Scott Fischer

Scott E. Fischer (December 24, 1955 – May 11, 1996) was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He is renowned for his ascents of the world's highest mountains made without the use of supplemental oxygen. Fischer and Wally Berg were the first Americans to summit of Lhotse, the world's fourth largest mountain (27,940 feet / 8516 m ), located next to Mount Everest.^[1] He and Ed Viesturs were the first Americans to summit K2, (28,251 feet/ 8611m) in the Karakoram of Pakistan.^[2] Fischer first summitted Mount Everest (29,029 feet / 8,848 m) in 1994, and died during the 1996 blizzard on Everest while descending from his second summit.

Career

Fischer spent his early life in Michigan and New Jersey and took two years of climbing courses after being inspired at the age of 14 by a show he saw on television. In 1982, he and his wife, Jean Price, moved west to Seattle, Washington, where they raised two children, Andy and Katie Rose.

In 1984, Fischer formed his own adventure company, Mountain Madness, which he set up to guide clients to the summits of the world's highest mountains for fees in the $50,000 range. In 1992, while climbing K2 successfully, he was involved in a rescue of Chantal Mauduit, a French climber who became severely snow blind. She went on to climb five more eight-thousanders but died in an avalanche on Dhaulagiri in 1998. From the 1992 season, Fischer brought a new level of commercialism to climbing adventures.

1996 Mount Everest disaster

Six weeks after returning from a charity climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Fischer left Seattle and travelled to the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. On May 6, the Mountain Madness team left Base Camp (17,500 feet) for their summit climb. At Camp II (21,325 feet, the height of Mount McKinley), Fischer learned that his long-time client and friend, Dale Kruse, was ill below him at Camp I (19,898 feet). Determined to be the one to tell Kruse that his Everest dreams were over, Fischer descended from Camp II, met up with Kruse and continued to Base Camp with his client. The next morning he left Base Camp and ascended to rejoin his team at Camp II, tired after the 4,000-foot climb. Having missed the additional rest time that the remainder of his team had had at Camp II, he was slow on ascent to Camp III (24,500 feet) the following day’. Early in the morning on May 9, more than 50 climbers left Camp III for Camp IV at the South Col (25,938 feet). Scott was among the last of them. Just before midnight they all set out for the summit.

Fischer reached the summit after 3:30 pm, much later than he had planned. He radioed Base Camp that he was weary and felt ill. His good friend and long-time climbing partner, Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, descended part way with him into the blizzard that became known as the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. They met up again just above the Balcony (27,559 feet), where Fischer encouraged Lopsang to descend without him and send back help in the form of Anatoli Boukreev, one of the Mountain Madness guides. Suffering from Hypoxia (environmental)#Atmospheric hypoxia and probably cerebral edema as well, Fischer sat down and never got up again. After the storm subsided, on May 11, two Sherpas climbing from Camp IV reached Fischer and Makalu Gau Ming-Ho, leader of the Taiwanese National Expedition. Fischer was unresponsive and his breathing was shallow. The Sherpas placed an oxygen mask over his face and rescued Gau, who they carried to Camp IV.^[3] After rescuing several other people in the storm, Boukreev finally reached Fischer, but his friend had already passed away. Boukreev shrouded Fischer’s upper torso and moved his body off the main climbing route.^[4] His body remains on the mountain.

See also

• List of people who died climbing Mount Everest

References

External sources

• Birkby, Robert (2008). Mountain Madness: Scott Fischer, Mount Everest and a Life Lived On High. New York, NY: Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing Corp. ISBN 9780806528755. OCLC 882611111. 
• Boukreev, Anatoli; DeWalt, G Weston (1997). The Climb : tragic ambitions on Everest. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312206376. OCLC 466377255.