Rob Hall died on May 11, 1996, during his fifth time summiting Mount Everest, when he and his group of climbers got trapped in a deadly storm.
Rob Hall had always been a climber.
Adventure ConsultantsRob Hall in 1992.
He spent his early years scampering up and down the Southern Alps in New Zealand, and soon graduated to even more challenging mountains. At 19, he climbed his first Himalayan summit. At 20, he set a record for speed while climbing Mount Cook. Hall would go on to climb the Seven Summits, and to successfully summit Mount Everest an impressive four times.
But Hall’s love for mountain climbing would take a tragic turn in 1996. Then, while leading a group of climbers up Mount Everest, Hall found himself trapped on the mountain amid a bad storm. Choosing to stay behind with one of his climbers, Hall perished on the mountaintop at the age of 35.
This is the story of the life and death of Rob Hall, the mountain climber who died on Mount Everest during the Mount Everest Disaster of 1996.
How Rob Hall Fell In Love With Mountain Climbing
Born on January 14, 1961, in Christchurch, New Zealand, Robert Edwin Hall discovered a love of climbing at a young age. Growing up in the shadow of New Zealand’s Southern Alps, he soon began exploring the nearby mountains himself. According to Hall’s obituary in the Independent, he dropped out of school at 14 to design climbing gear for a local sports company, and continued to hone his climbing skills in the meantime.
In 1980, at the age of 19, Hall climbed Ama Dablam in Nepal. The next year, Hall and a climbing partner scaled the Caroline Face of New Zealand’s Mount Cook in record time. But his climbing career really took off in the 1990s.
In 1990, Hall scaled Mount Everest for the first time alongside his climbing partner Gary Ball, and Peter Hillary, the son of Everest pioneer Edmund Hillary. Hall also completed the Seven Summits that year, then went on to climb K2, the world’s second highest-mountain, in 1994 and Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain, in 1994 and 1995. What’s more, Hall returned to Everest three more times, in 1992, 1993, and 1994.
Adventure ConsultantsRob Hall’s mountaineering feats were legendary, and soon led him to form his own mountain climbing business with his friend and fellow climber, Gary Ball.
Along the way, Hall and Ball teamed up to form their own mountain guiding business, Adventure Consultants, in 1991. They led their first commercially guided Mount Everest expedition in 1992, and successfully reached the summit alongside six clients and four sherpas.
Tragedy hit the next year, when Ball died of a pulmonary edema while climbing the Himalayan mountain Dhaulagiri alongside Hall in 1993. Hall was forced to bury his friend on the mountainside, but though the event was traumatic, Hall continued on with their company alone.
In May 1996, Rob Hall prepared to lead a group of clients up Mount Everest. They had each paid $65,000 for the privilege, and there seemed to be little reason to worry. After all, Hall had already climbed the mountain four times.
But disaster awaited them.
Inside The Mount Everest Disaster Of 1996
YouTubeRob Hall, in purple, alongside his clients and guides ahead of their disastrous attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1996.
On May 10, 1996, Rob Hall and two other guides prepared to steer a group of eight clients up Mount Everest. The group included the journalist Jon Krakauer, who would later write about the disaster in his book Into Thin Air, Doug Hansen, a postal worker, and Beck Weathers, a Texas pathologist who would barely survive the next 48 hours.
The group set out at midnight, and soon converged with another group, led by Scott Fischer. There was also a third group climbing that day, which created a traffic jam along Everest’s southern flank. Here, only a narrow path existed. And yet 33 people were trying to make their way to the summit.
Overcrowding caused dangerous delays, as did the unexpected need to install fixed lines. Meanwhile, Hall’s group fractured when he discovered that Weathers’ vision was obscured due to a recent corneal surgery. Hall ordered Weathers to stay behind, and the group continued on without him.
They didn’t reach the summit until after 2 p.m., throwing their descent into jeopardy. Leaving the summit after 2 p.m. meant that it was unlikely they would reach camp before nightfall, and climbing down the mountain in the dark was dangerous. Meanwhile, a storm had begun to gather — and the climbers were soon engulfed in freezing winds and whiteout conditions.
“It was chaos up there,” Krakauer recalled to Time in 1996. “The storm was like a hurricane, only it had a triple-digit wind chill. You don’t have your oxygen on, you’re out of breath, you can’t think.”
Then Hansen collapsed. And Rob Hall chose to stay with him as the rest of his group tried to make their way down the mountainside.
Rob Hall’s Death On Mount Everest
By 4:30 p.m., 16 of the 33 people who had attempted to summit Everest were stuck on the mountain, trapped in a powerful storm that battered the mountainside with freezing 70 mile-per-hour winds. Many people from Hall’s expedition were unaccounted for, including Hall. But at 4:45 a.m. the next morning, Hall was able to send a radio message to base camp.
Rdevany/Wikimedia CommonsEven on clear days, Mount Everest is full of perils.
“Is someone coming to get me?” he asked, according to Time in 2007.
Hall told base camp that Hansen, exposed to the elements and out of oxygen, had died during the night. Meanwhile, Hall was trapped and his condition was beginning to deteriorate. He told base camp that he was “too clumsy to move.”
According to Time, rescuers tried twice to reach Hall and failed. One of his fellow guides, Andy Harris, is also believed to have tried to reach Hall — his ice axe was later found near Hall’s body — but Harris vanished on the mountain and has never been found.
“I’ll hang in there,” Hall said, when base camp informed him that a group of sherpas had been unable to reach him, but had left a ski pole marker and oxygen tanks roughly 800 feet from his position.
However, no one knew the dangers of Everest better than Rob Hall.
He ultimately called his wife, who was seven months pregnant, and was able to speak to her for a final time.
“Sleep well my sweetheart,” he told her. “Please don’t worry too much.”
Shortly thereafter, Rob Hall died on the mountainside at the age of 35. His body remains on Mount Everest to this day.
He was not the only victim of the Mount Everest Disaster of 1996. Eight climbers died that day, including Hall, Hansen, Harris, and one of Hall’s clients, Yasuko Namba, as well as Scott Fischer, the leader of one of the other expeditions on the mountain. Weathers, meanwhile, had been left for dead, but managed to make it down to base camp. He survived but suffered from terrible frostbite, and his nose, his right arm, the fingers on his left hand, and several pieces of his feet ultimately had to be amputated.
The death of Rob Hall, and the greater Mount Everest Disaster of 1996, was a chilling reminder of the power of nature. On the tallest mountain the world, even experienced climbers can face danger and death.
After reading about the life and death of Rob Hall, the mountaineer who died on Everest during the Mount Everest Disaster of 1996, discover the tragic stories of other people who have died on Everest. Or, read about sherpa Tenzing Norgay who accompanied Edmund Hillary to Everest’s summit.
