Fifty-one-year-old Beck Weathers is celebrating his third birthday in a few months.
It's been almost three years since the Dallas surgeon was left for dead just below the summit of Mt. Everest -- only to find the strength to "resurrect" his frostbitten body and drag himself to help.Weathers, who was prominently featured in Jon Krakauer's best-selling account "Into Thin Air," was a member of the fateful 1996 climbing expedition that would become the deadliest in Everest history.
Eight climbers died, including three professional guides.
Weathers survived, but only after the mountain exacted a horrible cost. Frostbite claimed his right hand and part of his left. Doctors reconstructed his nose.
The Texan is not bitter. Instead he gleans inspiration from the remarkable episodes of bravery and heroism in the expedition's battle against nature.
Weathers, in an easy drawl, recounted his tale of survival Thursday at this year's CompHealth Symposium, a convention at the Wyndham Hotel of health-care professionals.
In the early hours of May 9, 1996, Weathers and his party left Camp Four, elevation 26,000 feet.
"It was an exquisite evening," he recalled. Winds were still and the stars bright as the group began its slow, metronomic ascent to the Everest Summit.
All was well for Weathers until sunrise. Before the climb, he had undergone radial keratotomy, knowing Everest was no place to be fumbling for eyeglasses. But the brilliant sun at high altitudes now left him almost blind.
Frustrated, Weathers told his guide, Rob Hall, about his failing eyesight. Hall told him his climb was through and ordered Weathers to wait where he was.
Hall told Weathers he would reunite with him on his return from the summit.
"It never once crossed my mind that (Hall) would not come back," Weathers said.
Hours later, some descending climbers invited Weathers to join their descent to camp, but the Texan kept his promise to Hall and waited.
"That would turn out to be the single worst decision I ever made," he said.
Soon Weathers heard a low growl from the mountain that quickly became a complete white out. Temperatures dropped rapidly.
At some point, he was joined by a group of other descending climbers struggling through the blizzard to make their way to camp. They soon became disoriented, lost in ice and cold. Several, including Weathers, were in serious trouble.
After wandering for hours, the climbers in the group still able to walk left Weathers and the others to find camp and enlist help. Spirits flagged. One of Weathers' climbing mates said she hoped to die quickly; another became hysterical, saying she didn't want to die.
A rescue climber eventually reached Weathers and his stranded party, which was actually only 300 yards from camp. A few were able to work their way to camp, but Weathers and Japanese climber Yasuko Namba were near death and, in a moment of desperate triage, the decision was made to leave them behind.
"I don't begrudge that decision," Weathers said, aware of the perilous situation the makeshift rescue team was facing.
Still, Weathers hinted more could have been done to help the diminutive Namba. "She was so tiny," he said.
Namba died. The mountain also claimed Hall. Weathers' wife and family were notified of their loved one's death.
But Weathers miraculously shook off his icy stupor and began walking. "I know if I did not stand I would spend eternity on that spot," he said.
Weathers said he was not frightened at that point but filled with a deep melancholy "that I would not say goodbye, I would never again say 'I love you' to my wife, never again hold my children."
"It was not acceptable," he said.
Weathers later wandered into camp, where his astonished climbing mates stripped off his clothes, stuffed him into two sleeping bags and warmed him with a hot water bottle.
But his nightmare continued. Weathers was in no shape to descend the Khumbu Icefall, an enormous glacier of mile-deep crevices and 12-story ice blocks, to reach the base camp.
The high altitudes seemed to preclude a helicopter rescue. No one had ever dared fly a chopper above the Icefall.
But a brave Nepalese pilot, Lt. Col. Madan Khatri Chhetri, flew his stripped-down helicopter up to 22,000 feet and, in two heroic trips, rescued an injured Taiwanese climber, then Weathers.
Weathers said he and Madan were separated by culture, religion and language "but bound together by a bond of common humanity."
"He is," Weathers said, "the most extraordinary person in this story."
Lessons were learned in the ordeal. Miracles do happen, Weathers said. And, he added, his family was the anchor that kept him alive.
"That which matters most are the people you hold in your heart," he said, "and those who hold you in theirs."