South Summit

South Summit is the exposed high point on the route below Everest’s summit where The Climb’s summit push repeatedly changes character: climbers arrive ahead of the group and wait, oxygen supplies and fixed ropes become urgent practical concerns, and the delay presses against the time needed for a safe descent. On May 10, 1996, it is both a staging point for the final ascent and a place where the limits of the expedition’s coordination become visible.

Route and function

South Summit is reached after the Balcony and lies below the Hillary Step, the rocky tower on the Southeast Ridge that the climbers must negotiate on their way to the summit. The route’s physical demands make the point more than a landmark. After hours of climbing in the Death Zone, climbers pause there to recover, exchange or seek oxygen, and assess whether they can proceed. The ridge also serves as a narrow passage: when climbers bunch at the fixed ropes, those behind cannot readily pass, turning the summit route into a queue with consequences for both oxygen use and timing.

The point’s practical importance is reinforced by what has to be done there. Fixed lines must be extended and secured for the remaining ascent and the return; oxygen canisters are expected to be available for climbers reaching the cache; and the team must keep moving if it is to descend before conditions deteriorate. Each task depends on equipment being in the right place and people being able to coordinate under exhaustion. South Summit therefore functions as a critical junction in the route’s human and material traffic, rather than merely a scenic milestone.

The May 10 bottleneck

Neal Beidleman reached South Summit at 9:58 a.m.; Martin Adams followed about half an hour later. Beidleman recalled feeling anxious about the lateness. He and Adams then spent roughly an hour and a half to two hours there, waiting while climbers behind them jammed the fixed ropes. Some of Rob Hall’s slower clients had moved ahead of the Mountain Madness group and could not be passed. Hall’s client Frank Fischbeck had already turned back, while Hall’s other clients, Fischer’s clients, and Taiwanese climbers remained staggered along the route below and near the summit. The queue meant that climbers were using oxygen while still waiting for a chance to advance.

The bottleneck had been made more dangerous by the failure of the planned rope-fixing arrangement. Members of the Hall and Fischer expeditions expected the climbing sirdars, Ang Dorje Sherpa and Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, to leave Camp IV before the clients and fix the ropes. They had not done so. Lopsang later said a member of a Montenegrin expedition that had attempted the summit the previous day told him the ropes were already fixed; Jon Krakauer questioned that explanation, noting that Lopsang and Ang Dorje carried rope with them. The account also presents the possibility that the expedition leaders believed the earlier report and did not know the ropes remained unfinished. Whatever the reason, climbers reached the upper route without the expected preparation, and South Summit became a place where the missing work had to be confronted in real time.

After waiting nearly an hour, Anatoli Boukreev and Beidleman decided to work together on the ropes to the summit. Boukreev gathered lengths of old rope from the ridge, then moved toward the Hillary Step so that the section could be completed by guides and Sherpas coming behind. He had climbed this route before and had once ascended the Step without fixed ropes, but securing the passage for the clients required a safer arrangement. Beidleman belayed him as he tied into anchors left by earlier expeditions. The work was not an incidental pause: it was a response to the gap between what clients had been told to expect and the actual state of the route.

Oxygen, waiting, and descent

Oxygen supplies at South Summit were another point of uncertainty. The Mountain Madness climbers had taken thirty-eight Poisk canisters up the mountain, with fifteen full Poisk canisters and some remaining oxygen at Camp IV. Ten canisters had been brought to South Summit for the Fischer team: six assigned to clients, one each for Beidleman and Fischer on descent, and two intended as backup. Yet when Beidleman arrived with the clients, the cache did not appear to contain the three full canisters expected. He recalled finding one full or nearly full bottle, which he believed went to Lene Gammelgaard, and several partly used bottles. Beidleman took a partial canister; at least Charlotte Fox and Adams later said they took no additional oxygen. Adams saw Andy Harris searching through a mound of perhaps twenty canisters but found none set aside for him.

The mismatch between the expected cache and what climbers found was consequential because the ascent was already running late. Adams eventually received his third bottle, and believed its remaining oxygen would be enough to summit and return to Camp IV. That confidence depended on assumptions about the time still available and the support awaiting the climbers. The account repeatedly contrasts this confidence with the delays at the fixed ropes and the uncertain distribution of supplies. At South Summit, an oxygen bottle was not simply equipment: it represented a finite reserve that could make the difference between continuing and turning back.

The same ridge later became a point of recognition and urgency on the descent. Boukreev encountered Jon Krakauer slumped on the traverse near South Summit, gripping his ice axe in a self-belay; Krakauer had exhausted his oxygen. Boukreev urged Adams to continue rather than stop and delay, while Klev Schoening recalled that Krakauer’s distress slowed him and that he wanted to see that help was being given. The accounts do not erase their differences: Adams identified the climber as Krakauer, while Krakauer later said he had not glissaded and suggested Adams might have mistaken Yasuko Namba for him. The book preserves the disagreement as a reminder that recollection at extreme altitude can diverge even over a consequential encounter.

The summit decision and return

For the climbers who reached South Summit after the summit, the place remained a decisive checkpoint. On a later expedition described in the book, Anatoli Boukreev’s team reached the point at eleven in the morning after nine hours breaking trail through deep snow. Apa Sherpa had fixed line on the steep section between 8,600 and 8,700 meters, but Boukreev discovered that there was no rope left for the next section. Apa had used the last hundred meters on terrain where unstable snow made a fixed line seem necessary. Apa then combined the remaining forty meters with old rope exposed on the route, allowing the team to continue. The episode makes the route’s dependence on rope concrete: a shortage discovered at South Summit threatened the expedition’s whole plan, while improvised repair restored a way forward.

That later summit attempt also shows South Summit as a place where ascent and descent must be judged together. The climbers reached it exhausted, and Boukreev worried that the Indonesian team members were nearing the end of their strength. Close to the summit, he urged Iwan and Asmujiono to turn back; they initially refused. After the team reached the summit late in the afternoon, Boukreev ordered an immediate descent so they could return in daylight. On the way down, the old ropes across the traverse were a slow and painful passage. Iwan fell at a junction of fixed lines and was pulled back by Vinogradski; Misirin fell repeatedly but continued. The whole Indonesian team reached Camp V at 7:30 p.m., with Boukreev guiding the descent by headlamp in the twilight. In this account, the summit’s achievement does not settle the outcome: the route back, already difficult at South Summit, determines whether the climbers reach shelter.

Narrative significance

The book’s treatment of South Summit gathers the expedition’s broader problems into a single stretch of ridge. The expected ropes are absent, the oxygen cache is incomplete or difficult to interpret, climbers are delayed by those ahead, and guides must make decisions without reliable communication or a shared, clearly enforced timetable. A point intended as a brief staging area becomes a place where these separate vulnerabilities meet. Its importance lies not in a single dramatic incident but in the accumulation of small delays and uncertain resources under conditions where neither can safely be treated as minor.

South Summit also marks the boundary between the apparent completion of the climb and the practical demands of getting down. From there, the summit remains visible as a goal, but the Hillary Step and the descent lie ahead; later, the same ridge carries exhausted climbers back toward camp. The contrast between the two directions gives the location its narrative force: progress upward can look like success, while the same route on the return exposes how little margin the climbers have left.