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This is a dispute, it's worth noting at the top, that has grown surprisingly ugly. One example: Boukreev's supporters are circulating a tape that, they allege, proves that Krakauer refused to help a climber in serious distress that day on Everest. Another example: Both sides hint that they have gone easy on one another in their books, and that the really damning stuff is still in their files. And there are unsubstantiated rumors of adultery, petty hatreds and drug use high on Everest that might have contributed, if only in small ways, to the death toll that day. Because the tragedy is still so fresh, few are willing to go public with these kinds of details. But you get the impression that, if anyone still remembers Everest '96 in the year 2010, the tell-all memoirs and retrospectives will be rolling off the assembly line. That said, the core document in the case against "Into Thin Air" is indisputably "The Climb," co-written by Boukreev, a flinty Russian climber who was the lead guide on Scott Fischer's team, and DeWalt, a little-known writer and investigative filmmaker. It is not a particularly impressive book, nor one that inspires deep confidence in its reportorial method. (Among other things, the book's co-authors did not, as Krakauer did, conduct independent interviews with either Mike Groom or Neal Beidleman, the only other professional guides who survived after being caught high on the mountain that day. DeWalt, whose account of the tragedy relies heavily on briefing tapes that were made shortly after the tragedy, says he tried vigorously to contact Beidleman.) But "The Climb" has become a rallying point for climbers and others who felt maligned by, or disappointed in, Krakauer's book. Written mostly by DeWalt and interlaced with excerpts from interviews with Boukreev, "The Climb" often feels like it's been lashed together with duct tape. DeWalt didn't do his co-author any favors by interviewing him in English, instead of translating Boukreev's words from his native Russian. The climber's halting responses to DeWalt's questions tend to sound like garbled subtitles on a movie you'd probably want to flee. ("Yes, big strong wind outside, very cold, lots of problem come, and I upset with him in this situation.") Worse, "The Climb" was riddled with small errors -- misidentified photos, misinformation about where key bits of evidence about climber Andy Harris' mysterious demise were found -- not all of which have been fully corrected in the new paperback edition. But "The Climb" has an unvarnished power that's very difficult to deny. Part of that power comes from the slow accumulation of detail about the journeyman climber's life in post-Soviet Russia. (At one point, Boukreev is so broke that he frets he will have to sell his ice ax in order to return home.) But the bigger part of that power -- and, unfortunately, the factor that will frustrate readers in search of a coherent, independent story -- derives from the fact that it's an angry book, written in direct response to Krakauer's account. As one climber has put it, it's a book that reads more like a legal document, a brief for the defense, than an attempt to tell a straightforward tale. Boukreev is no longer around to defend "The Climb." But by all accounts he was puzzled and upset by his depiction in Krakauer's book and wanted to get his version on the record. As anyone who's read "Into Thin Air" or other accounts of the Everest tragedy is aware, multiple errors in judgment -- some minor, some less so -- combined with the weather to cause the stunning death toll in May of 1996. Krakauer, to be sure, spreads the blame pretty widely, and doesn't spare himself. Among the questions he asks is: Why did savvy guides like Fischer and Hall allow clients to stay on the summit so late in the day? A generally accepted rule is that climbers who aren't within shouting distance of Everest's summit by 1 or 2 p.m. must be turned around in order to descend before nightfall. But many climbers that day were on or near the summit as late as 4 p.m., shortly before the blizzard began to roll in. It's a question that, despite being hashed over in countless late-night discussions among climbers, continues to be a source of puzzlement. The climber who comes off the least well in Krakauer's account, however, is probably Boukreev. Headstrong and taciturn, he was a difficult man to cozy up to -- a situation that was exacerbated by his fractured English. Boukreev didn't believe in coddling weak clients. He was hired, he says in "The Climb," "to prepare the mountain for the people instead of the other way around." Unlike many of the other Everest guides, Boukreev tended to hustle quickly up and down the mountain, fixing ropes and performing other duties, while only rarely attending to individual climbers or delivering much-needed pep talks. "He just wasn't a team player," says Dale Kruse, a fellow climber on Fischer's expedition, in "Into Thin Air." Boukreev and DeWalt don't quibble much with this interpretation; they merely note that Fischer had a second guide, Beidleman, who could make nice with the paying clients. What Boukreev and DeWalt do take issue with is Krakauer's interpretation of Boukreev's decisions once things began to get hairy that day on Everest. Many of the facts about Boukreev's actions on May 10 aren't really in dispute. Both sides agree that, with Fisher's assent, Boukreev climbed without supplemental oxygen -- an unorthodox decision for a guide, who needs to be strong enough not merely to get to the summit but to aid climbers who might be in distress. Both sides agree, too, that, before the storm approached, Boukreev sped down the mountain alone, hours ahead of his clients. ("Indeed, by 5:00 p.m., while his teammates were still struggling through the clouds at 28,000 feet," Krakauer writes, "Boukreev was already in his tent resting and drinking tea.") Both sides further agree that, after returning alone to Camp Four, Boukreev acted heroically in returning back out into the storm to rescue three other climbers who were stranded a short distance away on the South Col. In "Into Thin Air," Krakauer portrays Boukreev's decision to climb without oxygen as a grievous mistake -- one that forced him, because of the severe cold, to descend rapidly instead of being able to wait for clients on the summit. He provides Boukreev's rationale for his quick descent in the form of an interview the Russian climber gave to Men's Journal: "I stayed [on the summit] for about an hour ... It is very cold, naturally, it takes your strength ... My position was that I would not be good if I stood around freezing, waiting. I would be more useful if