THE grim tale of how eight people died in a single day on Mount Everest hits cinemas today – but the truth is even bleaker than the film, a survivor tells The Sun.
Amateur climber Lou Kasischke, who lived through the storm that killed so many of his fellow mountaineers, blames deadly rivalry between competing expedition teams for the tragedy.
The 73-year-old retired lawyer was on a commercial ascent of the mountain organised by exploration company Adventure Consultants, led by New Zealander Rob Hall.
The company was in an unofficial competition with the rival Mountain Madness team led by American Scott Fischer — portrayed in new film Everest by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Before setting off for the 29,029ft summit on that fateful day in May 1996, Hall had made his ten climbers, including Lou, promise to turn around if there was no chance of them returning to base camp in daylight.
The previous year Hall had turned back at the same spot for safety reasons, but on seeing rival Fischer heading on to the summit, this time he ignored that strict schedule.
Those watching from the base camp could not believe they kept climbing so late. Both Fischer and Hall left the peak far too close to darkness — and died on the way back.
One hazard that Everest climbers face just a few hundred feet from the summit is a 40ft rock wall, nicknamed the Hillary Step after the first man to climb Everest, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary.
A bottleneck at this point further held up Hall and his climbers by a fatal two hours.
Lou, from Michigan in the US, says: “It was a series of bad decisions which cost those lives.
“Until noon that day, there was no story, it was just another hard climb. At noon it was too late.
“The climbing plan was to go down at that point. No one would have died if the plan had been followed.”
He adds: “Rob enjoyed his status as the world leader of professionally organised expeditions at high altitude and he saw Scott as wanting to get into his turf, but he said, ‘There is room for all of us.’
“To feed the business they need success. The minute Scott kept going to the summit, he couldn’t face not going.”
With Hall’s clients paying £45,000 each for the trip, and journalist Jon Krakauer joining the expedition to cover the ascent, there was intense pressure to succeed.
It was Hall’s fifth climb to the summit and he helped Japanese climber Yasuko Namba to become the then oldest woman to reach the peak at the age of 47.
Yasuko, fellow climber Doug Hansen and guide Andy Harris never made it back. On Everest’s north side, three Indian climbers also died.
In the whole of that year 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it Everest’s deadliest year that far.
Last year 16 climbers died in an avalanche and in April this year 18 died in avalanches caused by the Nepal earthquake.
The film paints Hall — played by Australian actor Jason Clarke — in a heroic light for risking his life by trying to help the exhausted Hansen down the mountain.
Hall’s wife Jan — played by Keira Knightley in the film — was seven months pregnant at the time of the disaster.
In a final satellite call from the mountain he told her: “Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.”
But Lou thinks that as leader, Hall was to blame for putting Hansen and the others in danger.
He says: “Can you be a hero for putting out the fire you started?”
Lou, who was then 53, says it was his love for his wife Sandy that saved his life.
At just 100 metres below the summit — in Everest’s grimly named Death Zone — he was the final member of the Adventure Consultants expedition to turn back, with the temperature at a bone-chilling minus 30 degrees.
He recalls: “Everything was telling me to go forth. When you’re that close, you feel nothing can stop you.
“Then there was that strange, strange moment when all I could hear was my beating heart slowing down. I call it the voice of the heart because that’s the only sound I could hear.
“At that moment I thought, ‘This is the story I could come home to tell,’ that I hadn’t been reckless, that I had behaved in a manner Sandy would be proud of.”
He had promised her he would turn around if the climb became too dangerous — and that decision was his salvation.
But the journey back proved the most perilous part of the adventure. A fierce blizzard left Lou unable to see more than a foot in front of him and he says: “You get off route by a couple of degrees and you are going to walk off that mountain.
“It was a whiteout. It’s one of the things a mountaineer fears the most.
Generally you don’t move in a whiteout, but you can’t do that on Everest because you’ll freeze to death from the inside out.”
By the time Lou reached the relative safety of his tent at 26,000ft, he had frostbite and was snowblind. With winds of up to 100mph whipping through the camp he feared it was the end.
He says: “The damage the wind was doing to the tents . . . it was shredding them. I felt I was probably going to die.”
Once his eyesight returned, Lou had to resume his descent, even though the storm was still raging.
The alternative — staying at the Death Zone camp, where the atmosphere’s oxygen content is only a third of that at sea level — can also prove fatal.
Only back at base camp was he able to grieve for the dead.
He says: “I just threw down my pack and it all came out of me and now I’m realising, ‘God, these people are dead.’
“They were my friends. We all got along.”
Lou — dad to Douglas and Gregg, who were 27 and 24 at the time of the expedition — adds that memories of the disaster are still too raw for many of the survivors to talk about it.
Five of the climbers, including Lou, have written books about their experiences but he says: “There were other people who made it clear they didn’t want to have contact, because they didn’t want to relive the
experience through discussions.
“We all lived it together, but there are still questions and recriminations.”
After The Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy – One Survivor’s Story by Lou Kasischke is available now.
Everest in numbers
29,029ft height of Mount Everest
26,000ft start of the “death zone” where oxygen levels fall significantly
12,000 number of times Everest has been attempted – 8,000 succeeded, 4,000 failed
250 people have died climbing Everest
120 dead bodies remain on Everest
1950s Summits: 6 Deaths: 1
1960s Summits: 18 Deaths: 6
1970s Summits: 78 Deaths: 48
1980s Summits: 183 Deaths: 59
1990s Summits: 882 Deaths: 59
2000s Summits: 5048 Deaths: 69
2010s to date Summits: 2852 Deaths: 56
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