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1996 Mount Everest disaster
Tom Patterson · CC0

1996 Mount Everest disaster

Events of 10–11 May 1996, when eight people were caught in a blizzard and died on Mount Everest during attempts to reach the summit

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On 10–11 May 1996, eight climbers were caught in a blizzard and died on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit. Over that season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit. These deaths marked that season the deadliest season on Mount Everest until it became the third deadliest after the 23 fatalities from avalanches caused by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 16 fatalities of the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The 1996 disaster received widespread publicity, raised questions about the commercialisation of Everest, and prompted an enduring controversy about who and what was at fault for the disaster.

Quick facts

Type
mountaineering accident wd

About

Numerous climbers were at a high altitude on Everest during the storm including the Adventure Consultants team, led by Rob Hall, and the Mountain Madness team, led by Scott Fischer. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the latter were more widely reported. On the South Col approach, four members of the Adventure Consultants expedition died, including Hall, while Fischer was the sole casualty of the Mountain Madness expedition. Three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police died on the North Face.

Following the disaster, several survivors wrote memoirs. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine and on the Adventure Consultants team, published Into Thin Air (1997), which became a bestseller. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide in the Mountain Madness team, felt impugned by the book and co-authored a rebuttal called The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest (1997). Beck Weathers, of Hall's expedition, and Lene Gammelgaard, of Fischer's expedition, wrote about their experiences in their respective books, Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000) and Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (2000). In 2014, Lou Kasischke, also of Hall's expedition, published his…

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Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): 1996 Mount Everest disaster · CC BY-SA 4.0
  2. Wikidata item Q1517252 · CC0 1.0
  3. Image: Everest-3D-Map-Type-EN.jpg by Tom Patterson (CC0)

Last updated · facts checked 7 November 2026

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"1996 Mount Everest disaster". DigiNepal. Last updated 31 October 2026. https://diginpl.com/places/1996-mount-everest-disaster. Retrieved 7 November 2026.

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Text from the Wikipedia article 1996 Mount Everest disaster, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page's text is shared under the same licence. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Everest-3D-Map-Type-EN.jpg — Tom Patterson, CC0.

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