00:00The winds were roaring, the snow was swirling everywhere, and the visibility was reduced to nothing.
00:0617 climbers trapped at the top of Everest were cruelly lacking oxygen.
00:11Did they have the slightest chance of getting out?
00:13And why was this day going to mark history under the name of the Everest disaster of 1996?
00:19At the end of March of that year, an expedition of 18 people led by Rob Hall gathered in Kathmandu, Nepal.
00:27The next day, they embarked on a 9-day ascent through the Himalayan trails.
00:33On April 9, they finally reached the base camp, the starting point of the ascent of Mount Everest.
00:39The progression had been difficult, and several members of the team suffered altitude sickness.
00:44During this time, another climber, Scott Fisher, led a team of 19 people to the base camp.
00:52Upon arrival, the two groups undertook adaptation exercises to learn to breathe in an air impoverished with oxygen.
00:58In Rob's team, a climber was victim of frostbite to the toes, and his frozen throat practically prevented him from speaking.
01:06In Scott's team, a man struggled to breathe from the base camp and had to resort to bottled oxygen.
01:12One of Scott's Sherpas had another serious incident.
01:16These bearers and guides, essential to the Himalayan expeditions,
01:20are able to carry loads that can exceed twice their own weight on steep and icy reliefs.
01:26An adult in good physical condition can easily carry a backpack loaded with a quarter of his weight.
01:32In addition, Sherpas seem to have superhuman strength.
01:36They also have a remarkable ability to adapt to extreme conditions of high altitude,
01:41where pressure and oxygen retention are considerably reduced.
01:45According to scientists, this would be explained by a lower oxygen concentration in their blood,
01:50which favors muscle irrigation.
01:52It is also likely that this resistance is part of their genes.
01:56Either way, one of Scott's Sherpas suffered from a serious malaise,
02:00unable to breathe normally in this rarefied air.
02:03He had to be evacuated to a hospital, but succumbed a few weeks later.
02:08Alas, he would not be the only victim of this tragic ascent.
02:12The teams continued their progress and left the base camp on May 6,
02:16reaching camp 2 in the same day.
02:18Three days later, they reached camp 4, the last step before the summit.
02:23The goal was to reach the Everest summit, then return to camp 4 in less than 18 hours.
02:28Extending one's stay at such an altitude, especially without additional oxygen,
02:33represented a considerable risk.
02:35Meanwhile, a climber from the Taiwanese National Expedition on its way to the summit,
02:40named Shen Yunan, left his tent without properly attaching the metal crampons to his boots.
02:46Deprived of this essential hang, he slipped and fell into a deep ice crevasse
02:51on a steep section of the mountain.
02:53Although he survived, he nevertheless chose to continue his descent the next day,
02:57a decision that was fatal to him.
02:59At this stage, the teams had entered an area where the air is so poor in oxygen
03:05that the human body struggles to survive.
03:07Some climbers encountered another expedition that was already descending the mountain.
03:11These members warned them of the danger of continuing due to unfavorable weather conditions,
03:16but none of them took this warning into account.
03:19At midnight on May 10, climbers from several groups began their ascent to the summit.
03:25Each carried two extra oxygen bottles, knowing that they would be exhausted by 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
03:31They had to climb and descend without wasting time.
03:34However, the Sherpas in charge of installing the safety ropes were delayed,
03:38forcing the climbers to wait an hour on the steep slopes.
03:42In addition, some participants, less experienced, have still slowed down the whole group.
03:48Rob Hall, the leader of the first group, had given instructions to reverse between 1 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon
03:55whether they had reached the summit or not.
03:57At around 1 p.m., the first group crossed the Everest summit.
04:01However, many climbers did not respect their time limit set at 2 p.m.
04:06Scott Fischer, on his side, authorized his team to continue their ascent well after 3 p.m.
04:12Rob Hall and Doug Hansen only reached the summit at 4 p.m.,
04:16an hour too late to hope to descend safely.
04:20The weather was already deteriorating.
04:22At 3.30 p.m., a storm broke out.
04:25And at 6 p.m., it had turned into a blizzard of rare intensity.
04:30While some climbers managed to regain their camp, at 10 p.m.,
04:34half of the group was still trapped in the storm.
04:38One of the groups was blocked at 8,230 meters above sea level, only 60 meters from camp 4.
04:44Blinded by the storm, the climbers chose to regroup and wait for it to calm down.
04:49Rob Hall and Doug Hansen, on their side, found themselves immobilized near an icy and steep section,
04:55known as Hillary Spring.
04:58Hansen collapsed, and Hall remained on his side.
05:01Hansen's body was never found.
05:03Later, the Sherpas discovered the remains of other climbers scattered at different altitudes.
05:08In total, the disaster cost the lives of 8 people and caused many injured.
05:13It was the deadliest report in 24 hours on Everest.
05:17Five years later, Everest did everything to prevent Marco Siffredi from being the first to unveil his snowboard summit.
05:23The route he had initially planned for his descent was cruelly lacking snow.
05:27The French alpinist and snowboarder therefore had to choose another.
05:31After only 201 meters of descent, a snowboard fastening strap broke due to the cold.
05:37A Sherpa helped him repair it, and he finished his descent in two hours, up to 6,400 meters of altitude.
05:43The following year, Siffredi sought to reiterate his feat on another side of Everest.
05:48Although the season had been well advanced in August, it did not stop him.
05:52He reached the summit on September 8, accompanied by three Sherpas.
05:56Exhausted and faced with a changing weather, his guides advised him not to continue, but he did not listen.
06:03The Sherpas lost sight of him several times, and, at about 1,300 meters below camp 3,
06:09they saw a distant silhouette stand up one last time before disappearing into the mountains.
06:15Neither Siffredi nor the tracks of his snowboard were ever found.
06:19However, we could still hear about him, because it sometimes takes nearly a century to find traces of a disappearance on Everest.
06:26On June 8, 1924, Andrew Sandy Irvine and George Mallory embarked on an unprecedented undertaking.
06:34Reach the summit of Everest.
06:36But something went wrong, and the two men disappeared into the icy heights.
06:40No one ever knew if they had reached the summit before disappearing.
06:44If they had reached it, they would have broken a record that was officially established only 29 years later.
06:50In 1999, mountaineers discovered Mallory's body on the mountain.
06:55However, the corpse then mysteriously disappeared.
06:58Although the exact location was known, the research carried out using drones and cameras remained vain.
07:04Everything leads to believe that he had been moved, but no one knows the reason.
07:08Then, in September 2024, a team making a documentary for National Geographic made a rare discovery.
07:15A boot protruding from the ice on a glacier well below the northern face of Everest.
07:21The leather, worn and cracked, as well as the steel nails of the sole, indicated that it belonged to a distant era.
07:28Inside, a sock was sewn with a red label, where we could read AC Irvine.
07:35Confirming that these were the remains of Sandy Irvine.
07:39A few days earlier, while descending the Rongpuk glacier, the team had discovered an old oxygen bottle dating from 1933.
07:47Although it is not directly related to Mallory and Irvine's ascent,
07:51it allowed them to study the possible trajectories of objects and bodies in case of a fall on the mountain.
07:57Irvine was carrying a small Kodak camera during his ascent,
08:01and many think that the clichés he contained could provide the answer to the biggest question.
08:06Had he reached the summit before disappearing?
08:09Irvine's family members also offered DNA samples to confirm his identity.
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