Everest movie's true story told by Beck Weathers who paid a terrible price

Home Top

Girls star Allison Williams marries her boyfriend in stunning ranch wedding with Tom Hanks officiating and John Mayer serenading the newlyweds - two days before Brian Williams makes TV return
No Muslim should ever be allowed to become President, says Ben Carson adding that Islam is 'inconsistent' with the constitution
Carly Fiorina creeps ahead of Ben Carson and closer to Trump in new poll after her 'winning' GOP debate performance
BREAKING NEWS: Child, mother and pastor shot inside Alabama church in 'attempted murder'
'Mistress' of slain Houston police deputy was in the car with him when he was murdered at gas station
Police used bullet fragments to track down suspected Arizona 'highway sniper'
'Class! Style! Go USA!': American golf team enjoys sweet victory over Europe at Solheim cup after furious row leaves female stars from BOTH sides in tears
Hillary Clinton calls for the government to accept 65,000 Syrians migrants as Kerry announces plans to accept only 15,000
'Do what you love': Donald Trump offers advice to 'young and beautiful and attractive' Iowa teens
Hillary goes on the attack amid sinking poll numbers: Clinton gets partisan at New Hampshire rally as she tries to claw back support
Alexis Tsipras and his left-wing Syriza party on course for Greek election victory as exit polls indicate a six point lead over closest rivals - but party WILL fall short of a majority
Kylie Jenner attacked by a crazed fan who grabbed her by her hair outside concert - before guards jumped to her defense
Eiffel Tower is closed to visitors after terror suspect 'with large rucksack' is seen ascending France's most famous attraction
Stock car driver dies while taking victory lap after winning the final race of the season
Pope Francis meets Fidel Castro after his pointed remarks about communism: Pair exchange books 'on religion' and share 'informal' talks as anger grows over Cuban dissidents made to 'disappear' for papal visit
Yemen rebels release six foreign hostages including three Americans
German mother and daughter found LIVING at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus (after arriving 15 months earlier)
It's not just a movie... I was left for dead on Everest: The bone-chilling true story behind the epic new film... told by the American hero who paid a terrible price for his survival
Six killed and five others wounded in string of shootings and stabbings during night of violence in New York City
Florida man, 91, 'made landscaper get on his knees before shooting him because he sprayed grass clippings on his car'
Outrage as $125,000-a-year Hamptons school principal stars in rapper's 'vulgar' sex and drug-fuelled music video
Beloved author Jackie Collins only told older sister Joan two WEEKS before she died that she had been battling breast cancer for six years - because she didn't want to be a burden
Jackie Collins' final, stoic TV appearance: Novelist flew from LA to London for chat show just NINE DAYS before her death, gave no indication of her suffering and even joked about her 'research' for erotic novels
'It's fraud': Now Richard Dawkins lays in to Texas schoolboy Ahmed Mohamed for his alarm clock 'invention'... as Sarah Palin says he was asking to be arrested

Twelve climbers died in a terrifying blizzard on Everest on May 10, 1996
Beck Weathers escaped but has been permanently scarred by frostbite
In the new movie 'Everest', the American climber is played by Josh Brolin
Here, he tells how he defied nature, his own demons and death itself

Published: 16:24 EST, 19 September 2015 | Updated: 23:03 EST, 19 September 2015

810

View
comments

It is of one of the darkest tragedies in mountaineering history – the deaths of 12 climbers in a terrifying blizzard near the summit of Everest in May 1996.

American doctor Beck Weathers was twice left for dead, but survived – thanks to a vision of the family life he nearly lost.

Now the disaster has been turned into a film starring Josh Brolin as Weathers, and co-starring Keira Knightley, Jake Gyllenhaal and several other big Hollywood stars.

Here, Weathers tells how he defied nature, his own demons and death itself…

Scroll down for video

American doctor Beck Weathers, pictured with his wife Margaret, was one of a group of climbers caught in a terrifying blizzard near the summit of Everest in May 1996

On May 10, 1996, high in the ‘Death Zone’ of Mount Everest, I vaguely remember dying. The cold anaesthetised me and I gradually faded away. The following day, as the sun descended towards the horizon, I came back from the dead and opened my eyes.

That is a mystery and a miracle which I still don’t understand.

I struggled to my feet. I was lost. I was almost blind. My hands were frozen. My face had been destroyed by the cold. I had not eaten for three days, or had water for two. I remember moving into the wind, praying for deliverance but gradually coming to understand that I wasn’t going to make it through this thing alive. I looked up and I realised that in one more hour as darkness descended again, I would simply kneel and accept the cold moving through me one last time.

I had fallen into climbing in response to crushing depression that began in my mid-30s. The black dog slunk away, yet mountaineering became my obsession. When my wife, Peach, warned I was betraying the love of my family, I listened but did not hear her. I emotionally abandoned them and am eternally grateful they did not abandon me.

May 10 began auspiciously for me. I was battered from the enormous effort to get within 3,000ft of Everest’s summit, but I was as strong as any 49-year-old amateur mountaineer can expect to be and was hell-bent on testing myself against the ultimate challenge.

