Climbing
On the afternoon of May 10, 1996, high on the Southeast Ridge of Mount Everest, the weather began to turn.
Commercial expeditions led by Rob Hall and Scott Fischer had spent weeks preparing clients for a summit push from the South Col. By the following morning, eight climbers would be dead or mortally injured in what was then the deadliest single event in Everest’s history.
30 years later, the 1996 Everest disaster remains the defining modern mountain tragedy: a story about ambition, commercial guiding, overcrowding, bad decisions and survival at the edge of human endurance. It also became something else: one of the most contested narratives in mountaineering history.
The catastrophe was immortalized in “Into Thin Air,” the bestselling 1997 account by journalist and climber Jon Krakauer, who survived the storm while on assignment for Outside magazine. The book transformed Krakauer into one of the world’s most famous nonfiction writers and permanently shaped public understanding of the disaster. It also left several people portrayed in its pages arguing that history hardened around a single, emotionally charged perspective written in the immediate aftermath of trauma.
Among them was Sandy Hill. Now, on the 30th anniversary of the disaster, Hill has broken decades of relative silence in interviews with The Daily Mail and The Telegraph,, speaking publicly about Krakauer’s portrayal of her as an inexperienced, spoilt socialite. “Fairly or unfairly, to her derogators Pittman epitomized all that was reprehensible about Dick Bass’s popularization of the Seven Summits and the debasement of the world’s highest mountain,’ is how Krakauer describes the New York socialite, who reverted to her maiden name Hill subsequently. “Insulated by her money, a staff of attendants and unwavering self-absorption, Pittman was heedless of the resentment and scorn she inspired in others.”
Through his critical portrayal of Hill in his book, Krakauer kickstarted a vilification that culminated in the production of not just one but even two movies. The latter one, titled “Everest,” starred the likes Jake Gyllenhaal as Scott Fischer and Keira Knightley as Jan Arnold (Rob Hall’s wife), while Hill Pittmann was portrayed by Vanessa Kirby. “It devastated my life,” she told the The Daily Mail. “Every magazine, every newspaper, I was made fun of.”
Krakauer described Sherpas carrying an espresso machine for Hill and other luxury items for her expedition and alleged that Hill spent part of her summit push being short-roped by Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, a physically exhausting technique in which a stronger climber assists another by rope on steep terrain. The latter allegation Hill strongly denies as “completely untrue,” while the former she clarifies as being a small percolator that many hikers will take on expeditions. “It was portrayed in the movie as what they might have in a restaurant — a five-cup Gaggia, with a couple of Sherpas humping it up the mountain,” she fumes in her recent interviews. Either way, the damage was done and Hill reports as being vilified and ridiculed. It threw the 41-year-old into deep depressions and ultimately led to her leaving New York.
But the dispute between Krakauer and Hill should not overshadow the human tragedy at the center of it all. In the spring of 1996, Everest’s commercial guiding era was still relatively young. Hall’s Adventure Consultants and Fischer’s Mountain Madness expeditions were among the best-known operators on the mountain, marketing Everest to paying clients willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a guided ascent. Krakauer had joined Hall’s team to report on the growing commercialization of the world’s highest peak. Hill, then a well-known New York socialite and adventure travel writer married to MTV executive Robert Pittman, was climbing with Fischer’s team while filing dispatches for Vogue.
The summit push began overnight on May 9. Problems emerged almost immediately. Fixed ropes had not been installed early enough on key sections above the Balcony and at the Hillary Step, creating dangerous bottlenecks. Climbers reached the summit hours later than planned. Some guides abandoned established turnaround times. Oxygen supplies began running low. Then, a sudden and savage blizzard descended on the upper mountain in the early afternoon, trapping dozens of climbers in conditions where visibility dropped to near zero. Several climbers got lost on the descent. A group that included guide Neil Beidleman, clients Klev Schoening, Charlotte Fox, Tim Madsen, Sandy Hill Pittman, and Lene Gammelgaard, along with guide Mike Groom and clients Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba, wandered in the blizzard until they could no longer walk, huddling some 65 feet from a drop-off of the Kangshung Face.
What happened next is one of the most remarkable acts of individual heroism in mountaineering history. Boukreev, alone, left Camp IV three times and spent most of the night attempting to find the stranded climbers. On his second and third attempt, he located them and escorted Pittman, Fox, and Madsen to safety. Krakauer, however, did not stop from criticizing Boukreev’s decision to descend early and climb without bottled oxygen as irresponsible for a guide, alleging it contributed to a lack of client support. Boukreev later rejected the allegations in his book “The Climb,” stressing that descending, he was able to conserve energy and provide a crucial, immediate rescue effort from Camp 4, which would have been impossible had he stayed with clients.
By the end of the disaster and its immediate aftermath, eight climbers associated with the 1996 Everest tragedy had died. Climbers Hall, Fischer, Doug Hansen, Andy Harris, Yasuko Namba perished on the mountain. Meanwhile Indo-Tibetan Border Police officers Subedar Tsewang Smanla, Lance Naik Dorje Morup, and Head Constable Tsewan Pakjor also perished in the same storm on the north-side of the mountain. Several others barely survived. Among them was Beck Weathers, who was twice left for dead before somehow staggering back into camp with catastrophic frostbite; he lost his right hand, the fingers of his left hand, his nose, and parts of both feet.
But it was Hill who became one of the disaster’s most publicly scrutinized survivors. Krakauer, however, has repeatedly denied ever blaming Hill for the disaster itself. Writing last year, he said he had “never written or said” that she was responsible and expressed sympathy for the criticism she endured after the book’s publication. Krakauer has also reflected publicly on the strange aftermath of Into Thin Air — a book born from catastrophe that became one of the bestselling works of narrative nonfiction of its era.
In an interview with the New York Post ahead of the 30-year anniversary, he acknowledged the uncomfortable reality of the book’s success with characteristic bluntness: “I got f***ing rich.” Yet in the same series of anniversary interviews, Krakauer also described Everest as “probably the one thing in my life that I really regret,” telling National Geographic: “I wish I’d never gone.”
What is undebatable is that 30 years later, Everest itself has changed dramatically. In 1996, fewer than 700 people had summited the mountain. Since then, more than 13,000 ascents have been recorded as guiding infrastructure, weather forecasting, supplemental oxygen systems and Sherpa logistics transformed the climb into a global industry. Fatalities still occur almost every season, but statistically the mountain has become safer than it was in the 1990s.
Yet the 1996 disaster still looms over Everest in a way few climbing tragedies ever have. Part of that is because of the scale of the catastrophe itself. Part of it is because Into Thin Air became one of the defining nonfiction books of its era, shaping how millions understood the mountain and the people on it.
30 years later, survivors are still debating not only what happened on Everest, but how the story was ultimately told.
