# 1996 Everest Disaster An hour\-by\-hour relief\-model explainer of the storm and summit\-day mistakes on Everest, 10\-11 May 1996 By curious\-gecko\-aa69b514 Topic: History [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/MBq2QWl0GEY6) ## Transcript ### 1. Everest, 10 May 1996 On 10 May 1996, 33 climbers set out from the South Col for the summit of Everest\. By the next morning eight people had died on the mountain, the worst single day on Everest at the time\. This relief model shows the last 950 metres of the South Col route, from Camp 4 to the summit\. Drag the sky or the mountain to look around\. Heights are stretched 1\.6 times so the ridge reads clearly\. The clock on the plinth shows the time of day\. ### 2. A midnight start Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants team left the tents at 11:30 p\.m\., and Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness team followed about half an hour later\. The plan was about 18 hours: summit by early afternoon, back in camp by evening\. Each climber carried three bottles of oxygen sized for that plan\. Orange lights are Hall's team, teal lights are Fischer's team, white lights are other climbers and Sherpas\. ### 3. Queues on the ridge Fixed ropes were not yet in place at the Balcony at 8,400 metres or at the Hillary Step at 8,790 metres\. With 33 people on one narrow ridge, climbers waited in line, some for an hour or more\. Every hour in the queue burned daylight and bottled oxygen\. Beck Weathers, his eyesight failing in the thin air, was told to wait at the Balcony\. Anatoli Boukreev, climbing without bottled oxygen, reached the summit first, at 1:07 p\.m\. ### 4. The 2 p\.m\. turnaround Hall's rule was simple: anyone not on top by 2 p\.m\. turns back, whatever the distance left, so the descent ends before dark\. Move the clock through the afternoon\. At 2 p\.m\. many climbers were still going up\. Fischer reached the summit at about 3:40 p\.m\. and Hall stayed to help Doug Hansen, who arrived about 4 p\.m\., two hours late\. The red mark on the clock is the turnaround\. Hansen had turned back just below the summit in 1995\. ### 5. The storm climbs the mountain Between 4 and 5 p\.m\. cloud that had sat in the valleys rose up the mountain\. Snow began, the light went flat and by 6 p\.m\. there was a full blizzard\. Winds above 20 metres per second, over 70 km/h, drove the wind chill down to about minus 51 degrees Celsius\. Dozens of climbers were still high on the ridge, many out of oxygen\. Forecasts that season showed worsening weather, but not this early or this violent\. ### 6. Lost on the South Col Guide Neal Beidleman led a group of climbers down to the broad South Col, but in the whiteout they could not find the tents\. They huddled in the wind, perhaps 20 metres from camp\. After midnight, when the sky cleared briefly, some walked in for help\. Boukreev went out alone into the storm several times and brought back Charlotte Fox, Sandy Hill Pittman and Tim Madsen\. Yasuko Namba and Beck Weathers were left for dead\. Weathers later woke and walked into camp on his own\. ### 7. Eight lives Rob Hall died near the South Summit after a night and a day in the open; guide Andy Harris was lost nearby and Doug Hansen near the Hillary Step\. Scott Fischer died on the ridge at about 8,300 metres\. Yasuko Namba died on the South Col\. On the north side the same storm killed three Indo\-Tibetan Border Police climbers: Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup and Tsewang Paljor\. Weathers and Makalu Gau were flown out from about 6,100 metres on 13 May, a helicopter rescue at a record altitude then\. ### 8. Why it went wrong No single mistake explains it\. Missing ropes and crowding caused long queues\. The turnaround time was not enforced, so people were still high when the storm arrived\. Oxygen planned for 18 hours ran out on the way down\. Exhaustion and lack of oxygen dulled judgement, and teams were split up with poor radio contact\. The accounts in Into Thin Air and The Climb still disagree on details\. Toggle Route line in Settings to compare the route with the mountain alone\.