- Scott Fischer
Scott E Fischer (
December 24 1955 –May 11 1996 ) was an American climber andguide , and the first American to summit 27,940-foot (8,516 m)Lhotse , fourth highest mountain in the world.Fischer spent his early life in
Michigan andNew Jersey and took two years of climbing courses after being inspired at the age of 14 by a show he saw on television. In 1982, he and his wife,Jean Price , moved west toSeattle, Washington where they raised two children, Andy and Katie Rose.In the 1984, Fischer formed his own adventure company,
Mountain Madness , which he set up to guarantee clients the summit of the world's highest mountains for fees in the $50,000 range. In 1992, while climbingK2 successfully, he was involved in a daring rescue ofChantal Mauduit , a French woman climber who became severely snow blind. She went on to climb five moreeight-thousander s but died in anavalanche onDhaulagiri (1998). From the 1992 season, Fischer brought a new level ofcommercialism to adventures from successes of climbing.He died in the
1996 Everest Disaster onMay 11 , the worst tragedy in the climbing history ofMount Everest . OnMay 10 ,1996 , Fischer,Anatoli Boukreev andNeal Beidleman guided eight of their clients to the summit of Everest. On the descent, the team was caught in a severesnowstorm . All the climbers managed to reach Camp IV on theSouth Col (7,900 m or 25,900 feet), except Fischer.Fischer, who had reached the summit at around 3:45pm, had severe difficulties on the descent. Fischer was accompanied by sirdar (chief
Sherpa )Lopsang Jangbu , but just below the south summit, Fischer was unable to continue and finally coaxed Lopsang to descend without him. Lopsang did so, with the hopes that he would be able to send someone else back up with additional supplemental oxygen and help Fischer get down. Boukreev, after descending ahead of his clients earlier in the day, made several attempts to reach Fischer, but turned back on the first two attempts due to the weather, though he succeeded in rescuing several other stranded people.Finally, around 7pm on
May 11 , Boukreev was able to reach Fischer's position, but unfortunately it was too late. Many speculate that Fischer had been suffering from a severe form ofaltitude sickness , either HACE or HAPE. A memorial cairn for Scott Fischer can be found at the top of a hill nearLobuche , on the trail to Everest base camp.Accounts of what happened in 1996 were described in the books "The Climb" by
Anatoli Boukreev andGary Weston DeWalt , "Into Thin Air " byJon Krakauer , and "Left for Dead" byBeck Weathers . "Mountain Madness" by Robert Birkby is a biography of Scott Fischer.In the TV-movie "", Fischer was played by
Peter Horton .External links
* [http://classic.mountainzone.com/climbing/fischer/fischer.html Guide Scott Fischer Dies on Mount Everest]
* [http://www.mountainmadness.com/ Mountain Madness website]
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