Several explanations compete: human error, weather, all the dangers inherent in human beings pitting themselves against the world's most forbidding peak.Ī single cause of the 1996 tragedy may never be known, says HBS professor Michael A.

Newspaper and magazine articles and booksmost famously, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster have attempted to explain how events got so out of control that particular day. As the world's mightiest mountain, Everest has never been a cakewalk: 148 people have lost their lives attempting to reach the summit since 1922. Two of these, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, were extremely skilled team leaders with much experience on Everest. Five climbers, however, did not survive the descent. above sea level in preparation for an attempt on the summit.What went wrong on Mount Everest on May 10, 1996? That day, twenty-three climbers reached the summit. In the spring of 1996, 14 groups from 11 countries swarmed Everest’s lower campsite, digging in 17,600 ft.

Expeditions charge climbers, often unskilled, up to $65,000 to be walked to the top. Tibet and China, recognizing a moneymaking natural resource when they see one, have thrown the peak open to tourism. In the 44 years since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa climber, Tenzing Norgay, first scaled the peak, more than 700 people have followed them to the top at least 150 others have died in the attempt.ĭespite this fearsome history, Everest is big business these days. The altitude is the same, the 40☏- below-zero temperature is the same, and, most disturbingly, the lung-shredding, brain-addling atmosphere–barely one-third the pressure of sea-level air–is the same. Standing on top of the peak is roughly equivalent to stopping a passenger jet in mid-flight and climbing out onto the wing. As it turned out, two IMAX filmmakers David Breashears and Ed Viesturs were there with cameras.Įverest, as TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger explained, had become a popular destination despite the isolated and challenging environs:Įven under the best of conditions, scaling a mountain like Everest is an act of near madness. The story was also an opportunity to look at how a tragedy in one of the world’s most remote spots ended up so well-documented (including in Jon Krakauer’s 1997 book Into Thin Air). When images and accounts of the 1996 climb on which the movie is based were published in the book Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, TIME examined how the disaster-in which a storm resulted in eight deaths-came to pass. The new movie Everest is all Hollywood, with big movie stars meant for a big IMAX screen.

Jon krakauer everest