Thirty years ago this weekend, Wānaka’s Guy Cotter watched as a storm rolled toward Mt Everest, and he knew his friends were in danger.
What followed was one of the most infamous disasters in the history of climbing on the world’s highest peak, with Mr Cotter’s pivotal role in the rescue told in Jon Krakauer’s 1997 best-seller Into Thin Air and the 2015 blockbuster Everest.
Cotter was a guide for Hall and Ball Adventure Consultants - the mountaineering company founded by Rob Hall and Gary Ball that pioneered guided expeditions to Everest - for the company’s first guided expedition to the mountain’s summit in 1992, as well as for expeditions in 1993, in which the group reached the summit but Cotter did not as he cared for a client, and in 1995, when the group stopped 70m short of the summit due to bad weather and fading light.
In 1996, expecting his second child, Mr Cotter could not commit to a three-month Everest expedition, so instead led a group of Malaysian climbers on a shorter expedition to Mt Pumori, a smaller peak 8km west of Everest.
‘‘The Adventure Consultants expedition had been in the area for a month or so and when I arrived they were about ready to go to the summit.
‘‘I caught up with them and we had a few meetings and they went off toward the summit.
‘‘It was only a few days later when everything went wrong,’’ Mr Cotter said.
‘‘Back in those days, there was no really good weather forecasting, so you just had to make it up as you went along,’’ Mr Cotter said.
From his vantage point at the base of Mt Pumori, Mr Cotter could see the weather coming in, but it wasn’t a significant concern until he learned how high up the mountain his colleagues remained.
‘‘I looked down the valley from where I was a few kilometres away and saw this big front coming up the valley towards us,’’ Mr Cotter said.
‘‘The fact that they were relatively late getting down was the problem.
‘‘If they’d managed to get up and down back to the South Col by midday, or even by 5pm, there would have been no problem at all, but because they had various delays going on, they didn’t.
‘‘That was hard for me to accept because I’d been there all those years and been instrumental in making the decision to turn around early.
‘‘To hear that they were up there so late was devastating.’’ Mr Cotter said.
In attempting to guide client Doug Hansen safely down the mountain, Cotter’s friend and mentor, Rob Hall had made slow progress.
When Hansen went missing during the night, Hall continued down the mountain alone, but a frozen regulator on his oxygen mask slowed his progress before frostbitten hands and feet stopped him in his tracks.
Hall’s last radio communication was patched through to his wife in New Zealand, pregnant with her first child, who he is reported to have told, ‘‘Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.’’
Mr Cotter had been given a radio by Mr Hall to maintain contact, and once he heard how the disaster was developing, he headed to Everest base camp to help the base camp manager and to help co-ordinate the rescue.
‘‘It was very difficult,’’ Mr Cotter said.
‘‘There were people on the mountain who got involved in helping, and there were people who didn’t pitch in or help at all.
‘‘There was the whole cross-section of humanity, and all of its good and bad sides came out at that point,’’ Mr Cotter said.
In total, 12 people lost their lives in the disaster, including Rob Hall, New Zealander and Adventure Consultants guide Andy Harris, and Adventure Consultants clients Doug Hansen and Yasuko Nasamba.
New Zealand has left an indelible mark on Mount Everest, and while you might be well-versed in Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent, you might not know about the role of New Zealanders, and Adventure Consultants - the now Wānaka-based business led by Cotter - in pioneering guided expeditions up the mountain.
In 1990, its founders - Rob Hall and Gary Ball - summitted Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary’s son Peter, with a view to taking guided expeditions up the mountain.
Cotter, who grew up in the mountains and first climbed Mount Cook via the technical East Ridge aged 17, before guiding expeditions in Alaska and the Himalayas, was offered the opportunity to come on board as a third guide.
For Cotter, then in his late 20s, it was an incredible opportunity to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak, and to learn about the expedition business.
‘‘It was great for me because even though I was a strong climber, Himalayan climbing required so much more in the way of administration, politics, strategies and logistics, so it wasn’t just about the climbing anymore.’’
We settle on democratised as a fairer description.
‘‘What Hall and Ball did was to guide it, and that enabled every man and woman to get to Everest.
‘‘Prior to that, it was very exclusive and elite.
‘‘You had to be either a national team, or you had to be part of a sponsored team that was usually pulling in all of the best climbers from one country to go on these expeditions, so it was actually very, very difficult for people to get access to Everest,’’ Mr Cotter said.
Nothing is guaranteed on Everest, but the guided expeditions offered by Hall and Ball Adventure Consultants - as the business was then known - were immediately successful, with clients reaching the summit on the first three expeditions, and getting within 70m of the summit on the fourth expedition in 1995.
With Rob Hall’s death in 1996 following Gary Ball’s death of high-altitude pulmonary edema on the world’s seventh-highest peak Dhaulagiri in 1993, Mr Cotter purchased the remnants of Adventure Consultants from Mr Hall’s wife.
‘‘I didn’t know whether it was going to be the right move, or whether I should rebrand, but in the end I decided to carry on with the Adventure Consultants brand in respect of my mentors,’’ Cotter said.
‘‘There were some pros and cons, and there were some negative connotations because of what happened in 1996, but in the end it was an easy decision.’’
Cotter said that the coronavirus pandemic - and a regulatory environment making it more and more difficult to run expeditions in New Zealand - means that the domestic side of the business is lying dormant, but the international side, taking clients to the Earth’s extremes like Everest or the poles, is still going strong.
‘‘When I look back, Rob and Gary were pioneers.
‘‘Pioneers frequently reach the parameters of the activity that they’re working in, but doing that helps to establish how that activity should be operated going forward,’’ Mr Cotter said.
