Jon Krakauer was a client on Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants team during the 1996 Everest expedition that, in total, led to the loss of fifteen lives. Krakauer survived and published his book Into Thin Air which conveys his perspective of the events that occurred during the expedition. Krakauer is critical of the actions that he believed were contributing factors in the loss of life on summit day. In particular Krakauer scrutinizes senior guide Anatoli Boukreev from Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness expedition. Following the release of Krakauer’s book was the subsequent release of Anatoli Boukreev’s and G. Weston DeWalt’s book The Climb which confronted the allegations set forth by Krakauer. It is in my opinion after reading both accounts of the tragedy that Anatoli Boukreev’s actions on summit day during the 1996 Everest expedition were justified. This essay is going to focus on the following controversial decisions or actions of Boukreev: his decision to descend the mountain ahead of his clients, his decision to not use supplementary oxygen while guiding, and his decision to use a non-interactive guiding style. All of these things were regarded by Krakauer as unorthodox, but according to Boukreev, Krakauer was mistaken.

According to Krakauer “Boukreev had come down…hours in front of anyone on Fischer’s team. [A client] from that group has nothing but contempt for Boukreev, insisting that when it mattered most, the guide “cut and ran”” (ITA, 218). Krakauer surmises that Boukreev’s decision to not use oxygen preordained his decision to leave his clients on the summit ridge as he descended the mountain. Boukreev explains however that his decision to not use oxygen was influenced by safety. In his book The Climb Boukreev claims that “the axiom that Krakauer overlooked in building his case was: if you are climbing on the upper reaches of Everest with supplemental oxygen and you run out-no matter who you are-you can get into serious trouble, perhaps die, unless you get to a source of more oxygen” (TC, 280). Boukreev informs the reader that he has always climbed without oxygen because of this very reason. Boukreev’s decision to not use supplemental oxygen was responsible and justifiable in this context because his reasons were actually conducive to safety. Boukreev also states that Fischer, the leader of the Mountain Madness team and Boukreev’s boss, gave him explicit permission to begin his descent before the clients. Boukreev states that he and Fischer “agreed before the expedition began that [Boukreev]-if he was properly conditioned and acclimatized-would guide without oxygen” (TC, 281). Boukreev states that after he had met up with Fischer atop the Hillary Step that they had decided he should descend as quickly as possible because the clients who were still approaching the summit would only have three and one half hours of oxygen left and therefore someone would need to be at Camp IV prepared to deliver full tanks of oxygen and other provisions to desperate clients. In this sense it is evident that Boukreev’s decision to descend ahead of his group’s clients was responsible and justified.

Boukreev enlists the help of others who are willing to share their views on the actions and outcome of the expedition. One person in particular, Jane Bromet, the publicist for the Mountain Madness expedition, said that Boukreev’s premature descent was planned. “’Scott told me-you know, one of the scenarios-that if there were problems coming down, Anatoli would make a rapid descent and come back up the mountain with oxygen and water’” (TC, 284). The fact that Boukreev’s story corroborates with Bromet’s is no coincidence, despite there being no instance of her words in Krakauer’s book. Bromet disclosed to Boukreev that “Krakauer [had not] mentioned in Into Thin Air what she had told him, that Fischer had a plan for Anatoli” (TC, 285). Based on the account given by Bromet as well as Boukreev’s own it is obvious that his decision to descend early was authorized by his expedition’s leader, Fischer, and that the decision was made with safety in mind. Boukreev was sent down the mountain to help others who potentially would become stuck on the mountain and thusly his actions were justified. Another point can be drawn from this as well: why didn’t Krakauer explain what Bromet said to him in his book? The answer obviously has to do with Krakauer’s desire to spin the events in a dramatic way in order to make for better reading as it should be noted he is a professional writer by trade, his job is to uncover controversy, not climb mountains.

Another element of Boukreev’s guiding that was brought into scrutiny by Krakauer was his almost non-interactive guiding style. Boukreev believed that “If [a] client [couldn't] climb Everest without big help from [a] guide [then] this client should not be on Everest…otherwise there can be big problems [higher up the mountain]” (ITA, 156). That said, Boukreev did not go out of his way to facilitate any client’s pursuit of the summit. Krakauer claims that because Boukreev was not as hands on as the other guides that he was doing his clients wrong and that he was inherently placing a disproportional amount of work upon the other guides. Boukreev however, was acting according to a more Eastern school of guiding doctrine; he believed that if a client needed to be forced up the mountain then it was too dangerous for them to attempt the climb. Based on this enlightened perspective of Boukreev’s intentions it becomes evident that his guiding style was not irresponsible, but professional. Boukreev was in essence encouraging weaker climbers to drop out early on if they were overcome with the physical demands of the climb, and therefore his actions were justified as his intentions were to maximize his clients’ safety. Boukreev recognized that by dragging the clients to the summit he was enabling them to hurt themselves, or worse yet, he was allowing them to endanger their fellow clients and guides as well. The fact that he did not allow this to happen however, shows how responsible of a guide he was, justifying his actions, and shedding light upon his poorly interpreted goals.

I believe that Anatoli Boukreev’s actions on summit day were not suspect, and in fact were responsible and most importantly justified. I believe that because he did not use oxygen he was taking extra precautions in an attempt to reduce the potential for something wrong to occur, justifying doing so. I also believe that his decision to depart from the summit early was warranted by his superior Fischer, executed under the best intentions, and justified in every way. I think that Boukreev’s guiding style, which was repeatedly placed under attack by Krakauer, was not subject to inquiry as his style forbade anyone who wasn’t capable or willing to perform well enough from participating in the expedition and therefore was justified. Lastly the point can be made that if Boukreev had not make his rescue attempts for the climbers on the mountain then the death toll that day would have been much higher. When he left to begin his rescue attempts he notes that “there was nobody [else] able or willing to conduct rescue efforts” (TC, 218). Therefore I think the fact he was willing and able to conduct his rescue efforts to the capacity he did justifies him being away from the group.