The Story on Everest

A new excerpt from my memoir, "Into the Soul of the World"

Aug 18, 2023

This is The Pathless Path with Brad Wetzler (formerly Enlightened-ish), my weekly dispatch about how we can brave the wilderness of these tough, post-modern, hyper-capitalist times…together. It’s about storytelling, healing, adventure, the human heart, and the pursuit of the sacred and the holy, too.

Who am I? I’m a widely published writer on mental health, faith and ecumenical religion, and, previously, travel and adventure.

This week marks 27 years since Outside magazine's September 1996 edition—a pivotal issue featuring a weighty 17,000-word article titled "Into Thin Air." This piece, written by Jon Krakauer, painstakingly recounted the harrowing events of the ill-fated 1996 climbing season on Everest.

On this anniversary, I want to share the story from the perspective I had as the editor who originally pitched the idea to send a writer to Everest to cover the growing commercial guiding business.

It was a memorable time in my life.

Here’s the full, behind-the-scenes story, taken from the pages of my memoir, Into the Soul of the World (Hachette Go), available now at bookstores and on Amazon.

Credit: AP

During the winter of 1993-94, I wrote a story pitch proposing that the magazine send a writer to Mount Everest to report on the increase in commercial guiding operations, and I shared it in a staff meeting. For the past couple years, I'd been monitoring Everest closely as my self-appointed job as head of Outside's adventure beat and as the assistant to the editor of the Dispatches section. I had been talking with sources who told me that Everest base camp had become a shit show. I had edited short articles about the growing numbers of climbers who were winding up on the summit on the same day. I am a deeply intuitive person. In my story pitch, I proposed sending a writer to the base camp on the "classic" southern Nepalese side. I mentioned Krakauer and climber and adventure journalist Greg Child. He already was an established Himalayan mountaineer. He seemed to me to be the logical choice for this truly extravagant story. My colleagues seemed enthusiastic about the idea. The timing seemed right, too. And then we editors got busy with other things, including our impending move to Santa Fe.

Me? I never forgot about the Everest base camp idea, and I planned to bug Mark about it as soon as we got settled in our new desert home.

Some things in life happen fast, while other things take time. I now understand that we don’t have as much control as we like to think. The universe unfolds at its pace, and free will—if we have it—works in congruence with the pacing of the universe. I get why people talk about a divine plan. Some things require a person and the cosmos lining up. In the case of the Everest story, the universe turned out to be on its own schedule, and I simply followed along. As Di and I built a new life at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I occasionally found myself think- ing about Everest. I needed to get moving on more feature assignments if I ever wanted to be- come a senior editor.

In May of 1994 Outside moved its headquarters to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Larry Burke, the magazine's owner and publisher, had bought a horse ranch outside town, and he was building a beautiful, stylish office building for the magazine in the Santa Fe Railyard. I'd visited the city Santa Fe once on a short vacation: the high-desert town seemed funky, artsy, and cool. As Di and I settled into living in a round split-level guesthouse on ranch 25-minutes south of town, I was still thinking about the Everest base camp story, even as we were getting used to our new, more active lifestyle at the foot of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. I loved the vast, pinon-spotted landscape and the continuously clear big blue sky. We traded hot dogs and baseball for skis and mountain bikes, and we were happy to never spend another frigid winter in the Windy City.

During the next ten months, the magazine’s editor, Mark Bryant, and Jon talked occasionally about a possible Everest story, and Mark also began discussing financial details with Larry Burke, Outside's owner. Meanwhile, I'd been researching commercial expeditions on both the northern Tibet side and the southern Nepal side, and copying Mark on my research. One windy, gray morning in March of 1995, I stepped into Mark’s office and poked him about the story. He usually had his head in a manuscript, and his first glance up betrayed the look of annoyance that all editors flash when pulled out of a story by a younger editor’s questions. But then he smiled. “Let’s do this. Call Jon and see if he’s interested.”

I hustled back to my office:

Here's how Krakauer tells the story in "Into Thin Air":

"In March 1995 I received a phone call from an editor at Outside magazine proposing that I join a guided Everest expedition scheduled to depart five days hence and write an article about the mushrooming commercialization of the mountain and the attendant controversies. The magazine's intent was not that I climb the peak; the editors simply wanted me to remain in Base Camp and report the story from the East Rongbuk Glacier, at the foot of the Tibetan side of the mountain."

