Everest Nepal Summit

This story continues from my climb of Everest’s Southeast Ridge from Nepal. Read the previous section: Climbing to the South Col →

I’ll start this page by saying that multiple things went wrong on my summit day, and in the end I made the surprisingly easy decision to turn around. I didn’t reach the summit from Nepal, although I returned the following year and successfully reached the top of the world from Tibet. Looking back, however, this failed attempt was every bit as important to me as the successful climb. I came incredibly close to one of my biggest dreams, watched other climbers lose their lives around me, and ultimately found myself fighting just to make it back to camp.

Except for when I was sick with a fever at the beginning of the trip, I had felt very strong throughout the entire climb. Our team’s trouble started when we arrived at the South Col, the mountain’s highest camp on the Nepal side. We didn’t know the details at the time, but heard that one climber had run out of oxygen and died, while another had gone to sleep in his tent and was found dead an hour later. Summit day begins from Camp IV on the South Col, located in the death zone at around 26,000 feet (8,000 meters). At this altitude, the lack of oxygen puts enormous stress on the human body. It’s extremely difficult to sleep and eat, and your body is slowly deteriorating. Supplemental oxygen helps considerably, but you’re still operating in an environment where humans cannot survive indefinitely.

Before I started for the summit, my blood oxygen saturation was terrible, around 57%. When I stepped out of the tent, I realized that my face was all pins and needles. I had no idea if the numbness was superficial or something more serious. There were only three of us climbing that day, and we had started at different times, heading upward in darkness. It was a planned 18-hour round trip, give or take a few hours. I tried to bring all my mental strength together and push myself for what might be the hardest night of my life. The people who had lost their lives the night before were on all of our minds.

On top of everything that had already happened, I was worried about the weather. We knew a storm was coming, but it was supposed to remain below us at around 23,000 feet (7,000 meters). Almost immediately after we started climbing, however, it became windy, and shortly afterward heavy snow began to fall. The photo below was taken on our way toward the summit, just outside Camp IV.

As we continued the ascent, I was shocked by how many people had problems so quickly. After about an hour, people who were already turning around and descending began asking me for help. Two climbers were too tired to untangle their ropes and just wanted me to switch their safety lines. Another climber had his rappel device attached to a frozen carabiner and was unable to use it. I took out another carabiner and hammered at his, trying to break up the ice that had built up in the threads. Twice I told him it wouldn’t work and that I couldn’t fix it, but I kept hammering away and eventually managed to free it.

The group was tired but continued down the mountain, only a few hours from Camp IV. As I continued upward, I reached an elevation of around 27,500 feet (8,400 meters) and came across my worst nightmare. There was a climber upside down on the ropes who appeared to be suffering from severe altitude illness. He was coughing up massive amounts of fluid while his arms would randomly reach out every now and then. His mental state was so deteriorated that I wasn’t sure if he was even aware of my presence. The snow was blowing hard and the temperature was around 30 degrees below zero. His oxygen mask was off, and some of his clothing, including his gloves, was missing. Aside from whatever altitude problems he was experiencing, he was also exposed to the extreme cold.

I knew his condition was terrible, but the expedition leader had given me emergency medicine, so I felt obligated to try something. I tried to swing his legs below him and make him sit upright. With his random movements, it was an extremely exhausting task. I was able to get his legs down, but I couldn’t get his body upright. There was so much fluid coming out of his mouth that I wasn’t sure how I could get the medicine down his throat. I also realized that even if I managed to give it to him, it wasn’t as if he would suddenly stand up and head down the mountain. He seemed to be minutes from death. While I was there trying to get him upright, a Sherpa from our expedition caught up to me. Once he saw the situation, he told me in his limited English, “No problem, no problem,” meaning nothing could be done. Not knowing what else to do, we reluctantly passed the poor man, as everyone else had done.

I was grateful not to see anyone else in that condition. Mentally, I was shaken by the dying climber, but physically I still felt strong. A short time later we reached the Balcony and exchanged oxygen bottles. From here I was only four or five hours from the summit and was completely confident that I’d make it to the top of the world. The photo above is me sitting at the Balcony, and you can see that the weather was still windy and snowy. Of course it was also extremely cold, but I could see light in the distance as the sun began to rise.

