LEARNING FROM THE 1996 EVEREST TRAGEDY FOUR OUR DAILY LIFE
Many of us remember the 1996 Everest disaster when eight climbers died while attempting to descent from the summit. What we can learn from this tragedy in our daily life?
The two teams of Climbers Mountain madness led by Rob Hall and Adventure consultant led by Scott Fisher Climb together to reach the Everest summit in May 1996. Everything seems under control until the team arrived at post 4, the south col 7900 m. The adventure consultant team began a summit attempt on 10 May 1996 and found that the rope was not fixed properly when the team reach balcony 8350 m. This cost 1 hour of fixing the rope. When the team reach hillary step 8760, again they found no fixed rope had been placed and the team must wait for 1 hour for Helpers to fix it. This is affecting a traffic jam because 33 climbers were attempting the summit on the same day, and Hall and Fischer had asked their climbers to stay within 150 m (500 ft) of each other, there was a bottleneck at the single fixed line at the Hillary Step. Some of the climbers Hutchison, Kasischke, and Taske returned to Camp IV as they feared they would run out of supplementary oxygen due to the delays.
Anatoly boukreev was the first climber to reach the summit at 13.07. Many climbers had not reached the summit at 14.00, the latest safe time to turn around before nightfall. Boukreev helped other climbers to reach the summit after 1.5 hours of waiting. The snow started to fall and the light was diminishing at 15.00. Some sherpa’s descent from the summit and found a climbers Doug Hansen above Hillary step and asked him to descent but the climber refuse and insist to reach the top. The sherpa’s offered Hansen to reach the summit but Hall ordered them to descent to help other climbers. Rob hall decided to help Hansen who run out the supplementary oxygen to reach the summit. “At this point, I feel deeply sad, many emotional decisions were taken. I can feel how bad the situation is, I imagine myself was there, I would be worried and afraid. The climbers are in a real dangerous situation. I don’t blame them, because I was not there. I understand when the summit is only 100 meters in front of you, you will forget everything. We talk about months' preparation, big money was spent and of course the two teams' competitions.
The worsening weather began causing difficulties for climbers to descent, The blizzard was reducing the visibility and, some of the rope line buried. Some climbers and sherpas are trapped under the balcony 8350 n in the storm.I don’t want to discuss in detail how 8 climbers dead during the descent, you can read it somewhere But I recommend you to read the Climb by Anatoly Boukreev. “I am not able to tell the details of their death, I was also climber on a smaller scale compared with them. I am so sad every time I read their death story. When you run out of energy, lack oxygen you will think slowly, hard to think logically in that situation. Let take lessons from the tragedy, instead of blaming this or that, it will be subjective.”
Always check and recheck how your plan is implemented.
We can learn from the rope fixing above camp IV. The rope problem caused delays and traffic jams. This is how the problem started and developed. We must check our plan even we have trust in the team who work on it. You must have a piece of clear evidence that your plan was implemented correctly, by photos, videos, or other things.
You must know the critical point for the decision
14.00 limit to reach the summit is critical. Breaking the time limit rules affects the bad consequences to the climbers. You can break the rules when you are fully ready to face the consequences.
In our daily life, sometimes we are at the critical point of decision. Learn from this tragedy, although the mission was so close completed if the situation is too dangerous you must be able to decide to abort the mission. The cost is too expensive, your life. You can rearrange another mission. So we must know the risk to reward ratio.
Do what your plan
When we are not disciplined to our own rules, actually this is the starting point of the problem. I know in certain situations we need to adjust the decision according to the real condition. Adjusting anything is need to be done within the safe range. You must know your limit.
Your “summit dream” is not everything
Everybody has their dream in their life. They will do everything to make their dream come true for whatever cost. Learn from Hansen insisting to went to the summit although it was too late. You can not make others in danger because of your dream. You need to be wise, what is your success mean if scarifying others?.
Missions are always 2 ways, departure and going back to the home.
Many climbers are blind by the summit and forget how to descent. Many stories about tragic accidents on their descent after summiting.
In our daily life, some time is just too focused on the goal of the mission. We forget what We will do after the goal is reached, how we are coming home. Do we already well prepared? do we still have enough energy?. Reaching the goal is important but making sure that we can come back is even more important. Don’t be blind to your goal and forget everything behind it.
I hope we can take the lesson from the tragedy for our daily life.
