Camp IV

Camp IV, the Mountain Madness expedition’s high camp on the South Col, was the launch point for its May 10 summit attempt and the intended refuge at the end of the climb. It held the team’s tents and oxygen, but it was also an exposed, crowded staging ground where fierce winds, narrow safety margins, and failures of communication shaped what climbers could do. The camp’s importance lay in this double role: a place from which the summit seemed reachable, and the destination that climbers in trouble needed to find again before darkness and depleted oxygen made return impossible.

Setting and Establishment

The route to Camp IV depended on successive acclimatization excursions and the preparation of higher camps. Mountain Madness’s plan began with an excursion to 6,100 meters, the site of Camp I, followed by a return to Base Camp without an overnight stay. Clients were to carry only personal equipment and belongings to conserve strength; the climbing Sherpas, working under Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, would transport rope and supplies. Camp IV thus belonged to a staged system of movement and rest, rather than being an isolated destination.

That system was under strain as the team approached its summit bid. Camp III was still not established, while the Sherpas had worked several days in succession and were nearing exhaustion. A multi-expedition agreement called for ropes to be fixed between Camps III and IV on April 26, with participating teams contributing Sherpas. Mountain Madness had intended to send Sherpas rather than guides, but establishing Camp III and then allowing the Sherpas to rest would leave the expedition without a contribution. The decision was therefore made to send Anatoli Boukreev in their place. Mountain Madness could have declined, but doing so risked losing its place among the early summit parties; May 10 was already circulating as a possible summit date. The camp’s readiness was connected to a wider race to prepare the route and preserve a position for the ascent.

An Exposed High-Altitude Camp

When Boukreev reached Camp IV at about 2:00 P.M., the South Col was a scene of fierce wind and hurried construction. Gusts exceeding 60 mph swept across the exposed plateau, where depleted oxygen canisters left by earlier expeditions lay scattered in the freezing cold. Mountain Madness Sherpas had one tent standing and were struggling to anchor a second. Boukreev dropped his pack and joined them, while Klev Schoening climbed inside the tent to help pin it down. The work was not incidental campcraft: losing a high-altitude shelter could force a descent to the relative safety of a lower camp.

As the wind rose through the afternoon, the conditions made the summit plan increasingly uncertain. By 5:00 P.M., Scott Fischer and Sandy Hill Pittman had not yet arrived. Boukreev spoke with Rob Hall, who thought the weather might clear after the squall and described waiting another day, then descending if conditions remained bad. Boukreev did not share that optimism and expected the weather would not stabilize. Camp IV was therefore not simply a fixed platform for the climb; the wind at its tents could determine whether the attempt went ahead at all.

Oxygen, Departure, and the Summit Bid

The oxygen stock at Camp IV defined how much room the Mountain Madness climbers had for delay or retreat. The expedition had sixty-two canisters there: nine Zvesda bottles, reserved for sleeping, and fifty-three lighter Poisk bottles set aside for the May 10 climb. This represented 51 percent, by volume, of the oxygen purchased from Henry Todd; most of the remainder had already been used, particularly by Pete Schoening and Ngawang Topche Sherpa, while a small amount remained at Base Camp for medical emergencies.

The Sherpas carried twenty-one bottles up the mountain. Five of the six planned to climb with oxygen, while Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa climbed without it but carried one bottle for emergencies. Each of the other five Sherpas carried two bottles for personal use and two more for clients and guides. The six clients, Fischer, and Neal Beidleman carried two bottles each; Boukreev carried one. Together, guides and clients carried seventeen bottles. With thirty-eight Poisk bottles taken from Camp IV, fifteen full Poisk canisters remained there, in addition to whatever oxygen was left in the Zvesda bottles after the night. There was not enough spare capacity to wait out complications and make another summit attempt on May 11. For the clients, the plan was one attempt, not a flexible sequence of tries.

The calculations seemed to make the narrow margin workable. At the recommended flow rate of two to two and a half liters per minute, Todd estimated that one Poisk canister would last six hours. Two bottles were expected to cover the climb to the summit and the descent to a third bottle cached at the South Summit. If the weather held and the ascent took ten to eleven hours, climbers might reach the top with one or two hours of oxygen remaining, then use the cached supply for the descent to Camp IV. These estimates depended on favorable conditions and an on-schedule return; the stock at camp left little cushion if either assumption failed.

