Left for dead

Anyone who has read Jon Krakauers famous account of the 1996 Everest disaster, INTO THIN AIR, will remember the story of Beck Weathers: the gregarious Texan climber who went snow-blind in the Death Zone below the summit and who spent a night out in the open during a blizzard that took the lives of a dozen colleagues.

Having staggered back to Camp the following morning, so extreme was his frostbite that fellow survivors assumed he would not make it back down the mountain. But, calling upon reserves of courage and tenacity he didnt know he had, Weathers began the slow descent to a point at which the next stage of the drama could unfold: the highest rescue by helicopter ever attempted

Source: cover of book