Anatoli Boukreev

Boukreev was born in Korkino, within the Soviet Union's Russian SFSR. He came from the narod, the common people, and his parents were both poor.[2] After completing high school in 1975, he attended Chelyabinsk University for Pedagogy, where he majored in physics and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1979. At the same time, he also completed a coaching program for cross-country skiing.

After graduation, the 21-year-old dreamed of mountain climbing. Boukreev moved to Alma-Ata, the capital of the neighbouring Kazakh SSR (present day Kazakhstan) located in the Tian Shan mountain range. From 1985 he was part of a Kazakhstani mountaineering team, and he became a citizen of Kazakhstan in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Boukreev worked as a commercial mountain guide in the 1990s, and was working with Scott Fischer's adventure company Mountain Madness during the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.[3] He managed to survive and was also instrumental in saving the lives of others, including New York socialite Sandy Hill Pittman.[4]

Author Jon Krakauer was generally critical of Boukreev in his book, Into Thin Air. Subsequently, Boukreev was contacted by various media for a response, and also wrote his own account of the events on Everest in The Climb, a book co-written with Gary Weston DeWalt.

The core of the controversy[12] was Boukreev's decision to attempt the summit without supplementary oxygen and to descend to the camp ahead of his clients in the face of approaching darkness and blizzard. He was one of the first to reach the summit on the day of the disaster and stayed at or near the summit for nearly 1.5 hours helping others with their summit efforts, before returning to his tent by 5 pm on May 10, well ahead of the later summiters on his team.

Boukreev's supporters point to the fact that his return to camp allowed him enough rest that, when the blizzard had subsided around midnight, he was able to mount a rescue attempt and to lead several climbers still stranded on the mountain back to the safety of the camp. Boukreev's detractors say that had he simply stayed with the clients, he would have been in better position to assist them down the mountain, though every one of Boukreev's clients survived, including the three (Pittman, Fox, Madsen) that he rescued on May 11 after he had rested and overcome hypoxia. The only client deaths that day were suffered by the Adventure Consultants expedition, led by guide Rob Hall, who lost his own life when he chose to stay and help a client complete a late summit rather than helping the client descend.[13] Reinhold Messner criticized Boukreev, saying "[n]o one should guide Everest without using bottled oxygen" while David Breashears pointed out that Boukreev, despite climbing down first, was "sitting in his tent unable to assist anyone" until the clients themselves staggered into the camp with the information vital to their rescue.[14]

According to Krakauer, Boukreev's "refusal or inability to play the role of a conventional guide" caused dissension between him and Scott Fischer (who later died while returning from the summit). On the way to the summit, Fischer had directed Boukreev to bring up the rear of the group and keep an eye on everybody, but he instead remained at Base Camp and followed the group some five hours later. When a client named Dale Kruse fell ill, Boukreev was nowhere to be found, forcing Fischer to descend from Camp II to Kruse and help him back to Base Camp. According to Krakauer, Fischer encountered Boukreev at the Khumbu Icefall and "harshly reprimanded the guide for shirking his responsibilities". Back at Base Camp, Fischer called his Seattle business partner Karen Dickinson and publicist Jane Bromet to complain about Boukreev's actions before resuming his ascent.[15]

Before returning to the U.S. after the events on Everest in 1996, Boukreev climbed the 8,516-metre (27,940 ft) Lhotse, which is in proximity to Everest. He decided on a solo ascent because he hoped that in the process of climbing it he might find some inner clarity to what had just transpired on Everest.[17]

In 1997 Anatoli Boukreev was awarded the David A. Sowles Memorial Award by the American Alpine Club.[18] The award recognizes people "who have distinguished themselves, with unselfish devotion at personal risk or sacrifice of a major objective, in going to the assistance of fellow climbers imperiled in the mountains. It is dedicated to the memory of David A. Sowles." It was presented to him by Jim Wickwire, the first American to summit K2. The award is the American Alpine Club's highest award for valor in recognition of his role in rescuing climbers in the 1996 Everest disaster.[19]

Three weeks after receiving the David A. Sowles Memorial Award, Boukreev began his attempt to climb the south face of Annapurna I (8,091 m or 26,545 ft) along with Simone Moro, an accomplished Italian mountaineer. They were accompanied by Dimitri Sobolev, a cinematographer from Kazakhstan who was documenting the attempt. On December 25 around noon, Boukreev and Moro were fixing ropes in a couloir at around the 5,700 m (18,700 ft) level.[20]

Suddenly, an enormous cornice broke loose from the heights of Annapurna's Western Wall and rumbled down the 800 m (2,600 ft) long couloir. The avalanche knocked Moro down the mountain where he landed just above their tent at Camp I 5,200 m (17,100 ft). Fortuitously, Moro had somehow stayed near the top of the avalanche debris and managed to dig himself out after a few minutes. Unable to see or hear any signs of Boukreev or Sobolev (whom Moro had witnessed disappearing beneath "car-sized blocks of ice"),[21] Moro descended to Annapurna base camp where he was flown by helicopter back to Kathmandu for surgery on his hands, which had been ripped down to the tendons during the fall.

Anatoli Boukreev memorial at Annapurna base camp

News of the accident reached New Mexico on December 26. Linda Wylie, Boukreev's girlfriend, left for Nepal on December 28. Several attempts were made to reach the avalanche site by helicopter but inclement weather in late December prevented search teams from reaching Camp I. On January 3, 1998, searchers were finally able to reach Camp I and an empty tent. Linda Wylie subsequently issued a somber statement from Kathmandu:

This is the end... there are no hopes of finding him alive.

Boukreev had dreamt in detail of dying in an avalanche nine months before his death. The only thing missing was the name of the mountain. When Boukreev's companion tried to convince him to take a different path in life to avoid a fate that Boukreev was convinced of, he responded, "Mountains are my life...my work. It is too late for me to take up another road."[22]

Icelandic actor Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson portrays Boukreev in the Baltasar Kormákur film, Everest, about the 1996 Everest disaster.

• List of climbers
• List of Mount Everest summiters by number of times to the summit

• The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest by Anatoli Boukreev and Gary Weston DeWalt, published by St. Martins Paperbacks, 1997, ISBN 0-312-96533-8.
• Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer, written by Anatoli Boukreev. Collected and edited by Linda Wylie; published by St. Martin's Griffin, 2002, ISBN 0-312-29137-X.

• Anatoli Boukreev Memorial Fund
• Photo of Anatoli Boukreev (left) and Martin Adams with Kazakhstan state flag on Everest 1996