We talked for a few minutes.

“You can write the story and never set foot in the Death Zone. What do you think?” I said.

Krakauer seemed warm to the idea, and, before we ended the call, he said he'd consider the assignment, which excited me.

Krakauer did consider the story idea, and he even went so far as to book a flight and get the required immunizations.

I'm not sure how much time passed. But one afternoon Mark came into my office and told me that Krakauer had decided against the base camp story but was now considering going to Everest the following spring--and he wanted to climb to the top from the southern Nepalese base camp. This route was the route that Sir Edmund Hillary had climbed in 1953.

Now I was thrilled. This was a far more adventurous story. As exciting as the prospect of having an Outside writer on Everest seemed, I could tell that Mark was uncomfortable with the increased level of danger of the story. He feared losing his friend. And he reminded us of this. Winter set in, and the pinon-specked foothills glistened white under the bluebird sky. Di and I took our cross-country skis out of the closet and, our dogs in tow, glided around the mountain trails.

Mark gave me the assignment of calling various commercial guiding companies and trying to him on one of them. In January 1996, in congruence with Mark, I got Krakauer confirmed with a Seattle-based outfit called Mountain Madness, led by the experienced mountaineer Scott Fischer, in exchange for a combination of cash and advertising space in Outside. And then, in late February, Rob Hall, of New Zealand-based Adventure Consultants. called me with a better offer. Mark called Jon and told him. The countdown to the spring 1996 Everest season began. I called Krakauer to wish him luck and asked him to stay safe.

During this period, I felt wildly alive. I was now thirty and an associate editor. These early, minimal conversations with Krakauer and Mark about this new story assignment made me feel like I was part of something big and exciting. And it was thrilling and fun. But I wasn't really doing anything except talking on the phone. Krakauer was the only guy with a skin in this game: his life. And I knew that Mark had my back and remained involved behind the scenes.

I now see that I might have already gotten carried away. Those words "ego" and "grandiosity" again. I felt certain that once the Everest story hit the newsstands, I’d be promoted to senior editor. Once I secured that title, I felt I could leave the magazine staff and hang my own shingle as an adventure writer. I planned to negotiate a contract to write three or four feature stories a year and then fill the rest of my schedule with stories at GQ, and, with luck, the New York Times. I felt ready to take on the world. Empowered.

Or was I puffed up on hubris?

As April progressed, we stopped hearing from our writer as he began the trek into basecamp. With communications limited, we followed Himalayan weather reports on the internet, and Mark received updates from his wife, Linda Moore, who heard from him via satellite phone once a week. Eventually, word came from Linda that Krakauer and his team would make their summit bid on the May 10.

As they made their way toward the summit, I certainly felt excited but also scared. No, terrified. Of what? One of my tasks as the editor who oversaw the adventure beat at Outside was writing obituaries of the extreme athletes who pushed the limits too far. Would I end up writing an obituary about the writer than Outside had sent to Mount Everest. Was I freaking out on that May 1996 morning? Fuck yeah. We all were. We paced the halls, and swigged coffee. We chatted with friends on the phone and made pointless trips to the Borders Bookstore next door and flipped through magazines. We did everything I could to distract ourselves. And when all the distracting failed to distract us? We fretted.

I tried to calm myself by breathing deeply. I worried. I might have even prayed for his safety.

On the morning of May 10, 1996, the editors met in the hallway for our daily morning meeting, where the managing editor button-holed us about deadlines. Mark, looking simultaneously frazzled and about to burst with good news, cleared his throat.

“I heard from Linda last night. I have good news. Jon summitted just after noon, Everest time. Linda said he sounded good, strong. He’s headed back now. As we all know, the most important, dangerous part of the climb is getting down.”

High fives all around. I felt as happy and satisfied as I’d ever felt.

Looking back, I had little reason to be so happy. I didn’t know it then, but as I sauntered back to my office slapping more high fives to the secretaries and receptionist, people I did not yet know but would soon learn about were dying.

I slept soundly that night. The next morning, Di and I were at a moving sale for Alex Heard, an editor who was leaving for New York to take a job at the Times. Alex came running out of the house, looking panicked.

“There’s been an accident on Everest. Scott Fisher is dead. No word on Krakauer.”

