Oh man - polar expedition histories (north and south) are some of my favorite reading. The idea of these guys sailing off, knowing their ship would get locked into the ice… With no modern equipment…
Made of sterner stuff than I.
I want to third (or fourth) the thanks to @Spice_Weasel for her contributions to this thread. Well thought out and very helpful for understanding the entire trauma and its aftermath.
Aaand now I have to correct this. Am reading Beck Weathers’ book and he clearly states Jon tried to persuade him to come down, and he refused.
Krakauer did the right thing. Although our guide Mike Groom was just twenty minutes behind him on the trail, he offered to help me down. I, in turn, was uncomfortable with inflicting myself on Jon. I declined with thanks, saying I’d wait for Groom. I think Jon heaved a little sigh of gratitude.
This matches Krakauer’s account.
Not sure where DeWalt got this other story that Beck begged him for help and he refused.
(Beck also blames Boukreev for descending quickly, FYI. Though my official stance is that isn’t fair.)
And Boukreev wasn’t a guide for Weathers, because they were with different expeditions. So Weathers’ complaint is not fair. He’s crying like a baby.
Yeah, obviously one’s own expedition team members would have to come first. And Boukreev performed flawlessly on that account. I think he was only able to do so because he had so much mountaineering experience he had a keen understanding of his own limits. As evidenced by the fact he took a night’s rest after rescuing Fox and Pittman, before he went looking for Fischer. Because he knew what he could and couldn’t handle.
Exactly this. He knew his limits. And that’s why he knew he could guide without bottled oxygen, and he knew it was available for him if he needed some extra energy.
Having read Beck Weathers’ book that’s an unfair characterization in my opinion. You can’t go by out-of-context snippets. Overall Beck is pretty clear about where he made mistakes and his own flaws.
Didn’t Weathers blame Boukreev for descending early? Boukreev was not his guide. That’s my point. He’s not your guide, so you should not have expectations as to his performance.
It’s been a few years since I read any of these books, but I don’t recall that being the tone of Weathers’ narrative. He may have been critical of others, but he was equally critical of himself and he, too, was plagued with memory issues, which he even admitted to.
Same here, it’s been years since I read his book. It’s been years since my last read of Krakauer’s book too. Weather was one of several on the south col caught in the storm, and Boukreev‘s rescue could not help him because he wasn’t able to move on his own power. But blaming Boukreev for descending early when he’s not your guide is, to me, being a bit of a crybaby.
Since I read the first half of the book earlier this month, I will say to the best of my recollection that Weathers only commented briefly on Boukreev, but he stated pretty plainly that Boukreev abandoned his responsibilities as a guide by going down early. It was only maybe two lines in the book but it was very clear that’s how he felt. He didn’t seem particularly bitter to me about any of it, which is notable in itself. The book is mostly focused on his depression and his failures as a husband and parent and how he changed afterward (still reading the aftermath part.)
I find the book a bit tedious in places because there is a lot of information not relevant to his story, like his parents’ lives and his career history. I would have cut all that. But there are things worth reading too. I’m at the part where he describes learning to mountaineer and it’s pretty interesting to see it through a beginner’s eyes. He was afraid of heights! Can relate.
You keep saying Weathers’ said this but I have no recollection of that. Do you have a passage from the book that shows this?
Two lines in an entire book is pretty slim “evidence”.
Here are Weathers’ exact words:
Neal, Mike and Klev somehow did find High Camp that night, but were on their hands and knees by the time they did. None of them had anything left. They weren’t going to return for us; they couldn’t. The Sherpas in camp wouldn’t. There was no one else to try, except for the Russian, Anatoli Boukreev.
That day, Anatoli had forsaken his duty as a guide. While everyone was struggling up and down the ridge to the summit, or stacked up like cordwood at the Hillary Step, Anatoli climbed for himself, by himself, without oxygen. He just went straight up, tagged the summit, and came straight back down. Because he lacked oxygen, he couldn’t persist in the cold, and was forced to retreat to the shelter of his tent.
I’m not sure how much more strident you can get than “forsaken his duty as a guide.”
That begs the question of what, exactly, Anatoli could have done. Could one man really have broken up the traffic jam? Dragged weaker climbers to the summit? What, exactly, was Weathers expecting the man to do?
But yes, it would seem to be whining. Still wouldn’t call it “crying like a baby”.
Fine. Whatever. To each their own.
I also remember that when he gathered himself on the south col the next morning after the storm dissipated, figured that there wasn’t any cavalry coming to save him, and got himself up and stumbled back down to Camp IV, that when he entered the tents he exclaimed something akin to, “Geez, what does a guy have to do to get some service around here!??!”
Look, no argument here that what he did to save himself was downright heroic. To understand the physiology and mental focus to will himself to do that would be quite a fascinating study (because frankly, as a total swag, the likelihood of anyone being able to do that has got to be less than 0.1% IMHO).
Small correction - he said that to Krakauer after he’d been left alone in the tent overnight, the tent had collapsed on him and he ended up on the floor.
Interesting that he retained his sense of humor throughout all that.
Weathers’ account hews so closely to Krakauer’s it makes me wonder how much his memory of the events were influenced by what Krakauer wrote.
Boukreev was a guide, or at least an advisor, for the Mountain Madness expedition. Five of the Mountain Madness clients got lost on the way back to Camp IV: Klev Schoening, Fox, Madsen, Pittman, and Gammelgaard. They had a Mountain Madness guide with them, Neal Beidleman. The same group included Adventure Consultant clients Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba and guide Michael Groom.
I think it’s a call that can go either way. There were seven clients and two guides on the descent. Would a third guide have made a difference, or would he have been a tenth lost person? Boukreev didn’t abandon anybody (well maybe Martin Adams, but Adams made it back to Base IV; can’t easily find if Adams had sherpas with him). On the other hand, it’s an absolute principle of outdoors guiding that guides are responsible for their clients. I haven’t read Weathers book, but Krakauer absolutely believed that Boukreev violated that principle. It’s easy to believe that Weathers felt that same way since he was in the lost group with the five Mountain Madness clients.
But on a third hand, it was a known factor that Boukreev planned to summit without supplemental oxygen. Krakauer’s writings express that that was the real mistake - Boukreev shouldn’t have been allowed to be a guide if he wanted to summit without supplemental oxygen. The decision-maker, and the person who knew what the deal was with Boukreev was Scott Fischer - who was one of the climbers who died.
Personally, I side with Boukreev. I don’t think any of the Mountain Madness clients were unaware that he was climbing without supplemental oxygen or should have expected that he would stay at altitude to help them with the descent. Without Boukreev it was a 1:4 guide/client ratio plus sherpas. That doesn’t seem unreasonable. But there’s definitely an ick factor when you think about him as a guide who went down the mountain leaving his clients behind him.
[Referring to Beck Weathers.]
Semantics, perhaps, but in my book, self-preservation is not heroism. Heroism necessarily entails helping someone else. What Weathers did was astounding, verging on miraculous, but I wouldn’t call it heroic.