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The first sign that all would not go well came on the night of May 10. Though the established route up the mountain's south flank is precarious--barely wide enough to accommodate one climber at a time--no fewer than three expeditions had announced plans to begin their trek to the top that evening. Making things worse, two of the teams--Fisher's and Hall's--were the two largest on the mountain. All together, 33 people would be tramping the upward trail at the same time. For Breashears, this was reason enough to stay put. "We didn't like the way the weather looked," he says, "and now we were going to be crowded by all these other climbers. We decided to wait."
For those who decided to go, the climb to the top began not from the lower campsite but from the last of four ascending camps, just 3,000 ft. below the summit. Teams preparing to make their final climb usually bivouac there for a few days to allow their systems to become acclimatized to the wispy mountain air. Other teams slowly ascend through Camps 1 through 3 until they too are ready for the final push. On the night of May 10, the filmmakers slept at Camp 2, a mile below the summit, while the 33 other climbers trekked out into the darkness.
When the sun rose the next day, word came down that the climbers had made surprisingly good progress during the night. While some had turned back early, at least 20 were pressing on toward the summit. Breashears grabbed a telescope from his equipment tent, trained it on the peak and saw that the report was true. In his eyepiece was a flyspeck line of climbers inching up the last 1,000 ft. of Everest's five-mile rock pile.
Turning from the telescope, Breashears flashed a smile to Viesturs. But his relief was short-lived. At noon, he checked the peak once more, and was stunned to see that the group hadn't moved. He checked again at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Each time the climbers looked stuck. "This was way too late to be up that high," Breashears says. "They'd be fatigued, out of oxygen and descending in the dark. Things did not look good."
A few thousand feet below and two hours later, matters started to look worse. Paula Viesturs, Ed's wife, had been making potato soup in the cook tent at the 17,600-ft. base camp and stepped outside for a moment. Looking down, she saw a bank of huge, bruise-colored clouds rolling up the mountain. Clouds like that were almost certainly carrying a storm, and this storm appeared to be climbing fast. Before long, a high-altitude blizzard would lash one camp after another, until it finally reached the unprotected climbers clinging to the peak.
At 4:30 p.m., as the clouds continued to rise, the situation got worse still. According to radio traffic, Doug Hansen had collapsed, and Hall--who knew better than to linger near the top of the mountain in weather so ominous--was staying to help him. Five of Hall's other clients, including Weathers, had turned back. Where they were now no one knew. Guides Fischer and Harris were unaccounted for too. In all, 19 of the 33 people who had set out for Everest's top 16 hours earlier were stuck outside.