We had reached High Camp the previous afternoon to find four separate groups in a dozen tents bivouacked in preparation for the final assault. I was secretly grateful we couldn’t climb further that day – I was bound to feel better the next morning. This was rank self-deception. I wasn’t going to get any stronger. They call it the Death Zone because above 25,000ft the mountain slowly kills you, whether or not you leave your tent.

While attempting to reach the summit, Weathers was caught in a blizzard and forced to wait for more than 12 hours in the cold before he could descend. Above, Dr Ken Kamler nurses Weathers' frostbite on Everest

At about 10pm, the gale blew itself out. ‘Guys,’ said our New Zealand guide Rob Hall, ‘we’re going for it!’ We put on our oxygen masks and down suits.

It was an exquisite evening as we moved across the South Col towards the summit face. It was ten below zero, quite warm for a big mountain, and the stars shone brilliantly.

There was nothing to it, really. Just keep ploughing on. Step and rest, hour after endless hour.

Halfway to the top, I realised with deep annoyance that I couldn’t see properly. The previous year, I had had a cornea operation to correct near-sightedness. Unknown to me, a cornea thus altered will flatten at this altitude, rendering you effectively blind in poor light.

I wasn’t worried. Daylight would restore my vision.

As the sun rose, I headed upwards – until I wiped my face with an ice-crusted glove, lacerating my right cornea. It was 7.30am on a perfect day and I was stuck on a promontory called the Balcony, about 1,500ft below the summit. Rob told me: ‘If you can see in 30 minutes, climb on. If you can’t, promise to stay here until I come back.’

Fellow climbers helped bundle Weathers into a helicopter after he reached the camp so he could be flown to safety

It didn’t enter my mind that he might never come back.

By noon, three of our group descended: a bottleneck of climbers meant that they could not reach the summit. I should have gone down with them, but I had promised to stay put.

I expected Rob no later than 3pm. When 5pm came and went, I began to worry. As the shadows lengthened and it got colder, I realised I had stayed too long. I was blind again and trapped.

I recognise now that I was becoming dangerously hypothermic. The water bottles inside my jacket froze solid against my chest. Then Jon Krakauer from my party came along, plainly exhausted. Rob was at least three hours behind him, which meant that all deals were off.

Krakauer offered to help me down but I said I’d wait for another guide, Mike Groom, who was 20 minutes behind. I think Jon heaved a sigh of gratitude.

After half an hour passed, Mike arrived with Yasuko Namba, who had reached the summit, but looked like a walking corpse.

Fortunately, members of a different group arrived. They were close to the limit, but Yasuko and I were the acute problems.

The damage to Weathers' face and hands, which had to be wrapped in bandages, was almost immediately apparent after the incident

Descending a mountain is a lot more dangerous than climbing up, so Mike short-roped me. One end went around my waist, and 20ft behind was Mike, using the rope to stabilise me. It was nearly 6pm.

I moved forward, but stepped on thin air and came whipping down. The rope snapped taut, pulling Mike off his feet. We jammed our ice axes into the hill to stop the fall.

This happened twice more, but except for some rips in my suit I was fine – and heartily relieved to reach the South Col. In less than an hour we would be in our tents at Camp Four, drinking hot tea.

But as we all began to move, we heard that throaty rumble come surging up the mountain. Suddenly, a blizzard detonated all around us. It crescendoed into a deafening roar.

A thick wall of clouds boiled across the South Col, wrapping us in white until the only visible objects were our headlamps, which seemed to float in the maelstrom.

We were wrapped in a howling cloud laced with ice pellets. We couldn’t see our feet and it quickly became incredibly cold – 60 below. I grabbed Mike’s sleeve. He was my eyes. I dared not lose contact.

We instinctively herded together, all sense of direction lost. We inched forward until someone shouted: ‘Stop!’ A few more paces and we would have gone down a 7,000ft plunge. But to stand still is to freeze to death, which was already happening to me.

I could no longer feel my right hand. This is normally a fairly simple problem to solve: you take off two of your three gloves and jam the affected hand against your bare chest.

What happened next was a complete shock: the skin on my hand and my arm immediately froze solid. My outer gloves disappeared.

I didn’t consider my exposed arm – life and death was now the issue.

When the clouds briefly parted, one of the climbers called out: ‘I know where the camp is!’

We rapidly formulated a plan for the strongest among us to make a high-speed trek to get help. I agreed to stay.

Three climbers lurched off while Yasuko and the rest of us huddled like a dog pack, hoping to conserve heat. Sleep was a one-way ticket to death so we yelled and kicked each other to remain awake.

The storm relented on the morning of May 11. Three sherpas and another climber, Stuart Hutchison, found Yasuko and me buried in snow. Hutchison pulled a 3in mask of ice from Yasuko’s face. Her skin was porcelain. Her eyes were dilated, but she was still breathing.

Hutchison also found me and later said he had never seen a living human being so close to death.

But they left us. Yasuko and I were going to die and it would endanger more lives to bring us back.

On a warm, sunny Saturday morning in Dallas, my wife was told I was dead. But at about 4pm Everest time, a miracle occurred: I opened my eyes. Then came my epiphany.

