ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: KATMANDU, NEPAL
SOURCE: Associated Press NOTE: Above
A FIERCE WEEKEND BLIZZARD on Mount Everest killed up to eight climbers, some of whom briefly were kings (or queen) of the highest mountain.
In bitter cold and howling winds, with the peak of Mount Everest just 500 feet above him, Rob Hall called his pregnant wife, Jan, on his fading radio to say goodbye.
Hall, a 36-year-old New Zealander, had just reached the peak of the world's highest mountain Friday for his fifth successful ascent. But on the way down, he trailed others in his expedition in a futile effort to help 44-year-old Doug Hansen of Renton, Wash., who was ill and struggling, as a fierce blizzard lashed the mountain.
Hansen died Friday night. Hall was near death when he called his wife Saturday.
On another section of the 29,028-foot peak, Seaborne B. Weathers of Dallas struggled down to about 20,000 feet and was plucked off Monday in the world's highest-ever helicopter rescue mission.
``I am OK, I'm better now,'' Weathers said as he arrived at Katmandu's airport, his face blistered by windburn, his hands crippled by frostbite.
Life and death, luck and chance. In all, eight climbers were believed to have perished this weekend, one of the worst disasters since Everest was first conquered in 1953.
Yasuko Namba, 47, of Tokyo was reported dead by another expedition member after becoming only the second Japanese woman to reach the top of Everest on Friday.
Scott Fischer, 40, of Seattle and Andy Harris, 31, of New Zealand were presumed dead, as well as three climbers from India who began an ascent from the Chinese side of Everest.
Alpine experts said no one has ever survived two nights in the open without oxygen on the southern summit of Everest.
Hall and Hansen were trapped on the mountain without oxygen, fluids, a tent or a sleeping bag. Hall survived the night, and was able to make a last call Saturday to his seven-months pregnant wife at their home in Christchurch, New Zealand, his friend, Geoff Gabites, said Monday.
``I don't know what his last words were. It was a personal conversation between him and Jan. We are sure Rob did not survive another night out in the open,'' said Gabites, chief executive of the Adventure Tourism Council.
Other friends said Hall was experienced enough to know he was going to die.
``A bivouac without equipment 150 meters [500 feet] below the summit in bad weather means at the very least you're going to get frostbite and it could go right through to death,'' said Peter Hillary, who climbed Everest with Hall six years ago. ``He would have been aware of that.''
Since Hillary's father, Sir Edmund Hillary, conquered it 43 years ago, Everest's summit has been reached 629 times. Thousands more climbers have come close. The elder Hillary himself has complained that the track is now so familiar it has become a tourist mountain.
But that hardly reduces the danger. More than 100 people have been killed on its icy slopes. Their bodies remain frozen and irretrievable in crevices or under shifting snow and rock.
Near the peak, most people need an oxygen tank. Dehydration in the arid atmosphere can kill. High winds bring swift changes of weather, and the temperature is normally minus 40 at night.
At least 11 expeditions were on the mountain this weekend, with each climber having paid $10,000 in license fees. About two weeks remain in the annual climbing ``window'' between winter and the Himalayan monsoon season.
Nepal has no rescue procedures for climbers in danger, and requires each expedition to take responsibility for its own safety.
Weathers, 49, was lucky.
The storm caught him 400 feet below the peak. It was too dark to continue, so he squatted on a rocky ledge without oxygen or anything to drink.
``But I couldn't make it on that day because of exhaustion and dehydration,'' Weathers said Monday.
``I had trouble in my eyes,'' he said as he walked from the helicopter that rescued him to an ambulance at Katmandu's airport. ``From the top, I came down separated from the climbing group.''
On Saturday, Weathers made it down to South Col, a 5-mile-high pass used as the final staging ground for the assault on the peak. He struggled down 5,000 feet Sunday to Camp II, and descended another 1,000 feet Monday to just below an ice fall.
Col. Madan K. Chetri, flying a French-built Squirrel helicopter landed there in the highest-altitude rescue flight on record. Helicopters cannot operate above 20,000 feet because the air is too thin.
``The Nepal army did a heroic job,'' Weathers said. The helicopter, which was chartered by the U.S. Embassy, also brought back a Taiwanese climber.
Others were not so fortunate.
Fischer was about 1,000 feet below Hansen and Hall on Friday when Nepalese sherpa guides found him and Makalu Gao, the leader of a Japanese expedition. Both were unconscious.
The sherpas could not carry both men out. They revived Gao and brought him down. They then bundled Fischer, gave him oxygen and clipped him to a rope, hoping that rescuers could reach him later.
Harris made it off the summit to Camp Four, a regular rest stop on the way down. He was missing Sunday when colleagues checked his tent. ``It seems he hallucinated and walked out in a disoriented state,'' Gabites said.
Before he left for Everest, Fischer, co-owner of Mountain Madness, which organizes climbs around the globe, had explained what drove his own passion for climbing.
``Actually, I still do it for the thrill, the adrenaline, but it's changing,'' he told Outside Online, an Internet magazine. ``Now I climb not to get scared, to stay in control.''
His biggest fear was ``making a bad decision and dying in the mountains ... not coming home from a trip, leaving my kids without a dad. That scares me. We can control a lot of things, but even so, things happen.''
Fischer is survived by his wife, Jean, a 9-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter.
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A helicopter pilot rescued veteran climber Seaborneby CNBB. Weathers 20,000 feet up Mount Everest on Monday. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY