05/06/2007

Special to the Record-Eagle

Everlasting Moments On Top of the World

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Lou Kasischke slumped to his knees, heart pounding audibly over the roaring wind. Nearly 400 vertical feet from the summit of Mt. Everest, two hours from standing on top of the world, Lou fought a battle with himself.

He hadn't slept in two days. His mind reeled from the thin air as he watched teammates doggedly trudge upward. He was already higher than every other mountain in the world and knew he'd never, ever get another shot. Every ounce of his ego said keep going, while all logic screamed disaster ahead.

Then a voice invaded his oxygen-starved thoughts.

"You go, Lou,” his wife Sandy said before he set out for Nepal, "You go — but you come back.”

And Kasischke stood up, turned his back on the summit of Everest and began to descend. Before he made it to Base Camp, eight climbers would die and two expeditions would suffer a gale with negative 100-degree wind chill at 28,000 feet. Their story would sear itself in the world's eye as the single most deadly season in Everest history.

A resident of Good Hart, just north of Harbor Springs, Kasischke is ready for this story to be a public event again on the eve of the disaster's 11-year anniversary. Universal Studios is releasing a documentary this year and has a feature film in the works as well.

"Everest shook me to the core inside and put me on the quest to understand what happened and why,” said Kasischke. "It's the never-ending question of 'why did I survive?' and it's been a journey of the heart and soul.”

The world latched onto the events of May 10, 1996 like no other climbing story since the initial summit in 1953. News of the tragedy zipped across the globe before the survivors reached Base Camp.

The storm had scattered two dozen climbers, Kasischke included, high on the mountain. One expedition leader, Rob Hall sat freezing near the summit on the radio with a pregnant wife, choosing the name for a daughter he would never see. He'd lingered to aid a client who also died. Junior guide Andy Harris has never been found. Another expedition leader, Scott Fischer also died.

Afterwards, the second-highest helicopter rescue in history plucked Beck Weathers from above the dreaded Khumbu Icefall at 22,000 feet. Weathers survived for 22 hours exposed in the storm, left for dead 300 yards from camp. Miraculously, he awoke, stumbled into camp and was aided down the mountain.

These events were chronicled not only in bestselling print but IMAX video as well. Outside Magazine writer Jon Krakauer accompanied the expedition for a story on the commercialization of Everest. His account became the engrossing non-fiction novel "Into Thin Air.” Alpinist David Breashears was filming on the mountain. His expedition members raced up the mountain to assist Weathers and the other survivors.

Lou Kasischke (ka-SIS-kee) landed in Kathmandu, Nepal on March 29. He is aptly described in Krakauer's book as "a tall, athletic, silver-haired man with patrician reserve.” He was 53 at the time and had trained for a year by running up Boyne Highlands in the dark, listening to "Great Expectations” on audiobook.

Everest would have been the last of his Seven Summits — a climbing feat of scaling the highest peaks on each continent. His highest ascent by then was Aconcagua in Argentina at 22,835 feet, which he scaled twice.

Growing up in Bay City, Kasischke's early passion was speed skating and skiing. The mountains began to call in his 30s. Ski mountaineering became that "perfect combination,” he said, "of endurance athletics and the mountains.”

He developed alpine terrain skills and was soon hooked on climbing. "At first it was a little bit about the list” of new summits, he said, but his attitude evolved into something more spiritual as time wore on.

"You have to love to train in order to be a good climber,” he said.

Educated in business at Michigan State University, he was no stranger to hard work, eventually becoming a Bloomfield Hills lawyer and business owner. He wrote a book on corporate law in 1986.

"I was fascinated by risk,” he said, taking all the financial courses MSU offered. The skills honed there and in his profession dovetailed perfectly with climbing.

"One of my habits as a lawyer was diagramming and visualization.” He excelled at stepping aside, looking back at the dynamic and analyzing it from different perspectives before making a decision. "That was my whole business life. Little did I know that would become a life and death situation for me in 1996.”

Everest is often seen as a squat peak with wind blowing snow off the summit. This is the mountain piercing the jet stream, which makes the peak insurmountable 11 months out of the year. Historically, the stream moves in mid-May, leaving a narrow window for climbers to sneak up to a summit attempt.

The peaks hits 29,035 feet, or the cruising altitude of a jetliner. It was scaled first by Sir Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzig Norgay in 1953.

But Everest's mystique has been dulled. Once the bastion of the uber-elite, many inexperienced amateurs had been ushered to the top by the mid-90s. Purists had begun to deride it as a "slag heap,” and Kasischke's South Col route as the "yak route.”

By 2006, there has been 3,050 ascents by 2,062 individuals, and 203 people have died trying.

"People here had very little interest,” Kasischke said. "In fact, when I left for Everest in '96, most people I knew thought I'd already climbed it.”

Expedition guides like Fischer and Hall have since been criticized for stoking this reputation. Both men were building successful businesses boasting 100 percent success rates and a "yellow brick road to the top,” Fischer told Krakauer.

Still, many who could afford the nearly $70,000 price tag flocked to Nepal, regardless of experience. In 1993, the Nepalese government imposed a four-expedition limit, then cancelled it in 1996 after China began reaping the revenue reward with cheaper permits and no limits. There were 11 other expeditions when Kasischke arrived at Base Camp.

"Everest is the highest in the world, the icon, the symbol of achievement,” he said. "All serious climbers — and if they say they don't they're lying — want to climb Everest. It's the gold medal of the sport of mountaineering.”

Kasischke was surprised at the number of expeditions, expecting to see no more than three. He said Hall played it down, "clearly making it seem a non-issue.” Nobody argued because, well, Hall was the best in the world.

At Base Camp, Krakauer prophetically quotes Hall saying that with so many incompetents on the mountain, "I think it's pretty unlikely we'll get though this season without something bad happening up high.”

Kasischke, a student of Everest literature, recalled nothing overtly alarming at camp.

"It was almost like saying 'one of these days there's going to be an accident on I-75.' Well, sure — it's going to happen,” he said, but acknowledged a state of denial. "You're trying to convince yourself the risks are really not as high and things are never going to happen to you. They happen to other people.”

Just above Base Camp is the most feared portion of the South Col route: the Khumbu Icefall. Apartment building-sized chunks of flowing glacial ice often fall without warning. Kasischke called it the most technically demanding and first serious test of inner strength for a climber.

"You have to be ready and you can't stop for anything,” he said. "No breaks, no eating, no talking, no photos — you move. And you control your emotions.”

Tiptoeing over deep crevasses on a ladder, Hall's expedition would cross the icefall seven more times before summiting and once on the descent.

The treacherous trips back and forth were to acclimatize their bodies. After weeks of trekking to Base Camp at 17,600 feet, gradually increasing red blood cell counts to breathe thinning air, climbers tackle the mountain in a series of regulated ascents and descents. Sherpas haul equipment and supplies ahead to establish camps and climbers prepare by gingerly leapfrogging upward.

Kasischke did this while weakened from sickness. He picked up a virus on the way to Base Camp that stayed for weeks.

"One of the big challenges is to stay healthy,” he said. "It's very, very hard. On Everest there's a saying: 'once you're sick, you stay sick' because there's so little oxygen. When you're at Base Camp, you're at half the oxygen of sea level. If you cut your finger it just never heals.”

In the Death Zone, hypoxia sets in and body functions break down because the oxygen level above 26,250 feet cannot sustain humans. Altitude sicknesses like pulmonary and cerebral edema can fill the lungs and brain cavity with fluid. Exposed skin invites frostbite. Headaches are constant. You can't sleep, can't eat and oxygen deprivation intoxicates you.

Climbers use bottled oxygen to fight these effects. Hall mandated his expedition carry it for safety and ethical reasons: a climber on oxygen is less likely to need rescue.

"We all know — particularly when you're up in the Death Zone — you're on your own,” Kasischke said. "But if you get into trouble, out of a sense of humanity people are going to help you. That puts them at very high risk.”

After establishing middle camp, the climbers faced a grueling two-day climb into the Death Zone up the Lhotse Face, a steep 4,000-foot wall of ice. No ropes invite disaster. Unclip, fall without arrest and you plunge over a bottomless cliff. Atop the Lhotse Face, a high camp is established as a launching pad for the final push.

The decision to summit on May 10 had been discussed at Base Camp as a group on May 5. The expedition leaders met to decide summiting schedules based on the jet stream, with the final plan to be fluid based on the weather.

The decision to summit on the same day as the Fischer expedition caused some concern, but nobody pressed too hard. Climbers were working well together considering the stress and felt confident in Hall's leadership.

