The YouTuber on a Mission to Trash My Book: Chapter Eight
A refutation of Michael Tracy’s deceitful campaign to impugn the veracity of “Into Thin Air” and spread misinformation about the 1996 Everest disaster
Among the multitude of false allegations Michael Tracy makes in his videos, one of the strangest is his claim that I fabricated my account of Andy Harris inadvertently turning up my oxygen from half flow (2 liters per minute) to full flow (4 liters per minute) while we waited on top of the Hillary Step for the traffic jam below us to clear during our descent.
In the video Tracy posted on May 13, 2024, “Analysis of Scott Fischer’s photo from South Summit,” Tracy alleges that my description of running out of oxygen in Into Thin Air is significantly different from a brief account of the same incident I provided in this interview with the website Outside Online on May 20, 1996:
Anatoli got to the top first. I was running out of [oxygen]. Neal had been second, but he let me pass him. My oxygen was about to run out and I wanted to tag the summit and get back to the south summit where I had another cylinder. So I was the second one to the top, and Andy was the third, and Neal came up…. By the time I got to the Hillary Step — I got there just in time for the major traffic jam. And my oxygen ran out at the top of the Hillary Step and I had to wait there. I didn’t want to try to weave my way through the crowd without oxygen because I was so dizzy. I didn’t want to fall and blow it. So I just waited. I stood there at the Hillary Step for maybe half an hour. I don’t know how long, must have been at least half an hour, maybe longer. And at that point I watched almost everyone, maybe everyone, pass. I was on my way down and they were going up. The end of the line was Rob and Doug [Hansen], Scott, and Makalu Gau. I saw the whole parade go by right there and it was definitely a time-consuming thing.
At the 24:40 mark in Tracy’s video he says:
[Krakauer’s] story was that he runs out of oxygen and then he decides not to descend because if he had oxygen he could have just asked people to pause for a minute or two while he clipped in and rappelled down, but without oxygen he didn’t think he could make a quick descent and he didn’t want to clog up the Step. However that version makes it obvious that Krakauer screwed up and ran out of oxygen because he was impatient and wanted to be out in front, so the version in his book Into Thin Air is completely different.
Tracy is wrong. There are two accounts describing this incident in my book: One account is in Chapter 1; the other is in Chapter 13. Neither of these accounts contradict one another or the account I provided in the Outside Online interview; for the most part the accounts in my book are simply much longer than the account in the interview, and provide many more details. The primary difference is that in the Outside Online interview I didn’t mention anything about Harris inadvertently turning up my oxygen, because the interview was so brief, and I would have run out of oxygen waiting for the traffic jam to clear regardless of Harris turning up the flow. Furthermore, the incident ultimately had little or no bearing on what happened on May 10.
Tracy is prevaricating when he suggests my book attempts to cover up the fact that the reason I ran out of bottled oxygen is because I “screwed up,” and was therefore attempting to blame Harris for my oxygen shortage. In Chapter 13 of Into Thin Air I pointedly wrote that I “stupidly assumed” I would have plenty of time to reach the summit and return to the South Summit before my second oxygen cannister ran out, so I was plainly blaming myself. And my book leaves no doubt that my stupid assumption had serious consequences.
Nevertheless, Tracy goes to absurd lengths in this video to make a case that I invented the entire account about Harris adjusting my oxygen flow. At the 26:07 mark he argues that if Harris had mistakenly turned up the flow rate on my regulator from 2 liters per minute (half flow) to 4 liters per minute (full flow) instead of turning it off, as I had requested, it’s impossible I wouldn’t have known, due the loud hissing I would have heard as the gas entered my oxygen mask.
“While you’re climbing you don’t really notice it,” Tracy says, “but you can hear it when you’re just standing there. For instance,” he continues, “if you wake up in the middle of the night and hear the hiss you know you still have oxygen in your bottle,” especially when it’s at full flow. “It is difficult to believe that someone standing there could not hear the extremely loud hissing sound coming from an oxygen system he thought was turned off.”
