December 25, 1997

December 25, 1997, is the date on which an avalanche at Annapurna transformed a Christmas summit-route workday into the disappearance of Anatoli Boukreev and Dimitri Sobolev. The disaster struck while the three climbers were fixing ropes above Camp I; Simone Moro survived, but his companions were not found, and the empty tent at the expedition’s camp became the starkest evidence in a search that had begun with hope.

The expedition on Christmas Day

Boukreev, Moro, and Sobolev had arrived at Annapurna Base Camp on December 1. Sobolev, a Kazakh cinematographer documenting the expedition, joined the two climbers as they worked to establish a route through exceptionally deep snow. For three weeks they broke trail, often through snow reaching their chests, to establish Camp I at 5,200 meters. Their plan was to fix ropes to a ridge just above 6,000 meters and traverse along it toward the summit. The longer route was intended to reduce the time they would spend exposed on Annapurna’s slopes, where avalanche danger threatened their progress.

On Christmas morning, the three awoke at Camp I with the first light. Moro later recalled Boukreev as relaxed, joking, and in high spirits. Through the morning they fixed ropes toward the ridge. By 12:27 p.m., Moro had reached 5,950 meters. Below him, Boukreev and Sobolev climbed a gully, Boukreev carrying a coil of rope intended for the final fifty yards to the ridge crest. Their immediate task was practical and specific: finish the route to the ridge, the next stage of the planned traverse.

The avalanche

Moro had bent over his rucksack and was just straightening when an explosive sound made him look back. A house-sized block of ice was coming toward him: a cornice had broken from the ridge above, unseen from the climbing route below. With only seconds before the avalanche reached him, Moro looked down the couloir and shouted Boukreev’s name as a warning.

At about 5,650 meters, Boukreev and Sobolev turned toward the cry and saw ice and snow cascading down. Moro saw Boukreev catch his eye and begin a quick, calm sidestep up the sloping wall of the gully. The avalanche swept Moro down the mountain with tremendous force and deposited him just above the Camp I tent. He was knocked unconscious and left half-buried as the debris settled. When he came around several minutes later, he struggled upright and called into the debris field for about twenty minutes. Neither Boukreev nor Sobolev answered.

Moro’s survival did not mean he escaped without grave injury. Friction from the fixed ropes had torn the palms of his hands down to the tendons. He went into the Camp I tent for a new pair of gloves, then made a painful six-hour trek to Annapurna Base Camp. A Sherpa who had been allowed to abandon the camp had remained behind; a helicopter was summoned, and Moro was flown to Kathmandu for medical care. Before surgery, he phoned the United States with news of the avalanche.

News, hope, and uncertainty

The news reached Santa Fe, New Mexico, late on December 26. The narrator describes the shock against the preceding day’s ordinary Christmas outing: Linda Wylie, Boukreev’s girlfriend, Dyanna Taylor, and the narrator had climbed Atalaya Mountain in a blizzard. Their conversations had repeatedly turned to Nepal and to the anticipated summit bid by Boukreev and Moro. They had imagined the attempt taking place as the full moon approached. The contrast between those expectations and the report from Annapurna makes the disaster’s abruptness plain: the hoped-for summit attempt had given way, in a matter of hours, to a search for two missing climbers.

On December 28, Wylie left for Nepal to contribute what she could to the search. There was still a concrete reason to hope: the Camp I tent remained standing and was stocked with food, stoves, and high-altitude clothing. If Boukreev and Sobolev had dug themselves out of the avalanche debris, the tent might have sheltered them until rescuers arrived. The search therefore began not with confirmation of their deaths but with a difficult possibility that the two men could still reach safety.

Cloudy weather frustrated several helicopter attempts to approach the avalanche site in the last days of December. At the same time, speculation about the missing climbers’ fate spread through the press in the United States and Europe. The narrator recounts being asked by a U.S. News & World Report fact checker to comment on a planned story about Boukreev’s death before the two men’s fate had been established. When the draft characterized Boukreev as likely to be remembered as a villain in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, the narrator rejected that framing, saying that if Boukreev was dead he would be remembered as his peers saw him: a consummate mountaineer and a man of great courage. The episode shows how the uncertainty surrounding the search also became a dispute over the meaning of Boukreev’s public reputation.

The empty tent

On January 3, 1998, a team of Kazakh climbers led by Rinat Khaibullin, together with Sherpas, was successfully flown to Camp I. They inspected both the avalanche debris and the tent where Boukreev had slept on Christmas Eve. The tent was as Moro had left it: empty. Its supplies had offered a reason to imagine survival; its emptiness offered no such reassurance. From Kathmandu, Wylie issued a statement that there was no hope of finding Boukreev alive.

The date thus holds two sharply opposed scenes. In the morning, Boukreev was joking at Camp I and working with his companions toward the ridge; by the afternoon, a hidden cornice had swept through their route, and Moro’s calls into the debris brought no answer. The subsequent days prolonged the interval between disappearance and acceptance, as weather delayed access and the stocked tent sustained hope. The search’s ending did not recover Boukreev or Sobolev: it established only that the tent remained empty. December 25, 1997, consequently marks both the avalanche itself and the beginning of the uncertainty that followed it.