My family appeared in my mind’s eye. I knew with absolute clarity that if I did not stand up, I would die there. I struggled to my feet, almost completely blind. I told myself, ‘You cannot sweat the small stuff,’ and began to move across uneven ground. Each time I fell – blam! – I got up and started again.

I knew when the sun was gone, I was gone, too. I felt overwhelming melancholy that I would never again say I love you to my wife, or hold my children.

Weathers was caught in Everest's 'Death Zone' (summit pictured above), named so because there is not enough oxygen for humans to breathe

I saw two blue rocks and thought: ‘Tents!’ Suddenly a figure loomed up. It was Todd Burleson, the leader of another climbing expedition who had been told I was dead. My face was completely black, my jacket unzipped to the waist and my bare right arm was frozen over my head.

Todd took me to a tent, put me into two sleeping bags, shoved hot water bottles under my arms and radioed Base Camp, who told him: ‘He is going to die. Do not bring him down.’ When Base Camp called Peach and told her I was not as dead as they thought, they were trying not to give her false hope. What she heard, of course, was an entirely different thing.

I also believed I had a chance. They left me alone that night, expecting me to die. On a couple of occasions I heard the others referring to ‘a dead guy’ – that was me.

I don’t remember the storm roaring back and filling the tent with snow or being blasted out of my sleeping bag. That was how I found myself at dawn.

When I woke, only Jon Krakauer, along with Todd Burleson and Pete Athans – who were guiding their expedition – remained in camp. When Jon saw me, his jaw dropped. I was supposed to be dead.

Athans, an acquaintance from previous expeditions, saw that I could stand and gave me two litres of tea. The dead guy was ready to head down the Lhotse Face.

Now the disaster has been turned into a film starring (left to right) Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jason Clarke

With Pete in front of me and Todd behind, we made it to Camp Three, 23,400ft above sea level. All I wanted to do was sleep, but we had to keep moving.

At Camp Two at 21,300ft, our mess tent was turned into a hospital.

Dr Ken Kamler, a surgeon from New York, and a Danish physician, Dr Henrik Jessen Hansen, were seeing to the wounded, including Gau Ming-Ho, known as Makalu, the leader of a Taiwanese expedition.

I was put in a sleeping bag with my hands in warm water and a saline drip in my right arm, which felt like an icicle to the heart. This was when I began hearing rumours of a helicopter rescue. It sounded like a fairy tale.

We moved 2,000ft down to Camp One, where the radio came alive. ‘The helicopter is here for Weathers. One climber only.’

Just then, a group of sherpas came running down the valley dragging Makalu Gau, whose feet had been destroyed by the cold. I told the others the right thing to do was for Makalu to go in the helicopter. I didn’t want to second-guess myself every day for the rest of my life.

We grabbed Makalu like a sack of potatoes and threw him in before the helicopter plunged out of sight – as did my heart, because I knew it was not coming back.

We stood there for perhaps five minutes. There was nothing to say. And then I heard one of the most beautiful sounds ever – the whap! whap! whap! of a helicopter.

As soon as it touched down, I dived into the back. We crested the edge and went screaming down. We were safe but 12 people lost their lives in that blizzard, including eight from my party.

The biographical adventure thriller is due to be released on September 18 and is expected to tell the tale of the climbers' attempted descent

If you knew and believed that in one hour you would be dead, what would you think about? What would those last moments hold for you?

It was no surprise that at that point that I could see before me my wife and my two children. In my mind’s eye, they were clear as if they were standing next to me.

By the time I got back to Dallas, my life was pretty much shattered.

My marriage was largely at an end. My relationship with my children was extremely strained and I doubted that I would ever work again. I wasn’t sure how I would possibly support my family.

The depression that had driven my life for so many years had disappeared, but I was terrified that it would once again emerge and control my existence.

I remember sitting in a chair when a big chunk of my right eyebrow, fell off. Later, as I walked down the hall, my left big toe broke off and went skittering away. Eventually, my nose would fall off too

I was somewhat surprised that Peach did not leave me, although it would not have been in her character. This was the second miracle.

There were some grimly funny moments. I learned that my frostbite was so severe that my hands were like dead puppets. Now they are gone. I remember sitting in a chair when a big chunk of my right eyebrow, fell off. Later, as I walked down the hall, my left big toe broke off and went skittering away. Eventually, my nose would fall off too.

Over the following year, I underwent 11 different operations on my hands and to rebuild my face. I grew a new nose from tissue grafted on to my forehead.

But the big story is that Peach and I have grown back together. We are like a pair of old shoes, comfortable with each other and the vision of growing old together.

Would I do it again? The answer is yes, even if I knew everything that was going to happen.

I traded my hands for my family and my future. It is a bargain I readily accept. For the first time in my life I have peace. I searched all over the world for that which would fulfil me, and all along it was in my own back yard.

I’m a blessed individual. Even better, I know it.

Left For Dead, by Beck Weathers, is published by Sphere at £7.99. To get your copy for £5.99 (25 per cent off), order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk by September 27.