Right after the Balcony, not only did the sun come up, but the weather changed. We had clear skies above us, and the only clouds below us were along the Tibet side of the mountain.

Two climbers who had already summited were coming down and stopped to talk to me. They had left in the afternoon rather than at night and reached the summit at 2:30 A.M. We took the opportunity to exchange photos. Above is a photo of me with my Sherpa. At this point, I felt it was simply a matter of time before I reached the summit. About an hour later, I suddenly began to feel weaker and dehydrated. The weather was also getting worse, and we were moving through occasional whiteouts. One last team that had departed much earlier than we did was coming down the mountain. One of the climbers was clearly worried about the changing conditions. He pointed toward the weather, put both of his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Did you see all the dead bodies down there!? Go back!”

I lied and said I was only going to go a little farther, while fully intending to finish the job. As I cautiously continued upward, I could see the South Summit just ahead. I still had plenty of time based on the turnaround schedule we had been following. I drank some water and ate, and while I wasn’t feeling very strong anymore, I still felt reasonably well. Soon afterward, the storm seemed to be coming from below and was rapidly moving up the mountain. Each step I took seemed to bring worse weather. I looked back at the ridge we had just climbed and could see the wind and snow racing over it.

If we had been climbing on a clear, sunny day, without question I would have continued those final few hundred feet. But too many things had gone wrong during the previous 24 hours. Climbers had already died, I had passed a man dying on the ropes, I was beginning to feel weaker, and now the storm appeared to be overtaking us. Nothing about the day felt right anymore. I could see the South Summit just ahead, and after everything it had taken to get there, I was probably only about an hour from one of the biggest dreams of my life. Strangely, though, once I finally made the decision, there wasn’t much debate left in my mind. I turned around.

Like all mountains, regardless of the conditions, once you head down it’s a matter of survival. Needless to say, I no longer took any pictures that day. Aside from the Sherpa with me, no one else was around and I had the entire mountain to myself. With no one above me, I was the highest person on planet Earth. On my descent I ran into another one of my teammates and good friends. We discussed our options, and I explained that I felt we were playing with our lives. We decided to try to contact our expedition leader for a weather update. If the storm was expected to clear, we could continue. I was suddenly filled with a surge of energy. I was going to climb Mt. Everest after all! Using the radio, however, we weren’t able to get a response. We tried several times to contact anyone, but there was only radio silence. We were heading down after all.

By the time we descended to the Balcony, we were back in the major snowstorm. My friend’s Sherpa had an oxygen problem severe enough that he talked about possibly needing rescue. We were able to exchange his oxygen, which seemed to remedy the situation. All four of us were weak while descending, but as we went below the Balcony I suddenly found myself moving incredibly slowly. It was like a switch had gone off in my body. I was going so slowly that the next thing I knew, I was completely alone in the storm and could see only a short distance in front of me.

It seemed impossible to take even a few steps, and even worse, I was beginning to have irrational thoughts. It was like dreams were trying to force their way into my mind. It’s a bit hard to judge your own sanity when you’re alone in the death zone. I had no idea how bad my condition actually was or why it had suddenly come upon me. I did some basic math problems in my head and found that part of my brain still worked. Our expedition leader had shown me a trick where you close your eyes and bring your index fingers together. If you can hit them, you’re fine; if not, you’re losing your motor skills. This test I failed.

As I descended, I found myself so exhausted that I tried to sit down on the mountain and simply slide. More often than not, this was a waste of time and I got stuck in deep snow. Occasionally I picked up enough speed that I was a little scared I’d crash into a rock, or even worse, that my oxygen bottle would fly out of my pack and go down the mountain without me. I had secured my first oxygen bottle to my pack with a carabiner. The second one I had not, so if it fell out of my pack I certainly wouldn’t survive. Despite the risk, and the fact that it would have taken only about 30 seconds to fix, the idea of removing my backpack was overwhelming. I left things as they were.

As I slid down the mountain, I passed within inches of the climber I had tried to help earlier. He was dead now and nearly completely buried in snow. I began to question whether I should take the emergency medicine myself, and at this point I realized there was a serious chance I might not survive. I was completely alone in a snowstorm in the death zone, dangerously exhausted, and slowly losing my mind. I decided to change tactics, which probably helped save my life. Instead of sliding down, which sounded easy but was actually inefficient, I decided to rappel down everything I could. The terrain was very steep, but most people wouldn’t bother rappelling down half the terrain that I did. In my case, I was letting gravity do most of the work, and I was able to make rapid downward progress while using relatively little energy. I even caught up to the team we had seen at the Balcony and found that many of them appeared to be struggling as well.

