The Single Deadliest Day for Climbers on Mount Everest

On May 10, 1996, dozens of climbers guided by commercial outfitters were making their final push toward the summit of Mount Everest when a severe storm swept in, trapping them in the Death Zone. Eight climbers and guides didn’t make it back alive, making it the single deadliest 24 hours for climbers in the history of the mountain.

In the wake of the 1996 tragedy—chronicled by journalist and climber Jon Krakauer in his bestselling book, Into Thin Air—an 84-year-old Edmund Hillary lamented the crowds and commercialization that put the lives of Everest climbers at risk. “It was inevitable,” Hillary told Time in 2003. “I've been forecasting a disaster of that nature for some time. And it will happen again.”

Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first known climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953. At the time of Hillary and Norgay’s remarkable achievement, the world’s tallest mountain had already claimed several lives, including the famous British duo of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, pioneering adventurers who disappeared in 1924 attempting to be the first to reach Everest’s 29,032-foot peak.

For decades after Hillary and Norgay’s historic summit, Mount Everest was off-limits to all but the world’s most skilled and intrepid mountaineers. Fewer than 20 people summited Everest in the entire decade of the 1960s, and just 78 more reached the top in the 1970s. But things began to change in the 1980s with the discovery of the so-called “Yak Route” up the mountain’s southeast ridge, which offered an easier path to the peak.

Then in 1985, a wealthy, 55-year-old Texan named Dick Bass was successfully guided to the summit of Mount Everest on his third attempt. According to Krakauer, that’s when “the floodgates were flung wide open” and the previously impossible achievement of scaling Mount Everest became tantalizingly attainable for people with enough money, time and determination.

Commercialization and overcrowding on Everest became serious concerns in the 1990s with hundreds of paying climbers clamoring to reach the summit during the same narrow window each May. The greatest danger for even the most seasoned climbers is getting caught in Everest’s “Death Zone,” an oxygen-starved region above 26,000 feet that hobbles climbers with delirium and eventually causes their bodies to completely shut down.

For most of the year, the summit of Mount Everest is completely inaccessible, buffeted by hurricane-force winds and frigid temperatures. But in May, right before the monsoon season begins, there’s a brief reprieve from the wind that offers climbers a narrow opening to reach the top. However, with more climbers trying to squeeze into the same tight time window, it can create serious traffic jams on the mountain.

Professional climber and author Mark Synnott witnessed one of the worst bottlenecks firsthand on May 22, 2019, what he calls “the day Everest broke.” During a normal climbing season, outfitters coordinate with each other to limit the number of climbers making a run at the summit on the same day. But in 2019, the weather in May was so bad that when the skies finally cleared on May 22, hundreds of climbers decided to go at the same time.

“The statistic on Everest is something like 3 percent of people who go for the summit don't make it back,” says Synnott, author of The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest. “So when you see that many people streaming out of camp, you’re like, yeah, a good chunk of these people aren't coming back. And that’s pretty much exactly how it played out.”

During the 2019 climbing season, a total of 11 climbers died on Everest, including four on May 23. That day, all four fatalities occurred after the climbers had reached the summit and were trying to get back to camp. Delayed by crowds and bad weather, they were caught in the Death Zone without backup oxygen tanks. It was eerily similar to the conditions that led to Everest’s deadliest single day back in 1996.

In 1996, Krakauer traveled to Nepal on assignment with Outside magazine to report on what it was like to climb Mount Everest in the age of the “guaranteed summit.” Krakauer’s guide was Rob Hall, a veteran Everest outfitter who ran ads boasting a “100-percent success rate” for his clients. A competing Everest guide, Scott Fischer, told Krakauer, “We’ve got the big E figured out, we’ve got it totally wired. These days, I’m telling you, we’ve built a yellow brick road to the summit.”

An Everest expedition takes an average of two months to complete. It starts with a weeklong hike to Base Camp at more than 17,500 feet. The next six weeks are spent acclimatizing to the extreme altitude, which burns the lungs, fogs the mind and makes it difficult to perform even simple physical tasks. Once climbers have adapted, it’s time to go even higher. With the help of supplemental oxygen, climbers ascend to four increasingly high-altitude camps, the last of which is South Col at 26,000 feet. From there, it’s a final, grueling, 12-hour trek to the top.

In 1996, climbers paid as much as $65,000 per person to commercial outfitters like Hall and Fischer, who made all the arrangements for a successful summit: guides, food, gear, Sherpa porters, government permits, oxygen tanks, etc. (Today, climbing Everest costs between $65,000 and $125,000 according to Climbing Magazine.)

Up until the 1980s, most people who attempted Everest were experienced mountaineers in their late 20s and early 30s, reports Krakauer. By the 1990s, the fastest-growing demographic on Everest was people over 50. The flood of older climbers was partly due to the price tag of the commercial outfitters; who else could afford such an expensive venture? But it was also driven by the perception—promoted by optimists like Hall and Fischer—that anyone in reasonable shape could summit Everest with the right guide.

Shortly before midnight on May 9, 1996, three groups of climbers set out from South Col camp to make the final ascent to the summit. Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants led a group of 15, composed of three guides, four Sherpas, and eight paying climbers, including Krakauer. Scott Fischer of Mountain Madness led a group of 14, composed of three guides, five Sherpas and six paying climbers. A third group was a Taiwanese expedition without any guides.