The departure from Camp IV began around midnight. When Fischer asked who was ready to leave with Lopsang, Pittman stepped forward. Lopsang fastened a short rope to her harness with a carabiner and set off with her on a towline. Charlotte Fox followed about ten minutes later, on the eve of her thirty-ninth birthday. Other climbers left in groups, with Fischer as the agreed sweep at the rear. The ascent depended on a rope-fixing plan that clients understood would keep them from having to wait. At the Balcony, however, climbers from several expeditions began to bunch together, changing oxygen bottles and resting. They discovered that neither Lopsang nor Ang Dorje Sherpa, nor any other Sherpas, had gone ahead to fix the ropes as expected. The gap between the plan and what had happened on the route turned Camp IV’s carefully timed departure into a climb marked by waiting and uncertainty.

Camp IV as Return Point and Communications Hub

For Boukreev, getting back to Camp IV was a practical priority linked to the clients’ oxygen supply. He and Fischer had agreed that, if Boukreev were properly conditioned and acclimatized, he would guide without oxygen. Fischer’s plan provided three canisters—eighteen hours of oxygen—for each client, with the expectation that they would leave at midnight, summit, and return by 6:00 P.M., before darkness and oxygen depletion. If they were late, Fischer expected Boukreev could go to descending climbers with oxygen, hot drinks, or physical assistance. In this arrangement, the camp was both the intended endpoint of the clients’ supply and the base for a rescue response.

Boukreev estimated that he reached Camp IV at about 5:00 P.M. Pemba Sherpa met him with hot tea; Boukreev, expecting other climbers to follow, asked Pemba to prepare more and went toward the tent he had shared the night before with Martin Adams, Lene Gammelgaard, and Schoening. But urgent information did not arrive with the returning climbers. Pemba did not tell Boukreev about radio communication reported by Ingrid Hunt, or about the possibility of an emergency above the Hillary Step. The apparent quiet at camp concealed a communications chain that was already failing.

At Base Camp, Hunt’s messages to the mountain passed through several intermediaries: she gave them to Ngima, who relayed them in Nepali to Gyalzen at Camp II and then to Pemba at Camp IV. Messages moving down took the reverse route. Hunt believed she was not receiving accurate or complete reports from Ngima, and described messages as being augmented to present them more favorably. Communication with Pemba was sporadic as well. Because Rob Hall’s camp had better communications, Hunt moved between the two encampments while repeatedly asking Ngima for news. Camp IV’s position made it a vital communications link, but its place in a relay system also meant that reports could be delayed, incomplete, or altered before reaching the people who needed to act.

Storm, Disorientation, and the Camp’s Limits

The camp’s proximity offered little protection to climbers caught in the South Col blizzard. A group that had formed a protective huddle was less than twenty meters from the Kangshung Face and roughly 400 meters from Camp IV. In clear weather, the distance could have been covered in ten to fifteen minutes. In the storm, the climbers were hopelessly lost. The camp was near enough to be visible as a destination in better conditions, yet the whiteout and darkness made that distance functionally impassable.

When Adams eventually reached Boukreev’s tent, his face was covered in ice and he could barely respond. Boukreev removed his crampons, helped him into a sleeping bag, and put an oxygen mask to his face. Adams could not give a clear account of where the others were. After Pemba brought tea, Boukreev searched outside again, but the wind was stronger than it had been before the summit departure and his headlamp could not help him find the climbers. Adams, with nothing left, had fallen asleep inside. The scene captures Camp IV’s contradiction: it contained shelter, tea, and oxygen, but these resources could help only those who reached its tents, while the storm could strand others within a short distance.

The camp’s material vulnerabilities were part of a wider pattern of expedition coordination. Before the climb, Mountain Madness had brought older two-way radios that Martin Adams considered inadequate, rather than lightweight radios that could be carried by each climber. On summit day, neither Boukreev nor Beidleman had been issued a radio, while Fischer’s strategy relied on communication with Lopsang near the front of the group. At Camp IV, the oxygen reserve was tight, the expected rope preparation had not occurred, and emergency messages moved through an indirect relay. Together, these details make the camp more than a geographical marker: it was the hinge between an ambitious summit plan and the precarious work of getting people back alive.