Potterfield

Yet the events of last spring will never be forgotten, only absorbed into experience and carried along, somehow, by those touched by the tragedy. On May 10, 1996, a sudden storm slammed into the upper slopes of 29,028-foot Mount Everest, catching more than a dozen people above the sanctuary of their highest camp at the South Col. In the grim night-time hours that followed, climbers, guides and clients all over the upper mountain were pinned down without shelter or supplemental oxygen in blizzard conditions. By noon the following day, the unbelievable toll was in: the storm had killed 8 people, including famous big-mountain guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.

Scott was a friend of mine -- he figured prominently in my last book, In the Zone -- and his untimely death affected me viscerally, emotionally. It raised once again the question I had long since stopped asking -- why do people climb? In the next few weeks I hope to shed a little light on that subject as I accompany Todd Burleson and his Alpine Ascents International 1997 Everest Expedition to the mountain. I'll linger a few weeks at base camp before leaving the climbers to their sobering challenge when I return to work in Seattle as editor of The Mountain Zone.

Todd Burleson -- who with guide Pete Athans figured prominently in helping last May's survivors down from the high camp -- will this year be focused on science. Burleson, Wally Berg and Charles Corfield will once again help the Boston Museum of Science dean of mountains, Brad Washburn, measure movement of the mountain itself. It's an interesting experiment, involving both GPS technology and laser-based measurement of great precision. Coupled with the difficulties of just getting where they need to be, their goal is a sobering one. [Click here for a detailed look at the science to be done on Everest this year.]

Others will also be on Everest this year. Among them:

• Americans Ed Viesturs, Dave Breashears and Pete Athans will be climbing the mountain while making a film on high-altitude physiology for NOVA.

• Anatoli Boukreev, the Russian climber who as a member of Fischer's team last year made repeated solo forays into last May's storm to bring climbers to safety, will lead a team of Indonesian climbers in an attempt on the summit this year.

• Adventure Consultants, Ltd., the company founded by Rob Hall, will once again venture to Everest with a climbing team under the direction of new owner Guy Cotter.

• A well-heeled Malaysian national expedition will be on the mountain in force.

So join us over the next few weeks as the climbers regroup in Kathmandu, then make their way slowly toward the mountain. (More slowly than before in fact, as the Russian helicopters that over the past few years have flown climbers directly to Shyangboche have been declared uncertified for passengers, which means everybody is back to taking the Twin Otters into Lukla and walking a day and a half to reach Namche.)

In fact, things are never predictable on Mount Everest, which is probably why it generates so much interest.

-- Peter Potterfield, Mountain Zone Correspondent