When I was right behind their last member, I realized something terrifying that explained my extreme exhaustion and incoherent thoughts. I truly thought I was going to die at this point, and I yelled to the guy in front of me, “I’m going to die!” He turned around and saw that my oxygen line had broken off. Not only was I no longer breathing supplemental oxygen, but I still had the mask on my face, making it even more difficult to breathe. I seriously expected him to ignore me and keep going, but thankfully he stopped and used a knife to cut and remount the line. I thanked him, but he had only a warning for me: “If you want to survive, do not stop.”

I went against his advice and decided to rest. I was aware that I was panicking, so I thought it was wise to sit for a bit, breathe some oxygen, drink water, and eat so I could continue with as level a head as possible. With the snow blowing in, it didn’t take long for the others to disappear, and I was all alone again. My little break helped, and I was able to continue down more efficiently. The rest of the descent took an incredible amount of effort, and there were still a few times when I questioned whether I’d make it.

When I was close to camp, an incredible thing happened. I saw a man standing for no apparent reason in the middle of the storm. At first I thought I had imagined him, but as I got closer I realized he was real. “I heard someone was on the mountain still,” he said, and gave me a cup of hot tea. He warned me that I had one minute to drink it. As I thanked him between sips, a minute must have passed because he snatched the cup away before I was halfway finished and disappeared back toward camp.

As I continued, I became worried that I had missed camp and gotten lost. It wasn’t until I was almost directly in front of it that I could see the yellow tents. After being gone from camp for a total of 20 hours of nonstop climbing, I stumbled back into my tent at the South Col and collapsed. As I lay there completely wasted, I realized that I still had to get down the mountain. All I had done that day was get close to the South Summit and return to Camp IV. I still had the Yellow Band to cross, the Lhotse Face to descend, the Western Cwm, and then the Khumbu Icefall to deal with over the next few days.

The next morning I found out that while I was struggling to save myself, one of my other teammates, whom I hadn’t seen at all that night, had encountered people screaming for help and heroically given up his own summit attempt to bring them toward camp. He managed to get one of them back to a tent. He helped the second climber to within about 150 meters of the South Col, where the man collapsed and my friend was too exhausted to help anymore. That climber somehow was still alive the next morning but died soon afterward. The other climber he helped survived, although we heard that he suffered severe frostbite.

As I descended in sunshine the next morning, I figured the worst was over. But only about 15 minutes outside Camp IV, I passed two more bodies buried in the snow. I initially thought they had died while trying to reach the South Col, but later learned that they had actually been trying to leave the mountain. I never quite understood how they both died so quickly after leaving the South Col. This image came from my GoPro while I was recording video on the way down the mountain. I really debated putting it on my website out of respect for those who lost their lives. I ultimately decided to include it because I’ve always taken a journalistic approach to this site and simply posted my experiences here, good and bad, especially since the climber is not recognizable.

Despite feeling much better than the day before, I was still worried about making it down myself. With each step I took into thicker air, I felt stronger and more energized. I initially thought I wouldn’t make it to Camp III, but after reaching it I felt strong enough to continue and went all the way down to ABC. Once I was reunited with others from my team, we heard rumors that someone was writing an article called “A Bad Day on Everest.” I was never able to find it once I got back to civilization, but I was surprised to see articles blaming inexperience and overcrowding for what happened that night, while neither explanation seemed to match what I had experienced.

Several of the climbers who died were experienced at high altitude, which was a reminder to me that experience alone cannot eliminate the dangers of Everest. I had gone into summit day feeling strong and confident, and within hours I had gone from thinking the summit was almost guaranteed to wondering whether I would make it back to my tent alive. I had also learned how quickly an equipment problem, bad weather, exhaustion, or simple bad luck could become life-threatening at that altitude. The motivations for wanting to climb Everest are an entirely different topic. What surprised me was that none of this changed mine. I was disappointed that I hadn’t reached the summit, but I never regretted turning around. By the time I was safely off the mountain, I already knew I wanted another chance. My dream of reaching the top of the world hadn’t changed, and I would return.

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