St. Petersburg is presented as a site of expedition logistics rather than climbing itself: Anatoli Boukreev travelled there to secure oxygen for Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness team, but the effort ran into a supply dispute that would shadow the expedition’s equipment planning. The city connects the preparation of a commercial Everest attempt to the material constraints later visible at Camp IV, where the team’s oxygen was carefully divided among climbers and purposes.

The Poisk negotiations

Fischer wanted to reduce the weight his clients would have to carry and had heard of Poisk, a manufacturer in St. Petersburg producing lightweight titanium oxygen canisters. Each was at least half a kilogram lighter than the usual three-litre canister used on the mountain. Boukreev had contacts at the factory, so when the two men agreed to work together, he undertook to negotiate for the expedition’s oxygen after returning from Manaslu.

The assignment was part of a wider procurement role. Fischer also asked Boukreev to arrange for a high-altitude tent made in the Urals, while the oxygen order remained a pressing task because the clients would soon travel to Kathmandu and might be attempting the summit by early May. After returning from Manaslu and taking a short rest in Kazakhstan, Boukreev travelled to St. Petersburg on a freezing winter day to visit the factory. He regarded his new work with Fischer as fortunate: rather than having to seek precarious work in the winter, he had a defined responsibility in the expedition’s preparations.

A blocked supply and an alternative

By January 29, negotiations had not produced an oxygen deal. Poisk representatives told Boukreev that Henry Todd, of Himalayan Guides, had made an advance purchase agreement on the condition that he become the sole supplier of Poisk oxygen for Everest. The arrangement effectively made Todd the exclusive distributor. Boukreev was particularly taken aback because he had introduced Todd to Poisk’s factory personnel the previous year.

The impasse had immediate practical consequences. Mountain Madness needed oxygen for its clients, but did not yet have a supply secured. While Fischer was in Africa leading an expedition on Kilimanjaro, Karen Dickinson was handling the team’s business with Boukreev. Boukreev proposed turning to Zvesda in Moscow, where he believed he could obtain oxygen at a better price than Todd was charging. The procurement problem thus shifted from a planned purchase through Poisk to a search for another supplier.

From the factory to Camp IV

The book later records that Mountain Madness had sixty-two canisters at Camp IV: nine from Zvesda and fifty-three lighter Poisk canisters. The Poisk cylinders had been reserved for the May 10 climb, while the heavier Zvesda cylinders were intended for the preceding night’s sleep. The inventory was not an ample reserve: only a little remained from the Zvesda supply after the night, and fifteen full Poisk canisters remained at Camp IV once the climbers had taken their loads.

The allocation shows the logistical significance of the St. Petersburg negotiations without resolving every part of the supply chain. Six climbing Sherpas took twenty-one bottles up the mountain; the guides and clients carried seventeen between them, including one bottle for Boukreev and two each for the six clients, Fischer, and Neal Beidleman. Together the climbers carried thirty-eight Poisk canisters. The remaining stock was too slim to support an overnight delay and a second summit attempt on May 11. The lightweight equipment sought in St. Petersburg had become part of a tightly constrained plan: the team had one summit day, not a comfortable margin for complications.