Tragedy on Everest Case Study

Prologue

On May 10, 1996, a blizzard hit the summit of Mount Everest. On the southeast route alone, five climbers perished in the storm. Others among them – marooned by darkness, flattened by high winds, numbed by frostbite, confused by lack of oxygen — were lucky to survive. Some wouldbeleftdisabledforlife.

Yet, five or six weeks earlier, expeditions had gathered in the warm spring sunshine of Base Camp staring at the beauty of the world’s highest mountain, hoping and praying for benevolence from the mountain, the weather and the winds

Early April: Arrival

Welcome to Base Camp, a ramshackle collection of 300-plus tents and makeshift rock ~,. £ shelters strewn across the dirty ice of the Khunibu Glacier in Nepal.

004

While you are picking your way among the rubble of rocks, ice, people and yaks, you soon realize that this chaos is ordered. The shelters are in fact grouped according to 14 expeditions of varying sizes. The larger settlements have dedicated tents for cooking, eating, communications equipment, latrines and even solar-heated showers, as well as sleeping quarters. And if you raise your eyes above the jagged lines of colourful nylon peaks, you see the world’s most awe-inspiring skyline in all its celebrated splendour.

As you linger in Base Camp, certain people begin to stand out from the crowd of around 300 temporary residents. The first you notice is a why, affable New Zealander with a bushy dark ~ beard and a dry sense of humour. Behind the twinkle in his eyes, however, lies an unmistakable intensity and focus. His confident and commanding air suggests that -if such a post existed – he would indeed be the ‘Mayor of Base Camp’, as some already call him. Indeed, Rob Hall (age 35) is in charge of the largest expedition that season: 26 people, including eight clients who have each paid up to US$65,000 to be guided to the world’s highest point. And back again.

They could not be in safer hands. Hall’s marketing material promotes his company, Adventure Consultants, as the ‘world leader in Everest climbing’. His record speaks for itself, so this is not just marketing puff. One of his colleagues will later recall that he was “the guy who was seen as the best in the industry, the one that everybody else looked up to for the organized way in which he ran his expeditions.”1 Over six years, he has successfully taken 39 amateur climbers to the summit of ‘the Hill’, as he calls it. Maybe – some are quick to point out — he has been blessed by good weather throughout this career, but, as Pasteur said, ‘luck favours the prepared mind.’

Last year, 1995, was not so successful. He and all his clients were forced by conditions to turn around just 100 meters from the summit. If anything, this one failure to reach the top has only served to enhance Hall’s reputation for safety.

1 Guy Cotter, Hail’s former climbing paitier and an Adventure Consultants guide on another Himalayan expedition in 1996: http:I!www.pbs.org/wgbhlpageslfrontlineleverestfstotiesilifeafterhtiril

Copyiighl©2O11INSEAD 1 01/2012-8819

811-043-1 INSEAD

The Bu.wen School for the World

This year, there is another formidable presence in Base Camp, the American Scott Fischer (age 41). For his Mountain Madness guiding company, based in Seattle, it will be a first ascent of Everest and only the second peak over 8,000 meters (26,250ft). Fischer himself has already reached the top of the ‘Big B’, as he calls it, without bottled oxygen. His mountain credentials are impeccable. His party of 23 is almost as big as Hall’s, charges similar prices and also numbers eight clients. But assembling the expedition has been tedious, and some of his intended guides have joined other expeditions, including Hall’s. He still needs to establish his finn’s Himalayan reputation.

Fischer’s herculean silhouette is in stark contrast to Hall’s. Tall, muscular, square-jawed and blond-ponytailed, with a gold ring in one ear, he is not only physically impressive but also has a magnetic personality. ‘People just gravitate to him,’2 say his friends. They admit that his easy-going demeanour makes him less imposing than his Adventure Consultants counterpart but insist that he is every bit as charismatic.

It takes a little longer to notice a third significant figure, David Breashears (age 40), also from the United States. He too has a track record: he has reached the top of the world twice already and broadcast the first live television pictures from the summit back in 1983. In 1985, Breashears took a friend, the wealthy 55-year-old businessman Dick Bass, to the summit — until then, the preserve of only elite mountaineers.

~ c~.fThis year, however, he has assembled a team of ten paid experts, climbers and cinematographers, with a total budget of US$5.5 million, to bring back the world’s first fl ~ IMAYi’> large-format footage from the summit. If they succeed it will be an unprecedented technical and logistical feat. For Breashears, who has been malcing documentaries about Everest for 15 years, shrinking film to the size of a television screen each time, the IMAX project is a chance to create images on a scale (22m wide by l6m high, or 72ft by 53ft) that does justice to the world’s highest mountain.

