Beck Weathers

Seaborn Beck Weathers (born December 1946) is an American pathologist from Texas. He survived the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, which was covered in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air (1997), its film adaptation Into Thin Air: Death on Everest (1997), and the film Everest (2015).

Weathers was born in a military family. He attended college in Wichita Falls, married, and had two children. In 1986, he enrolled in a mountaineering course and later decided to try to climb the Seven Summits. He considered Richard Bass, the first man to climb the Seven Summits, an "inspiration" who made summitting Everest seem possible for "regular guys". In 1993, Weathers was making a guided ascent on Vinson Massif, where he encountered Sandy Pittman, whom he would later meet on Everest in 1996.

In May 1996, Weathers was one of eight clients being guided on Mount Everest by Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants. Weathers, who had recently had radial keratotomy surgery, soon discovered that he was blinded by the effects of high altitude and overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, high altitude effects which had not been well documented at the time. On May 10, the day of the summit assault, Hall, after being told Weathers could not see, wanted him to descend to Camp IV immediately. He, however, believed his vision might improve when the sun came out, so Hall had advised him to wait on the Balcony (27,000 ft, on the 29,000 ft Everest) until Hall came back down to descend with him.

Hall, up high waiting for another client to reach the summit, later died high up on the mountain. Weathers eventually began descending with guide Michael Groom, who was short-roping him. When the blizzard struck, Weathers and 10 other climbers became disoriented in the storm, and could not find Camp IV. By the time there was a break in the storm several hours later, Weathers had been so weakened that he and three other men and women were left there so the others could summon help. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide on another expedition led by Scott Fischer, came and rescued several climbers, but during that time, Weathers had stood up and disappeared into the night. The next day, another client on Hall's team, Stuart Hutchison, and two Sherpas arrived to check on the status of Weathers and fellow client Yasuko Namba. Believing Weathers and Namba were both near death and would not make it off the mountain alive, Hutchison and the others left them and returned to Camp IV.

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