Finally Ready to Confront Everest After Fatal Climb of ’96

Beidleman was serving as a guide under Scott Fischer in May 1996 when a raging storm overtook two climbing teams high on the mountain. Five climbers on the teams died, including Fischer, who led one team, and Rob Hall, who led the other. In all, eight climbers died during the storm, a story chronicled by Jon Krakauer in his best-selling book “Into Thin Air.”

“It’s not like I dread talking about it; it’s not taboo,” Beidleman, 51, said last month before leaving for Katmandu, Nepal, to begin what he hopes will be a successful climb of Everest. “But when I reflect back, it doesn’t give me a warm feeling. It’s not something I’m necessarily proud of.”

Beidleman and the three other members of his team (he is a co-guide for an amateur climber) will make their way from Katmandu to Everest’s South Side base camp. The intended route, via the South Col and the Southeast Ridge, will have Beidleman retracing his steps from 1996.

“Hopefully, there’s a closing chapter for me to what happened in ’96, because in returning, the story doesn’t have to be about the past,” he said. “The story can be about the future. And to me, that’s a significant change and a necessary condition to engage in this.”

Raised among the mountains here, Beidleman is an engineer and designer of things like aircraft autopilot systems and industrial machines. He is also an accomplished backcountry skier and runner, and a married father of two. The two-month expedition means confronting anew the events of ’96, as well as the prospects of another adventure to 29,035 feet.

Beidleman said it took some finesse to warm his family to the idea of returning to Everest, especially his 83-year-old mother, who, he said, “let me know in no uncertain terms how she felt about it.”

His wife, Amy, was more understanding.

“In the end, Amy knows me as a climber,” Beidleman said, noting that they became engaged in 1994 during an expedition to Makalu, located about 14 miles east of Everest and at 27,825 feet the fifth-tallest mountain in the world. “She knows when things are great out in the mountains, it’s one of the coolest experiences you can have.”

He added: “Still, certainly this trip will bring back a lot of raw emotions. But I have no intentions of not making it back. I don’t view this as something that’s extraordinarily dangerous, if things are done correctly.”

The events of May 10 and 11, 1996, on the Southeast Ridge, the basis for “Into Thin Air,” are not without controversy. Krakauer’s narrative placed a spotlight on the actions of Anatoli Boukreev, a guide on Fischer’s team who was climbing without oxygen and descended from the summit without clients. Krakauer also wrote of blown turnaround times, inexperienced clients, competition among commercial guide outfits and communication failures. Later, Boukreev, who rescued several climbers, rebutted Krakauer’s interpretation of the events in his own account, “The Climb,” written with Weston DeWalt.

Boukreev, one of two climbers from the expedition to return to Everest, died in 1997 in an avalanche on Annapurna, a 26,545-foot peak in the Himalayas.

”My intention is not to come out 15 years later and contradict something Krakauer or Anatoli said,” said Beidleman, who was portrayed favorably in both books. “It’s very controversial when people start talking about who did what, and I don’t want to go back and re-expose old wounds or try to right any of the wrongs.”

He added: “The truth of it is tough, and it’s ugly. We went to the mountain with high expectations of making the summit and coming home happy. And not everybody did. The angst has to do with the fact that some accounts that came afterward exacerbated issues and drove wedges between people that shouldn’t have been driven. But that’s secondary. The problem was that people didn’t make it off the mountain; people died. We all feel, I hope, really badly about that.”

Ed Viesturs, an American high-altitude mountaineer and longtime friend of Beidleman’s who was with the Imax film team on Everest in ’96 and participated in the rescue operation, said the “Into Thin Air” episode would never be resolved.

“I probably talk about it and think about it more frequently than any other climb I’ve ever been on,” said Viesturs, who has been to Everest 11 times and climbed all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter (more than 26,000-foot) peaks without oxygen.

“Neal certainly wasn’t the cause of what happened,” he said. “He’s a guy that I believe saved some lives.”

Recalling 1996, Beidleman said the storm was harrowing, “roiling up from the jungle.”

He added, “As we headed down into it, people were running out of oxygen; they were staggered, people couldn’t walk, you had to pick them up on your shoulder.