1996 Everest Disaster
The summit of Mount Everest
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| Date | 10 May 1996 – 11 May 1996 |
|---|---|
| Location | Mount Everest |
| Organised by |
Adventure Consultants Mountain Madness Indo-Tibetan Border Police |
| Deaths | 8 |
The 1996 Mount Everest disaster occurred on 10–11 May 1996, when eight people caught in a blizzard died on Mount Everest during attempts to ascend to or descend from the summit. Over the entire season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest day and year on Mount Everest prior to the 16 fatalities of the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche and the 18 deaths resulting from avalanches caused by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake. The 1996 disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Numerous climbers, including several large teams as well as some small partnerships and soloists, were high in altitude on Everest during the storm. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the South Face were more widely reported. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was in a party led by guide Rob Hall that lost four climbers on the south side; he afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air (1997), which related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide in Scott Fischer's party (which lost Scott Fischer, but no clients), felt impugned by Krakauer's book and co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest (1997).Beck Weathers, of Hall's expedition, and Lene Gammelgaard, of Fischer's expedition, wrote about their experiences of the disaster in their respective books, Left For Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000) and Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (2000). In 2014, Lou Kasischke, also of Hall's expedition, published his own account of the tragedy in After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy, One Survivor's Story (2014). Mike Trueman, who coordinated the rescue from Base Camp, has added to the story with The Storms: Adventure and Tragedy on Everest (May 2015). Graham Ratcliffe, who climbed to the South Col of Everest on 10 May, has documented in A Day To Die For (2011) that weather reports delivered to expedition leaders including Rob Hall and Scott Fischer prior to their planned summit attempts on 10 May forecast a major storm developing after 8 May and peaking in intensity on 11 May. As Hall and Fischer planned their summits for 10 May, portions of their teams summitted Everest during an apparent break in this developing storm only to descend into the full force of it late on 10 May.
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