"Things were going pretty well,” Kasischke said. "It was all happening. Things were working.”

According to the plan, two sherpas would leave high camp before dawn on May 10 to fix ropes on the Hillary Step, a 40-foot ice wall just below the top. No teams had summited yet. High winds rebuffed the IMAX team the day before, but Hall's expedition would try anyway.

The decision was heavily debated at high camp.

"I thought it was a bad decision,” Kasischke said. "But hey, I'm there, I'm never going to have another chance, so I'm going.”

The climbers now had a ticking clock to consider. From high camp, the summit is an 18-hour continuous push on a rigid timetable.

"There was really no margin for error there,” Kasischke said. "You had to be back (to camp) in daylight and before you ran out of oxygen.”

But the pace was slow. A communications breakdown between the two expeditions meant no ropes had been fixed, which caused confusion and ate up time. Climbers were bottlenecking on the ridge and Hillary Step.

"People didn't work together,” Kasischke said. "It resulted in delays and now it brings to the forefront the issue of the large number of climbers from the combined expeditions.”

Kasischke found himself on the ridge, 8,000 feet of air on both sides, weighing the variables stacking up. He was two hours away from the summit, well behind the timetable, which called for a 1 p.m. turnaround, and clouds were beginning to form below.

But climbers were still moving. Guides Hall, Harris, Mike Groom, and clients Krakauer, Doug Hanson, and Japanese woman Yasuko Namba pressed onward.

"Those moments stay with me forever,” Kasischke said.

The dynamic had suddenly shifted. For six weeks, Kasischke fought the desire to quit from the hardships and misery. Turning around seemed anathema at this point.

Kasischke remembers the self-focused voice. "I don't take 'no' for an answer,” he said, "especially from myself.”

Teammates Stuart Hutchison, Frank Fischbeck and John Taske had already turned around, "but I couldn't accept that,” Kasischke said. "The others were still going, so I figured it must be OK.”

Then his heart started to pound.

"It was frightening,” he said. "I could hear it beating over the roar of the wind. I'd never experienced anything like it. I dropped to my knees and in those moments, I found myself in the internal struggle.”

There on the ridge, the risks running high, his wife's voice echoing in his mind, the lawyer within weighing the risks ahead, Kasischke did something he'd never done before: he turned around.

"I did say 'no' to my dream,” he said. "But then my heart stopped pounding and I felt at peace.”

He would have been the second oldest in history to summit Everest.

"And of course, you know the story,” he said. "Most everyone else who went on at that point died.”

Enter the storm

Descending into a brewing gale, Kasischke caught up with Taske at the balcony, a small plateau where they rested for a moment before moving on, each glad for the company. They could see the clouds moving up towards them.

Taske nearly bought it with a misstep.

"He was cascading down the valley,” Kasischke said. "I whipped right around, sunk my ice ax into the snow. My eyes are bulging as I'm watching him about to catapult into Nepal, and he did a spectacular move — a classic mountaineering self-arrest.”

Whoa, he thought.

"If there's anything that gets your attention,” he said, "it's something like that.”

Kasischke and Taske met up and moved town together. The storm engulfed them just before high camp.

"The clouds and visibility were such that one minute you could see what was going on and the next minute you couldn't,” Kasischke said.

They found camp by following the crampon marks. It was about 5 p.m. and Kasischke collapsed in his tent.

He would endure a new horror upon awakening. Having forsaken his protective goggles for a period earlier, he awoke with no sight in a violently shaking tent. Intense sunburn of the cornea had rendered him snow-blind.

A doctor would later tell him the ultraviolet light at that altitude was like a welding torch to his eye.

"I'm confused, I'm blind, I'm disoriented and by now the storm is in full hurricane force.”

The wind shook the tent, picking it up and slamming it back down "like 100 freight trains,” he said. Kasischke futilely screamed for help.

He began to wonder; what time is it? Where is everyone? What day is it? Why am I alone? How am I going to get out of here? Am I going to die here?

"My immediate fear was fighting for my life in the elements,” he said. "Either that tent was going to shred into pieces or it was going to get blown into China with me inside.”

Blind, he groped around for his gear, slowly pulling on each piece. His eyes began to water and he feared his eyeballs would freeze. Total concentration was required. This went on for hours.

"Then, one of the most joyful moments in my whole life was when I heard the zipper opening and Stuart Hutchinson crawled inside,” Kasischke said.

Hutchinson had a radio and knew what was happening. Over 20 climbers were missing. The entire Fischer expedition and some of Hall's were exposed in the now famous "huddle” 300 yards from camp. Namba died and Weathers would be left for dead.

The storm lasted through the night, abating the next afternoon, then rebuilding by the evening on May 11. Kasischke learned that Doug Hanson had reached the summit at 4 p.m., three hours after the turnaround time and Hall had been waiting.

Hanson perished but Hall survived the night in radio contact from South Summit. His last words were "please don't worry too much,” to his wife, Jan, after rescue attempts failed. The IMAX expedition would find his body on May 23.

Three Indian climbers from a Northeast Ridge expedition also died, bringing the death toll to eight. The count would climb to 12 before the month ended.

Kasischke's eyesight had returned by May 12. The storm had lessened slightly and the survivors decided to abandon everything and run for it.

"We didn't think we could live another 24 hours in the Death Zone,” he said.

Kasischke crawled out of his tent, stood up and collapsed. He stood up and crumpled again, his body weary from oxygen deprivation and four days without food and sleep.

"I heard people yelling 'ready, ready' and starting to move,” he said. "I thought, 'you either move now or you're dead'.”

Body and mind frozen stiff, he struggled down to middle camp on sheer will. He had frostbite on some fingers and was treated by a doctor. He ate, drank, and collapsed into a tent for his first sleep in five days.

The next day he tiptoed though the Icefall one last time and stumbled into Base Camp. He promptly cried his eyes out.

"All I could think about was that I needed to talk to my wife, Sandy,” he said. The satellite phone was down, so Kasischke went to his tent and talked to himself. He prayed and gave thanks.

"And something else happened that I didn't discover until years later,” he said. "I wrote a note to Sandy to be faxed on the sat machine.”

The note read: "God's Will and our love for each other turned me around a short distance from the top and saved my life.”

The story of will inspires

When the University of Michigan beat Ohio State to win the Big Ten Championship in 1998, two prayer flags from Everest Base Camp were flying in the Big House.

Credit Lou Kasischke, who unexpectedly provided the steel for the resolve that saw the Wolverines to victory in a season with the team mantra of "climbing Everest.”

There's no doubt in Kasischke's mind that he'd be forever entombed on Everest had he not turned around. The journey to understand Everest's effect on his life would take years.

Immediately afterwards, a glut of media coverage swarmed the survivors, but Kasischke had another tragedy to deal with. Sandy's father abruptly died the day he returned. They mourned while dodging TV crews camped on his lawn.

"I couldn't tell the story beyond the basic factual events because I don't think I really understood it,” he said, so he declined most requests to speak.

Then he received a call from Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr, who wanted Kasischke to speak to his players.

Kasischke was initially reluctant, but Carr convinced him that he wanted more than a locker room pep talk. He wanted his players to hear about decision-making from someone who'd made the right one when it counted.

"When I told my story to the football team, everything for me changed,” Lou said. "I could see it in their eyes within minutes. I could feel the intensity of their interest, the depth of their understanding — the translation of this climbing struggle to their own struggle. For the first time, I felt good about telling the story.”

From that point, Kasischke didn't just tell a mountain climbing story, he told the story of his inner struggle and sources of strength to do the right thing in the face of adversity.

"And to my great astonishment,” he said, "still more people want to hear the story,”

Parents, teachers, coaches, business leaders, military officers, social workers, even prison officials wanted their inmates to hear it.

"On and on,” he said. "To them, it was a story about everyday life.”

He says Everest was "the worst experience in my life and I wish it had never happened to me,” he said, "but it gave rise to this tremendous time of personal and spiritual growth.”

Kasischke stopped climbing for a long time, but is planning a new expedition to climb the sacred mountains of the world — an epilogue of sorts.

He leaves in June for Turkey, Egypt and Greece. He will climb Mt. Ararat, Mt. Sinai and Mt. Olympus. Ararat is the very first place mentioned in the Biblical book of Genesis after the flood, a place to sweep away the past.

"Everest, like Ararat, is a mountain,” he said. "For me, a place, or moment of new creation, of new life, a fresh start. A new sense of myself.”