I can see this, but in Krakauer’s book, he describes being on the summit and basically being blank, he was suffering so badly from oxygen depletion, or whatever. All that to get to the top, and you can’t even enjoy it…
I also recommend the following:
-Lene Gammelgaard’s book/diary of the disaster: Climbing High….
-Ed Viesturs’ book: No shortcuts to the top
-NOVA’s: Into the Death Zone - a documentary on a follow-up expedition in which psychological testing was performed to determine the effects of high-altitude climbing on decision making.
If you want a more “fun” look at mountaineering - with some disaster but not nearly as much - I highly recommend Seven Summits. It’s the story of the first people to complete the now famous challenge of climbing to the highest point on each continent.
I read the late Edmund Hillary’s account of his ascent of Everest-man, these guys were gentlemen! Col. Hunt (the expedition leader) made sure every man was expereinced, and the members of the expedition worked together=Robert Noyce relinquished his chance to summit, so that Hillary and Tenzing would have their chance. These were real MEN! Not these creeps (who would walk by a man , freezing to death, and not offer assistance).
I guess the “Golden Age” of mountaineering is long over 
Can you link to that, please?
Last Sunday I caught part of a documentary series called Everest: Doctors in the Death Zone. The doctors climb Everest and experiment on themselves to understand how bodies work in low-oxygen situations, and hoping it will lead to treatments for intensive car patients suffering from a shortgage of oxygen.
It was pretty cool - they carted all this lab stuff up the mountain (they were at Base 3 at the end of the episode) including some complicated measuring equipment and an exercise bike. From Camp 2 to 3 one of the doctors wasn’t able to go any further because he was getting disoriented and irrational. He was interviewed at the time and said that logically as a doctor he knew he was showing symptoms of HACE and needed to descend, but emotionally he felt that he could easily keep going.
At Camp 3 there was another expedition and the doctors described seeing someone from the other group really struggling to get to the camp. The doctors went and helped him up, and I remember one of the doctors describing how everyone from the other party just watched while their team member was in trouble, and complete strangers had to go to his aid. The doctors gave him medical care and told the other group that the climber needed to descend immediately or else he would probably die. The group hemmed and hawwed about it until it was too dark to safely descend. The doctors were pretty frustrated at the other team’s attitude. And this is just my impression, but I thought the other team seemed almost … embarrassed. Because they knew they were acting like scum; they knew that they should listen to the team of doctors; they knew that staying put would likely cost this man’s life; they just weren’t willing to abandon their summit attempt to do so.
Fortunately for me, moutain climbing isn’t my obsession, but I can kind of understand the attitude of the climbers. They have all spent many thousands of dollars to get there, for most it is literally a once in a lifetime chance, they have probably trained for months or years, and they also know that a fairly large percentage of climbers die in the attempt.
So a “weakling” shows up in their party, and threatens to ruin it for all of them, a couple of thousand feet or less from the summit. And many of today’s climbers are Type A yuppies punching another spot on their thrill ticket. The attitude must be something like-- leave the rescues to the professionals, that’s what the guides are paid for. I’ll lend a hand on the way down.
I personally hope I wouldn’t have this attitude in such extremes, but I don’t really think it’s possible to be sure until you’re there, near death yourself and being asked to take on additional risks for a relative stranger.
I recall seeing this from sometime back, and one of the measurements they dwelled on was the amount of oxygen in the blood at extreme altitudes. Climbers compared, unfavorably at times, to dying patients in the hospital by this measurement. IIRC one of the climbers got the lowest reading ever recorded of this among people who survived.
The longest-lived climbers follow a simple rule of thumb: the object is not to reach the top, but to make a round trip. (“The summit is only the halfway point”) If you have the discipline to turn around when things start going wrong, then you can live and try again. The mountain will always be there.
Unless you’re on a slow connection or behind a firewall, you can watch it online on the Frontline website.
Some Everest facts here.
I read Into Thin Air but can’t remember if Jon elaborated on this. There’s always been the insinuation though in most everything I’ve seen and read that maybe some of those present failed to provide assistance to others and those failures probably contributed to their deaths. Therefore, when Beck made this comment, I was really hoping he, or the show, would elaborate. Was it the two older climbers from the trip that were interviewed? Was it the sherpas? Couldn’t really tell so I’ll probably try and catch this again.
At least one of the facts on that page is wrong:
In Into Thin Air Jon wrote that one of the paid guides, a Russian named Boukreev, elected to climb without supplemental oxygen. This meant that he was unable to wait at the summit for other members of the group. Krakauer goes into a lot of detail about the effect of hypoxia on thought processes and resistance to hypothermia.
The professional guides Krakauer interviewed were almost universal in stating that it was irresponsible for someone to deliberately put themselves in a physical condition where they were unable to assist a client. Boukreev’s position was that by being more acclimated to the altititude he would be more able to cope if the oxygen were depleted.
There were a lot of failures that day. Krakauer admits that having a journalist along may have caused the leader and head guide, Rob Hall, to continue the attempt at the summit past the point when they should have turned back. Rob Hall had failed to summit on his prior attempt and that may have had an influence as well.
One of the strongest Sherpas had, for reasons never fully explained, elected to short-rope a client, basically spending six hours towing her up the mountain. This left him with insufficient reserves of strength to participate in rescues.
Krakauer was so delerious with hypoxia that he misidentified an almost total stranger as a friend with whom he had just spent six weeks, causing them to believe that Andy Harris was safe in camp when he was still out on the mountain.
Andy Harris died just 350 yards away from the relative safety of the tents.
The 1996 season was the deadliest on record, with 12 climbers dying in the attempt, but that was only 3% of the 398 climbers who tried to climb Everest that year. The historical average is 3.3%. It was just a normal year as far as Everest goes.
Fifteen died that year according to everything I’ve read.
You couldn’t be more right. I had neglected the three members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Expedition from India who died. Thanks for the correct information.
I read the NG (1954?) for the fine article. As i say, there was a different standard of behaviour in those days-men had honor and there was an implicit duty to render aid to a felow human.
Thanks, I’ll see if my public library keeps NG archives.
There have been amazing efforts of climbers today rendering superhuman aid to others at great risk to their own safety. The climbers during the early days of Himalayan expeditions didn’t have the time and money pressures that current climbers have, and the mountain is a very different place.
Things have changed, some for better and some for worse, but there is still plenty of honor if you look.
That IS odd. Maybe one of those should have been Last Year without Descent, as in they all went up, but no one came down. 
Now that I think about it too, I’m pretty sure the fastest ascent is faster than that listed.