But I wasn’t bedded down in a quiet tent when Harris mistakenly turned my regulator to full flow. I was hunkered on the crest of the summit ridge being buffeted by roaring wind that was more than loud enough to drown out the sound of oxygen flowing into my mask, regardless of how loudly the gas was “hissing.” Additionally, I was wearing three layers of insulation over my ears that muffled the hiss even further: a thin balaclava, a heavy wool hat, and the 2-inch-thick down hood of my one-piece high-altitude suit.
Here’s another shot I took looking down at Andy Harris waiting on top of the Hillary Step for the traffic jam to clear. This is where I was situated when he unintentionally turned up my regulator to full flow:
The photo below, shot by Neal Beidleman, shows Boukreev approaching the Hillary Step as the wind blows an immense plume of ice crystals over Tibet and lifts the rope high above the ridge. This provides an accurate sense of how strong it was blowing. The top of the Hillary Step is the snowy promontory that appears near the top of the photo.
When the traffic jam on the Hillary Step finally cleared, I hadn’t had any supplemental oxygen for well over an hour. I was suffering acutely from hypoxia. Afflicted with intermittent periods of vertigo and feeling wobbly, I worried that I might black out at any moment. But I figured as long as I was clipped into a fixed rope I would probably be OK. So after Andy Harris rappelled down the Hillary Step, I rapped down after him, then started traversing across the corniced ridge leading to the South Summit. But when I reached a spot beyond where the fixed ropes ended — approximately where you see the red X in the photo above — I lost it.
I jammed the shaft of my ice ax into the ridge crest for something to hold onto, then hunkered over it, too freaked out to keep moving forward. There was no fixed rope between me and the South Summit, and I was terrified that if I went any further in my severely diminished condition, I might black out and fall 7,000 feet down the Southwest Face of Everest.
A short time later, Michael Groom — who was guiding Yasuko Namba down from the Step — overtook me. I was “slumped on the ridge… in a very distressed state, having run out of oxygen — a crippling event at such altitude,” Groom writes on page 282 of his book, Sheer Will. He dug into my backpack, which was still on my back, and disconnected my oxygen hose from my empty oxygen bottle. Then he unplugged his hose from his own bottle, slipped his bottle into my backpack, and connected my hose to it. The beneficial effect of the oxygen for me “was almost instantaneous,” Groom writes, “and the three of us continued to join Andy on the South Summit.”
When we got there I returned Groom’s oxygen bottle to him, and he handed my third oxygen bottle to me from the stash of eight purportedly full bottles Rob Hall’s Sherpas had left for us on the South Summit. A minute or two later, after I’d already put my backpack on to continue heading down the mountain, I asked Groom to take a quick look inside the pack and confirm my regulator was set to a flow rate of 2 liters a minute, because I’d neglected to check it when I screwed it into my third bottle, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t run out of oxygen again.
According to Groom’s book, “Jon… wanted me to check the flow rate on his regulator which should have been on 2 litres a minute but was on 4 litres, which explained why he had run out prematurely.”
This confirms that Harris turned up my regulator to full flow on top of the Hillary Step, refuting Tracy’s allegation. But no amount of evidence can ever be strong enough to abate Tracy’s torrent of bullshit. In his video he claims that I must have turned the regulator up to full flow myself when I was slumped on the ridge after Groom gave me his oxygen bottle.
Adjusting my regulator by myself at that time would have been impossible, because I never took off my backpack when I was on the ridge crest. I never even considered it. Doing so on that exposed, icy perch would have run the risk of accidentally dropping the backpack and everything inside it down the immense Southwest Face of the mountain, or the even more immense Kangshung Face on the Tibetan side of the ridge.
Tracy has never been on the route we climbed, however, so he has no idea why I wouldn’t have taken off my backpack on this exposed section of ridge, where no rope had been fixed.
In a further effort to discredit me, Tracy claims in his videos that I lied about how much time passed between the moment my oxygen bottle ran out at the top of the Hillary Step, and the moment Mike Groom attached my regulator to the oxygen bottle he gave me below the Step. To support this dishonest allegation he cites the report about Rob Hall’s 1996 expedition found in the Himalayan Database — a remarkable resource which has been accurately described as “a treasure trove for mountaineering historians.” However, as I explained in earlier chapters, expedition reports in the Database are known to be rife with errors — especially reports filed in the 1990s and before. As Tracy himself acknowledges in the video he posted on August 19, 2024, “the data from Elizabeth Hawley back in 1996 or early ’97… was the best that was available, but… garbage in garbage out, as they say.”
