tengri expedition did not happen for me. As with so much in life, things crop up that conspire to take away these precious opportunities.

On Christmas Day 1997, Anatoli was tragically swept to his death by an avalanche while attempting to climb Annapurna in western Nepal – 12 months after the second card was posted.

Flights back home at the end of May 1996 proved problematic. The date I’d booked for my return when I’d originally bought the ticket had been mid-June. The reason for this was that we’d had no idea on what date our summit attempt might fall, so I’d allowed plenty of extra time at the end. The return flight I was scheduled to take was over three weeks away. A further difficulty arose because Biman Airlines, with whom I’d flown, had only two flights a week back to Heathrow. It transpired they had no available seats on the dates in between for a transfer of my ticket.

I looked into the possibility of buying a one-way ticket on a different airline. Anyone who has tried to book a last-minute one-way air ticket will understand when I say the official full fare I was quoted was eye-watering: nothing like the comparatively modest sum I’d paid for the whole of my original return ticket. The potential cost involved would have been crippling to our already impoverished family budget. In the end, Biman Airlines managed to move my date forward slightly, leaving me another ten days in Kathmandu.

Back in the Gauri Shankar, I spent time at the hotel bar with Carlos, discussing his forthcoming felicitation. This was rapidly being organised by the Nepalese officials in recognition of his recent achievement.

He’d joined an elite group of three people – Reinhold Messner (Italy), Jerzy Kukuczka (Poland) and Ehardt Loretan (Switzerland) – by completing the fourteen highest mountains. The Nepalese authorities were quick on the uptake, realising this presented them with the perfect opportunity to make a public statement of pride. Most of Carlos’s success had taken place in Nepal, where the majority of these mountains lie.

Carlos, embarrassed at the attention he was about to receive, asked if I would like to accompany him to the ceremony. Not needing to check my diary over the coming days, I was delighted to accept.

The next day I was presented with an official invite that read:

Within the same envelope was a brief résumé of Carlos’s achievements, giving the year that he’d summited each of the 14 mountains, and a professionally prepared colour postcard that had been printed several months earlier to promote the expedition he’d just completed. This card bore the names of Ed Viesturs, Veikka Gustafsson, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.

At 4 p.m. on the afternoon of 24 May, Carlos and I were collected by minibus from the Gauri Shankar for our short journey to the Hotel Blue Star. Sitting alongside Carlos, I was slightly taken aback when he asked me what I thought he should say in his acceptance speech.

‘Wow, a bit late to be thinking about that,’ was my first thought.

In fairness, this quiet and modest man was feeling nervous about the attention that was being lavished on him. His question was searching for the obvious that he might have overlooked.

The felicitation did not disappoint. Taking place in the hotel ballroom, it had all the formality and official speeches that one could have asked for, to the point of overkill. When the time came for Carlos to address the gathered throng, he displayed great modesty, playing down his recent achievement. Rather, he concentrated on the close friends he’d lost along the way. The loss that had affected him most was that of Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz on Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, in May 1992. Wanda, considered the best woman climber of her time, had been making a summit bid with Carlos. As he covered the ground more quickly, he’d summited first; on his descent, he came across Wanda and tried to persuade her to abandon her attempt and return back down with him. She chose to continue, planning to bivouac and complete her ascent the next day. A storm blew in that night and she was never seen again. Carlos had been the last person to see her alive. He had been devastated. In his speech, he described this as his darkest hour, a time at which he nearly gave up climbing because of the pain he felt over Wanda’s death. As he uttered those words, I couldn’t help but think they were influenced by more recent events. Deep down he must have been relieved he’d completed his quest before he too became a name on a long list of people who were no longer here.

So eager was I to return home that each subsequent day seemed to grow in length as I waited out the allotted time. Shortly after breakfast on one of these mornings, I heard the unmistakable sound of Elizabeth Hawley’s VW Beetle as it pulled up outside the hotel entrance.

Henry and the others had returned from Base Camp. Liz was on her fact-finding tour to collect all the relevant details she needed for her meticulous records. Once again, I sat down to join in the discussion, which understandably took on a more sombre tone than that of the previous year. After Liz had covered some initial questions, she asked Henry how far our team had got up the mountain.

‘The South Col,’ Henry replied.

‘Is that as far as they got?’ asked Liz, who’d been surprised by his response.

‘That is correct,’ Henry answered, in a manner that had an embarrassed tone to it, his eyes not meeting Liz’s enquiring glance.

Henry’s business was built on success, with each year used to promote the next, much in the way Rob’s and Scott’s had been. Henry would have preferred to be sitting there telling Liz of success rather than informing her that his team had got nowhere near the summit. However, these were exceptional circumstances. This was anything but a normal year.

Liz Hawley had seen far more than her fair share of people destined not to return. Many a great Himalayan climber she’d interviewed before an expedition had not come back; a good number of these had visited Nepal numerous times before. Now they included Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. She had met these two several times, and Rob on a regular basis for several years in his role as leader of Adventure Consultants. Now she had to place in her records the date of 10 May 1996 for their successful summit, but this time it would bear a small black cross next to their names, along with ‘died on descent’.

Sadly, death was no stranger to Elizabeth Hawley. Undoubtedly one of the hardest and most painful tasks Liz had ever undertaken came in 1975, when she had to tell her close and very dear friend, Sir Edmund Hillary, that his wife Louise and their youngest daughter Belinda had been killed in a plane crash in Nepal after he’d helped them board at Kathmandu only a short time before.