I returned to Camp Four in order to be able to take oxygen up to the returning climbers or to go up to help them if some became weak during the descent." An unnamed climber from Fischer's team, quoted in "Into Thin Air," characterizes Boukreev's actions somewhat differently. Boukreev, this climber says, "cut and ran." Krakauer, too, is suspicious of Boukreev's motives, and he points out what he calls a "serious flaw" in the "return to get tea" argument. Since Boukreev was not issued a radio on the climb -- another mistake on Fischer's part -- how could he have known if anyone left above him needed his help? "I certainly don't think Anatoli caused the tragedy," Krakauer says. He claims that he tried to be as fair as possible to Boukreev in "Into Thin Air," and to fully credit him for his late-day heroism, particularly since he felt that he had perhaps been too hard on the Russian climber in his earlier Outside article. But Krakauer doesn't back off his criticisms. Among the facts he hasn't printed, he says, is that many of the Sherpas on the trip, some of whom were treated poorly by Boukreev, do blame him for many of the deaths. To Boukreev and DeWalt, however, few things seemed fair about "Into Thin Air." For Boukreev, this spat had entered Hemingway territory -- both his honor and his manhood had been publicly called into question. In "The Climb," they make a number of responses to Krakauer's book. Among other things, they reemphasize that Boukreev, who had already summited several 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen and was among the strongest climbers alive, was given permission to climb without O's, as climbers like to call the bottles of compressed gas. More important, though, they hotly dispute Krakauer's assertion that Boukreev acted unilaterally when he descended down to Camp Four in front of his clients. This is the point where, in the case of Boukreev vs. Krakauer, all paths diverge. Here's Krakauer's version: In "Into Thin Air," he recounts a conversation that took place between Boukreev and Fischer during the mid-afternoon on May 10 above the Hillary Step, a notoriously treacherous ridge just below the summit. A tired-looking Fischer was heading up the mountain; Krakauer, Boukreev and two other climbers, Andy Harris and Martin Adams, were heading down. According to Krakauer, a short conversation ensued. "As Adams remembered the conversation, Boukreev told Fischer, 'I am going down with Martin [Adams].'" Fischer assented, and continued trudging up the mountain. It would become clear, however, that Boukreev did not stick with Adams as he claimed he would -- instead he raced down without him. In the aftermath of the tragedy, however, Boukreev said that he'd had a second conversation with Fischer above the Hillary Step after the other climbers had left. In this conversation, according to Boukreev, Fischer agreed that Boukreev should descend ahead of all of his teammates in order to prepare tea and gather oxygen in order to bring them to anyone who needed them. Krakauer is convinced -- or at least, he says, he is "98 percent convinced" -- that Boukreev invented this second conversation. "This was a new story," he says. "Scott [Fischer] was walking away -- he didn't wait around." Besides Krakauer, the only other living climber who was there for the first -- and perhaps the only -- part of that conversation is Adams, a retired Wall Street bond trader who now spends most of his time in the Rocky Mountains. Along with DeWalt and Sandy Hill Pittman, a wealthy Manhattan socialite and climber who also came off poorly in "Into Thin Air," Adams is among Krakauer's harshest critics. Adams acknowledges that he doesn't know if the conversation took place, but argues that "it is impossible for Jon to say that there was no second conversation. It may not have happened while he was up there. It may have happened later. But I wasn't there, and he wasn't there, either." For his part, Krakauer says Adams has changed his story. Krakauer supplied Salon with typed notes from an untaped telephone interview with Adams in July 1996. In those notes, Adams says that Boukreev's "memory of the conversation between him and Scott ... is somewhat different than mine. As I remember it, he told Scott he was going to go down with me. He says he told Scott that he was going down ahead of everybody. But we talked through our differences and reached some agreement." Adams doesn't recollect making those comments. "I think Krakauer misquoted me, and took things I said out of context," he says. Krakauer replies that he'd stake his professional reputation on their veracity. Adams also implies that Krakauer had good reason to vilify Boukreev. "Krakauer couldn't acknowledge Anatoli as the hero of this story," he says. "Because if Anatoli is the hero, who's going to get the book contract? Anatoli, not Jon." Krakauer remains skeptical about the notion of a second conversation, but he is willing to concede the slight possibility it did indeed happen. "OK, let's say for the sake of argument I missed it," he says. "How does that change anything? Fischer was virtually comatose. Anatoli says to him, 'I'm going to go make tea.' Fischer was in no shape to be making decisions, and Anatoli should have known better." This was another example, Krakauer says, of Boukreev "blaming Fischer for his own bad decisions. Getting permission did not make it right." The final wrinkle is that DeWalt claims in "The Climb" that there was another, earlier plan to have Boukreev descend the mountain ahead of clients. In the book he quotes a woman named Jane Bromet, a correspondent for Outside online, as saying that Fischer had discussed such a plan with her in the days before the climb. (In a letter to DeWalt after "The Climb" was published, Bromet disputed the quote -- she said her conversation with Fischer happened weeks, not days, before the climb, and that he never mentioned it again.) The Bromet quote now seems like a red herring; even DeWalt admits that if Fischer had mentioned such a plan, Boukreev was probably never made aware of it. Disgusted, Krakauer cites DeWalt's use of the quote as another example of what he calls "The Climb's" intellectual dishonesty. DeWalt replies that, by ignoring even the possibility of both plans, Krakauer abdicated his journalistic responsibility. In any case, most mountaineers agree on two central points: A guide should, in general, remain with his clients; and Boukreev's failure to carry oxygen made it extremely difficult for him to do that. If Boukreev had carried oxygen, he would likely not have been forced to descend early, and might have been able to save more climbers. N E X T+P A G E | The climbing world takes sides |