According to the Himalayan Database, “Krakauer stayed on top only a few minutes, met group coming up Hillary Step and waited ½ hour for them to pass.” I don’t know the source for this information, but it is definitely incorrect — as is plenty of other information in the same report. For example:
· The Database incorrectly states that during the delay at the South Summit, “Krakauer, Kasischke, Beidleman and Hansen reacted to this by taking the rope from Sherpa and 3 of these members who were guides of the two teams had some rope and setting off to do it.” This is clearly not true, because Lou Kasischke turned around before he reached the South Summit, and Doug Hansen arrived on the South Summit long after Boukreev and Beidleman had finished fixing the ropes on the Hillary Step and above, so it would have been impossible for Hansen to have had a role in fixing any rope.
· The Database incorrectly states that Fischer’s body was “lying somewhere between S. Summit at 8400 meters,” when his body was actually found more than 100 meters below that altitude.
· The Database incorrectly states, “On 10 May between 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm the summit of Mt Everest was reached by Rob Hall (NZ), Yasuko Namba (Japan), Doug Hansen and Jon Krakauer (USA), Michael Groom (Australia) and Andy Harris (NZ). Harris and I actually arrived on top before 1:30, and Hansen didn’t reach the summit until 4:10 P.M.
· The Database incorrectly indicates that Ang Dorje Sherpa and Chuldum Sherpa are different names for the same person.
Contrary to what was reported in the Himalayan Database, I waited on top of the Hillary Step without bottled oxygen for at least 55 minutes:
I arrived on the summit at 1:12; began my descent at 1:17; and arrived at the top of the Step between 1:30 and 1:35.
I ran out of oxygen no later than 1:50, and possibly as early as 1:45.
At approximately 2:45, Scott Fischer, the last person to ascend the Hillary Step, arrived on top, allowing Andy Harris to rappel down. After Harris got to the bottom of the Step, I rapped down and started traversing the ridge toward the South Summit until I panicked and slumped on the ridge at approximately 3:15.
At approximately 3:20, Mike Groom saved my bacon by giving me his oxygen bottle, after which Groom, Yasuko Namba, and I quickly made our way to the South Summit.
According to this timeline, I ran out of bottled oxygen no later than 1:50 P.M., and started breathing bottled oxygen again at 3:20, which means I spent at least 90 minutes above 28,700 feet without supplemental oxygen. I felt the detrimental impact from this extended period of extreme hypoxia for the remainder of my descent. And I have nobody to blame but myself.
In the comments section for the video Michael Tracy posted on May 13, 2024, one of the subscribers to his YouTube channel wrote this :
This whole disaster has its roots in simple bad judgment: There was a well thought-out rational plan which was formulated the day before. It was 2:00 turn-around time. Pretty simple. If they had stuck to the plan nobody dies and we wouldn’t be reading about it today. I am not a high mountain climber but I am a building contractor and I know the importance of plans. STICK TO THE FUCKING PLAN! It was made for a reason.
Tracy’s reply to this comment reveals something important about his unhinged YouTube campaign to discredit me:
A lot of these videos are not about what happened on the climb — as you note, simple bad judgment explains most of it and you don’t need to watch hours of videos to come to that conclusion. Instead, the take away from the videos are how fake journalists use manipulation techniques to persuade people. Spotting those techniques in your everyday life and avoiding being manipulated by the numerous influence operations that take place every day on the internet is the goal of these videos.
I agree with Tracy about some of what he says in his reply above. But he is confused about the identity of the “fake journalist” who’s conducting an Internet influence operation based on “manipulation techniques to persuade people.”
The fake journalist is not the guy who is portrayed as the villain in Tracy’s videos about the 1996 Everest disaster.
The fake journalist conducting an Internet influence operation is actually the guy who portrays himself as a courageous Slayer of Charlatans with his YouTube avatar.