For weeks leading up to the summit attempt, Hall preached the critical importance of the team’s “turnaround time.” It takes roughly 12 to 14 hours to climb from South Col to the top of Everest, a vertical gain of more than 3,000 feet. That entire time is spent in the Death Zone, where even with supplemental oxygen, the body can suffer severe altitude sickness.

Hall told Krakauer and the rest of the Adventure Consultants team that if they didn’t make it to the summit by 2 p.m., they would have to turn around, even if they were only a few hundred feet from the top. If not, they risked running out of oxygen and being too exhausted to make it back to camp.

"With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill," Hall told Krakauer. "The trick is to get back down alive."

It takes tremendous maturity and clear-headedness to come that close to achieving a lifelong dream and turn back in the name of safety, which is why so many climbers put their lives at risk.

“Let’s not mince words: Everest doesn’t attract a whole lot of well-balanced folks,” Krakauer told Outside magazine in 1997. "The psychological circuitry of most Everest climbers makes it hard as hell for us to quit, even when it’s obvious that we should.”

Due to a series of delays, Krakauer was one of the few climbers who made it to the summit before 2 p.m., where he was concerned to see dark clouds moving into the valley below. The day had dawned clear and sunny with no indications of a storm, but Everest weather can turn on a dime.

On his way down, Krakauer passed climbers who were clearly exhausted and moving very slowly, including one who was being "short-roped" by a Sherpa, essentially dragged up the mountain. Some of these climbers and their guides wouldn’t make it to the summit until 3:30 p.m., well after the turnaround time.

On his way down, Krakauer hit a traffic jam at the Hillary Step, a steep notch in the south ridge line that can only be ascended and descended on a single rope. Krakauer’s oxygen tank ran out while waiting nearly an hour for his turn on the rope, but he was able to grab a life-saving backup tank at the South Summit.

As Krakauer descended past the bottleneck, the weather worsened, quickly changing from light snow to high winds and near-zero visibility. High above him, Krakauer's teammates were celebrating on a summit still bathed in sunshine. They had no idea that their time was running out.

By the time the last of the climbers and guides began their descent, the storm was raging. One by one, oxygen tanks began to run out. Delirious and exhausted, one group got lost on the way back to camp and was stranded on an exposed ledge. The guides and Sherpas with the lost group made the difficult decision to leave behind two unresponsive climbers—47-year-old Yasuko Namba and 49-year-old Beck Weathers—while they went for help. Namba died, but Weathers was able to revive himself and stumble blindly back to camp the next morning. Weathers ended up losing his hand and nose to frostbite, but his survival was nothing short of miraculous.

Scott Fischer, the Mountain Madness guide, died from hypothermia and exhaustion after hours in the Death Zone without oxygen. Another guide, Andrew Harris, seemingly made it back to camp, but was so delirious that he wandered off and disappeared. One of the saddest stories belongs to Rob Hall, who stayed behind trying to save his client Doug Hansen. After Hansen died, Hall spent an excruciating night on the mountain without oxygen and exposed to wind chills as low as minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Early in the morning of May 11, Hall made radio contact with Base Camp. He was alive, but suffering from severe frostbite on his hands and feet. Hall was patched through to his pregnant wife, Jan Arnold, back in New Zealand via satellite phone. Throughout the day, Arnold and the rest of the Base Camp crew urged Hall to attempt a descent, but his injuries were too severe. Hall’s last words to Arnold were, "I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much."

A total of eight people died on Everest on May 10 and 11, 1996. Five, including Hall and Fischer, died on Everest’s southeast ridge, while three climbers with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police died on the Northeast Ridge.

The details of exactly what transpired on Everest on May 10 and 11, 1996, have been heavily debated. Krakauer's book became an international bestseller, but other survivors wrote their own accounts, including Anatoli Boukreev, a guide with Fischer’s team whom Krakauer accused of abandoning climbers on the mountain while he descended safely to camp. The difficulty of piecing together a definitive story is compounded by the fact that everyone on the mountain that day was suffering from varying degrees of altitude sickness that impaired their judgment and clouded their memories.

While the 1996 tragedy holds the distinction of being the deadliest 24-hour period for climbers, there have been even worse days on Everest for Sherpas, the Tibetan ethnic group native to the Himalayas. In 2014, an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas at Everest’s Khumbu Icefall. A year later, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake ripped through Nepal, killing an estimated 9,000 people, including 22 at Everest Base Camp. The 2015 Everest earthquake victims included three climbers and 19 Sherpas.

While climber and author Mark Synnott agrees that the crowds at Everest are a problem, especially in a bad weather year, he takes issue with the image of all Everest climbers as “fat cat CEOs and corporate lawyers who are in over their heads and not climbing for the right reasons.” That characterization of the rich, reckless Everest climber was widespread after the success of Into Thin Air.

“That’s not what I saw when I was there,” says Synnott, who met a plumber from Poland and a group of underprivileged kids from India when he climbed Everest in 2019. “I don't want to fault people who are going and trying to achieve their dream. If your dream is to climb Mount Everest, well then freaking go and do it.”