Summary
Early morning on May 6, the team at last leaves Base Camp for their summit bid. The team takes a rest day at Camp Two, where Krakauer sees Göran Kropp, a Swedish solo climber, descending back to Base Camp having abandoned his bid just below the summit due to exhaustion. Hall remarks that he is impressed by Kropp’s judgment and reminds the team that on summit day they will adhere to a strict turnaround time of 2:00pm, regardless of their progress. Fischer catches up to Krakauer’s team at Camp Two looking uncharacteristically tired after having had to attend to various emergencies on the mountain over the past few weeks. This is partly the fault of Fischer’s senior guide Anatoli Boukreev, a highly gifted climber who nevertheless lacks the personality to be an attentive team leader and regularly shirks his responsibilities.
By the time the team reaches Camp Three, Fishbeck and Kasischke—two of the team’s strongest climbers—start doubting that they have the strength to reach the summit, which surprises Krakauer and adds to his growing worries. The guides hand out oxygen canisters and masks to use for the remainder of the ascent. Krakauer notes that the use of bottled oxygen has long been a subject of controversy among climbers, with some suggesting that using it amounted to cheating. In 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first westerners to ascend Everest without supplemental oxygen, setting the high bar for mountaineering achievement. Hall requires everyone on Krakauer’s team to use oxygen, however, in order to slow the damage to brain cells and blood vessels that occurs in the thin air above 25,000 feet. Krakauer tries to heed Hall’s advice to keep the mask on at all times, but he has trouble sleeping with it on; he spends the night at Camp Three breathlessly awake counting the minutes until dawn.
While at Camp Three, Chen, a member of Makalu Gau’s Taiwanese expedition, falls into a crevasse and sustains significant injuries. During a Sherpa’s attempt to guide him back to Base Camp, Chen falls unconscious and dies before a rescue team can reach him. This marks the first death that season and lowers morale on the mountain, although Gau appears largely unconcerned, focused on the summit bid ahead.
On May 9, the team begins its ascent to Camp Four. Krakauer is surprised to see Fishbeck and Kasischke among them and is impressed at their determination. He picks up his pace in order to pass the approximately 50 climbers slowly making their way up the Lhotse Face, reaching Camp Four ahead of the crowd. By the time the last of the climbers arrive, a windstorm is blowing with full force across the South Col, the barren, icy plateau where the camp is located. An expedition from Montenegro arrives at the camp, having abandoned their summit bid earlier in the day due to the wind, and Krakauer worries that his team will be forced to turn around as well. The roar of the wind makes it impossible to communicate, heightening a feeling of isolation and disconnectedness that Krakauer laments has been present within the team throughout the expedition—he accepts that they will ultimately ascend the summit as individuals, if at all. Fortunately, the wind abruptly stops by early evening and yields to a freezing but calm night, creating perfect conditions for the summit.
Although battered and tired, the team begins their summit bid shortly before midnight with three guides, all eight clients, and four Sherpas. Fischer’s team of three guides, six of eight clients, and six Sherpas leave Camp Four an hour later. Gau’s Taiwanese expedition ignores their promise to ascend on a different day and departs shortly after Fischer, for a total of 33 climbers from three teams all attempting the summit on May 10. Shortly after leaving camp, Fishbeck decides to turn back. Hansen considers doing so as well, but continues climbing after briefly speaking with Hall. Hall had issued strict orders the day before that the team had to climb in close proximity to one another, forcing Krakauer to repeatedly stop and wait for slower teammates. Fischer’s team eventually catches up to the front of the line, even with Lopsang Sherpa towing Fischer’s client, Sandy Pittman, up the slope using a dangerous and exhausting technique called “short-roping.” At 27,600 feet, Krakauer stops again, waiting more than 90 minutes for his teammates while the two other expeditions pass him. He is unhappy about wasting time and falling behind, but defers to Hall’s judgment and authority as guide. Upon resuming the climb, Krakauer soon finds Lopsang Sherpa vomiting from sheer exhaustion. Normally one of the strongest climbers on the mountain, Lopsang fell from the front of the line, where he would have been a key asset, as the day took a tragic turn. His decision to unnecessarily short-rope Pittman—motivated by an over-eagerness to get the whole team to the summit and please Fischer—would later be questioned and criticized.
Analysis
As the summit ascent gets underway, the narrative loses almost all sense of optimism. The team’s failing health, the use of bottled oxygen as a vital crutch, and the death of Chen from the Taiwanese team all signal weakness and doubt at a time when the team should be feeling strong and confident. Göran Kropp’s aborted summit bid puts emphasis on judgment as the key to survival, foreshadowing the mistakes of judgment that ultimately doom Krakauer’s team. Following Kropp’s example, Hall sets 2:00pm on summit day as the point of no return—the symbolic dividing line between reason and ambition. The violent windstorm on Camp Four threatens to ruin any chance of making a summit bid. Ironically, if the storm had continued for just a few hours more it would have forced a disappointing end to the expedition but prevented tragedy—a figurative final warning from the mountain to the climbers on its slopes.
