DougPaul said:
Doug Hansen had failed high on the mountain the previous year. Perhaps Hall was trying extra hard to make sure he (Hansen) made it this year. (Hall did offer a reduced rate for a re-try for those who failed to reach the summit.) Conditions were very nice until a nasty storm appeared with very little warning. (Had the storm not appeared, it just would have been another "nice day on the big hill"...)
Hall died in the col between the Hillary Step and the South Summit. He appears not to have had the strength to climb up and over the South Summit. IIRC, Hansen's body has not been found. Hall may have managed to get Hansen to the col and stayed with him until he (Hansen) died. By then Hall may have been too exhausted to continue.
Brains often do not work properly at altitude, so it is also quite possible that Hall was using logic that us lowlanders might not agree with. It would seem likely that he became fixated on getting Hansen to the summit and back down. It is also very difficult to leave someone who is alive, but who has no chance of survival.
Doug
I agree with all of the above.
First paragraph:kinda' like what happened on Franconia Ridge this past early February.
Second paragraph: Andy Harris, one of Rob Hall's guides, also disappeared, but Hall, Krakauer, and others mistook others for Andy even before the storm struck.
Third paragraph: Yes, a guide stays with his client(s) right to end, no matter what, for which Rob Hall will always be remembered. Anatoli Boukrev,Scott Fisher's chief guide, on the other hand, was not above the South Col when he was needed.
I sensed that Bec Weathers' final words in the film were probably directed at Jon Krakauer. But, I do not think that one can fault Krakauer for hunkering down in his tent rather than trying to help Boukrev in the South Col, as Krakauer was a client and not a guide (in fact, the only client who was able to take care of himself). Understandably, the survivors are not happy with what Krakauer wrote about them in his book, as some times the truth hurts. I think that Hall and Fisher really felt that they had the route "wired" for just about any clients, no matter how ill prepared, as they could rely on their sherpas to "short rope" clients up and down if necessary, which worked again and again right up to 1996.
