A look at the popular accounts of the Everest 1996 disaster. Looks at the "Big Secret" and evaluates Jon Krakauer's climb, comparing it to that of Sandy Pitman's.

Notes:

Krakauer states the bottles he was carrying weighed 6.6 lbs and lasted between 56 hours. This is only consistent with 3 liter bottles. A 4 liter bottle weighs over 8 lbs and last over 8 hours. At no point did any bottle Krakauer nor anyone else was using last 8 hours. Thus, the Adventure Consultant team were also using 3 liter bottles.

I am fully aware that "The Climb" says the Mountain Madness (MM) clients received 3 bottles. However, this is not consistent with the number of bottles MM took on the upper mountain, the number of Sherpa used (more bottles means more Sherpas), not the stated plan in "The Climb" for the caching:

At the South Summit, as had been planned, each descending climber would pick up a third canister that the Sherpas were to cache there.

Boukreev, Anatoli; DeWalt, G. Weston. The Climb (pp. 130131). St. Martin's Publishing Group.

That would have the clients summit and return to South Summit all on 2 bottles. And then use a full bottle for the short period it typically takes to descend from South Summit to South Col. That "plan" does not remotely make any sense. Instead, the four bottle system would have the climbers pick up a full bottle on South Summit, leaving a partially used bottle which they would pick up on the return.

This is exactly what "The Climb" says was supposed to happen in a different passage:

So, when Beidleman and the clients arrived at the South Summit, their cache of oxygen should have included three full canisters* and whatever partial canisters had been discarded when the climbers had changed bottles on the way up.

Boukreev, Anatoli; DeWalt, G. Weston. The Climb (pp. 157158). St. Martin's Publishing Group.

So, the "The Climb" has them both picking up a bottle at South Summit on the ascent and on the descent. Even assuming they didn't use an earlier cache point, they all left with 2 bottles, so that still makes 4.

It is entirely possible that Boukreev was confused about the exact scheme to be used and that explains why he was confused about the remaining bottles on South Summit. Boukreev was generally not climbing with the group and was not involved in switching their oxygen out. He certainly did not carry bottles to any of the cache points.


By Debasish biswas kolkataDerivative work MagentaGreen This file was derived from: Hillary Step near Everest top.jpg:, CC BYSA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...


By Uwe Gille (talk · contribs) Own work, CC BYSA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

By Tirthakanji Own work, CC BYSA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
curid=27668124

   • Jon Krakauer · Into Thin Air · 1996 E...  

Join this channel to get access to perks:
   / @michaeltracy2356