In addition to noticing these three expedition leaders, you also notice that you are short of breath and easily tired. This is a consequence of the altitude. At 5,300m (17,600ft), there is only half as much oxygen in the air as at sea level. As a result, your body is less efficient. Everything takes more time and much more effort.

Here are some other facts. If you had landed on the summit of Everest instead of at Base Camp, you would probably be dead by now. The air at 8,848m (29,028ft) — the altitude of a cruising airliner — has only 20% of the oxygen that is available at sea level, and the humidity is uncomfortably low. The human body cannot survive more than few minutes at that altitude unless it has undergone a process of acclimatization — going progressively higher (and then down again) over the course of several weeks. Even then, above 8,000 meters survival is a matter of hours. Most climbers, including professionals, rely on bottled oxygen to remain strong enough, warm enough and clear-headed enough to make it back down quickly. That’s why the area above Everest’s South Col at 7,900m (26,000ft), where most expeditions make their high camp in preparation for the final summit push, has been dubbed the ‘Death Zone’.

2 Neal Beidleman, a Mountain Madness guide: http:I/www.pbs.orgtwgbWpageslfronthne/everest/etckemembesingiitinl

Copyitghl©Z011 ENSEAD 2 01/2012-5819

811-043-1 INSEAD -r

The Bunion School for the Woild

Here axe some final facts for anyone on the mountain this spring of 1996. The path to the top is strewn with bodies, some preserved by the low temperatures for decades. By now, thousands of people have attempted to reach the world’s highest summit — and many have been successful. Everest has been climbed more than 800 times by various routes, with and without bottled oxygen. Nearly 150 people have paid for their dreams and ambitions with their lives. In the 1980s alone, 1,871 climbers set off from Base Camp. Just 180 made it to the summit; 56 died. The odds of failure axe high. You’d better get on with preparations – it takes your mind off these statistics. If you think too hard about them, you will never make it to the top.

Mid-April: Acclimatization

‘Climb high, sleep low’ is the relentless manfla of the acclimatization process. Up and down, up and down – 600m (2,000ft) or so higher each time, as your body adapts. Four to six weeks ~.. ~ of danger and boredom in equal measure, passing between the chiasmic crevasses and teetering towers of the Khumbu Icefall, just above Base Camp, on every upward and downwardtrip.

Hall’s Adventure Consultants stick together throughout the acclimatization phase. He runs the proverbially fight ship, carefully controlling the seasoned Base Camp team and meticulously supervising his two fellow guides, Australian Mike Groom (37) and fellow New Zealander Andy Harris (31). Groom has already climbed the world’s four highest peaks without bottled oxygen. However, on one expedition he lost the front third of both his feet to frostbite; it took him two years to walk again. His feet axe now more vulnerable to frostbite. Harris, on the other hand, has never climbed anything above 7~)00m (22,lOOft); his great climbing skills, youthful enthusiasm and dedication to his hero, Rob Hall, amply compensate for his lack of experience.

As well as a professional base camp manager and a team doctor, the other paid members of the team are Sherpas, the Nepalese mountain people who are essential members of any major Himalayan expedition, and are all the more important when guiding clients. Born and raised at 14,000 feet, Sherpas have adapted physiologically to cope with backbreaking work at altitude. They are the undisputed pioneers of Everest climbing and have a reputation for unwavering loyalty – at least to members of their own team. For cultural and economic reasons, even the most experienced Sherpas are reluctant to challenge Westerners.

Thanks to Hall’s experience, reputation and resources, Adventure Consultants has been able to recruit seven of the most respected Sherpas in the business. Their tasks include fixing ropes, carrying equipment and hauling supplies up the mountain, including the burdensome, expensive, yet life-preserving oxygen cylinders. Most of them have climbed with Hall before and are as devoted to him as young Harris.

The eight clients, in contrast, have no load-hauling or gear-fixing duties. They do not even have to make their own tea. Among the assorted, international group are a lawyer, a publisher and three doctors, including Beck Weathers (49), a talkative Texan pathologist. The only woman is Yasuko Namba (47), a diminutive and very quiet personnel director from Tokyo, who is following in a proud tradition: the first woman to climb Everest back in 1975 was Japanese. Weathers and Namba are well on their way to completing the ‘Seven Summits’ (the