I nearly collapsed on the ground. Di and I jumped into my pickup and drove across town to the office. I landed in my chair and picked up the phone. I tried calling Adventure Consultants in New Zealand. I tried calling Mountain Madness, their competitor. I tried calling the editors of various mountain blogs as well as the New York Times. I didn’t get anybody. Di went home, and a few of us worked the phones all day. No news. And then at around 3 pm, Mark entered my office and told me that he'd heard from a source that Jon was still alive, though he had no further details.

At home I told Di the news. We held each other, and then we drove to Alex’s going away barbecue at the home of our colleague Hampton Sides and his journalist wife, Ann Goodwin Sides. Nobody was in the frame of mind for a party.

We stood in the quiet dark and nursed our beers, staring at the Milky Way, which in New Mexico looks like somebody spilled a pitcher of cream across the night sky. We were ten thousand miles from Everest, but it was as if we were at basecamp too. We knew many of the people up there. I’d spoken to Fischer several times, on the phone and in person. As an editor, it’s so easy to think of people as characters. Too easy. But that night, it became painfully obvious that they were flesh and blood, mortal and vulnerable. And they were dying. And our writer? He was huddled in a tent, maybe dying, too.

We sulked and moped and drank some more. And then Hampton’s voice pierced the night sky.

“Mark. You have a phone call.”

Looking stunned, Mark jogged inside. We waited in silence until he returned. “Um, Jon is okay. But Rob, his team leader, isn’t. He stopped to stay with a sick client, and he's stuck there now. They may not make it through the night.”

I’d spoken to Rob frequently that spring. He seemed so brave, friendly, and optimistic about the climb and about the future of guiding clients on Everest. And now, as I sat holding a plastic cup full of beer, he was dying of exposure on the South Summit, a place I had never visited but felt as if I knew. My mind raced. I knew the idea of rescue at night in a storm was beyond fantastical. But I still held out a glimmer of hope that somebody could do something. There’s that psychological defense called denial again. No, nothing could save him. Rob was just below the summit of the world’s tallest mountain. He might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. As my tired brain tried to grasp the grim reality, I felt as empty as a capsized sailboat whose adventurous solo captain thrown overboard by a big wave off Antarctica. Our guy was safe in his tent, but he was still in the Death Zone, and he was nowhere near out of trouble. And I still felt sick.

The next morning, I talked to Mark. Rob Hall had died during the night. He and Fischer weren’t the only fatalities. Over the next few days, we learned of the deaths of six other climbers. Other guides and clients were injured and badly frostbitten. Our writer was still alive and on his way back down the mountain. The weather looked clear for the next two days it would likely take him to descend. But as we were learning, on Everest, the situation can go south in a hurry.

Sad, rattled, but breathing a little easier knowing that our writer was likely out of the woods, we resumed our work of putting out a summer issue.

He arrived safely in basecamp, and then I got his call from the hotel in Kathmandu. After I hung up the phone, I went for a walk. I took my first full deep breath in weeks. And then I took another.

In mid-August, Outside published "Into Thin Air," a 17.000-word account of the tragedy of the 1996 climbing season on Mount Everest. An ABC News team in my office and by scores of reporters for other news outlets, per Mark's request. And then, as I had planned, I gave notice, packed my things, and, in mid-December 1996, seven months after that intense month of May when we editors lived on the edge of our seats, I drove away from the Outisde office and stepped into the rest of my life. My life appeared to be on the upswing. Man, is it easy to deceive ourselves.

If you haven’t bought my memoir, Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing, yet, I hope you will.

Here’s what author Hampton Sides wrote about it:

“Brad Wetzler has led the very definition of an adventurous life, but in Into the Soul of the World, he gives an unflinching account of his interior adventures. Wetzler’s soulful quest, by turns anguished and transcendent, will resonate with readers around the world who struggle to find purpose and a sense of the holy in the ambient jitter of the digital age.”

Are you an aspiring memoirist who has struggled to finish your book? Sign up for my next Write Your Way Home: A Memoir Masterclass, a comprehensive four-week course for beginner and intermediate memoir writers. You’ll walk away with everything—tools, mindset, and confidence—you need to finally write and finish your memoir.

Seeking: Letters to the Restless

Discussion about this post