(5 of 6)
If Hall was fated to die, one dead man refused to stay that way. Late in the day, as the Camp 4 climbers got set to trek down, they noticed what appeared to be an apparition: trudging toward them, his parka open, his mittens missing, his arms held before him like the vampiric undead, was Beck Weathers, risen from the snow. Somehow, inexplicably, he had survived the nightlong storm, living through bitter, anoxic conditions that should have killed him hours before. To be sure, his condition was grim. His hands, frozen and long past useless, had the white, waxy look of a cadaver's. His nose and cheeks were black with frostbite. He was, however, indisputably alive.
"I woke up in the snow, opened my eyes, and directly in front of me was my ungloved right hand, which was clearly dead," he remembers. "It looked like a marble sculpture of a hand. I hit it on the ice and realized that so much of my tissue was dead, I wasn't feeling any pain. That had the marvelous effect of focusing my attention. I had an innate awareness that if the cavalry was going to come rescue me they would already have been there. If I didn't stand up, I realized, I was going to spend eternity on that spot."
The next day, while Breashears stayed at Camp 3 to assist descending climbers, Schauer and Viesturs hiked to Camp 4 to help bring Weathers down. For most of the morning, the Texan was half-led, half-carried down the slope, at one point sitting still while he was secured with rope and lowered like a 200-lb. rucksack. When the team reached Camp 3, they were joined by Breashears and a group of Sherpas bringing Makalu Gao down. Together they trekked to Camp 2, where they learned that a helicopter--which could never have stayed aloft in the tenuous air near the top of the mountain--would now be able to meet them and evacuate the wounded. Before long, the climbers heard the whap-whapping of blades and saw a dark green chopper struggling up to them. When it landed, the able-bodied loaded first Makalu Gao, then Weathers aboard, and the pilot flew off, dropping gratefully down to lower altitudes where there was thicker air for his blades to bite. With the helicopter gone, the most grievously injured climbers were at last on their way to safety. Back on Everest, the ambulatory ones were left to make their own way down--and the fallen ones were left to remain forever where they lay.
In the end, two Sherpas, two clients and four guides died on Mount Everest. Weathers lost his nose, which was surgically rebuilt, as well as his hands, which can never be replaced. For several days, the weary filmmakers did little more than knock about base camp. Finally, on May 23, they made their trip to the summit and finished their filming. On the way, they passed the frozen bodies of Fischer and Hall. While Fischer was still exposed to the elements, the upper half of Hall's body had drifted over. Breashears and Viesturs paused to spend some time with each of them, sitting beside them for a respectful half-hour in the punishing summit air. They wanted to do more.