Word: snows
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Three days after Hall's optimistic assessment, Weathers, face burned black and arms nearly useless, would be one of the surprise survivors of one of the worst alpine disasters in recent memory. On the night of May 10 a storm swept the summit's fearsome "Death Zone" with snow, bitter cold and hurricane-force winds. Within 24 hours, eight of the more than 30 climbers on the peak were dead, among them Hall and Scott Fischer of Seattle, who was also running a commercial tour...
...which 40 people reached the top. Now 11 groups were swarming up the mountain's top 900 meters like ants on a piece of cake. Fischer's and Hall's parties set out at around midnight and eventually merged, pushing together through waist-high snow up Everest's last 75 meters. Despite delays due to the number of people crowding through narrow passes, the mood was good. The daughter of Washington State postal worker Douglass Hansen had earlier faxed in her support: "Come on, Dad, do it." By 2:30 p.m., he and more than 20 others had reached...
...Jonathan Krakauer, a journalist covering the climb for Outside magazine, stood at the top of the world, he noticed something ominous: clouds were approaching from the valley below. Within two hours they had arrived and metastasized into a monster: shrieking winds blew sheets of snow horizontally at 65 knots. A "whiteout" dropped visibility to zero, and wind chill plunged to -140[degrees] F. "It was chaos up there," says Krakauer. "The storm was like a hurricane, only it had a triple-digit wind chill. You don't have your oxygen on, you're out of breath, you can't think...
...meter Lhotse face. Fischer, a vastly experienced climber known as "Mr. Rescue," lagged behind his clients, perhaps to help stragglers. Searchers found him two days later high above the South Col. In the same area they found Taiwanese climber Makalu Gau, half buried in the snow and mumbling. Gau could be awakened, but Fischer was comatose; and so, by the stark rules of mountain triage, the overtaxed rescuers saved whom they could...
...Nepalese helicopter pilot. Choppers seldom venture above 6,000 meters: at a certain height, the thin air reduces their lift. Yet Madan flew up to a giant cross the climbers had painted on the Everest ice with red Kool-Aid. There he hovered, runners just touching the snow's treacherous surface, as Gau was loaded on board. Madan flew Gau down to the base camp, then repeated the process with Weathers. It was the second-highest helicopter rescue in history...