2006 marked the tenth anniversary of a major disaster on the slopes of Mt. Everest, one which shocked the world. At the time, a team lead by David Breashears was filming an IMAX documentary about an ascent of Everest and ended up capturing the disaster; ten years later, Breashears set about filming a follow-up. In the wake of the disaster, many of the people involved had attempted to record their stories through books and films, creating a rush from publishers and leading to disputes between one another. Breashears' hope was that ten years on, he would be able to piece together a more complete picture of what had transpired by visiting the climbers and Sherpas who survived the deadly snowstorm that brought on the tragedy.

Ten years ago, Jon Krakauer was on assignment with American outdoors magazine Outside and climbing Everest with a team led by New Zealander Rob Hall. After his narrow scrape with disaster, Krakauer wrote a first-hand account of the incident, the book Into Thin Air. The book told of how the disaster claimed the lives of the founders of two of the most prominent guiding companies operating in the Himalayas--Rob Hall, founder of Adventure Consultants, and Scott Fischer, founder of Mountain Madness, both celebrated climbers in their own right. Stories from that snowstorm were heartbreaking, such as that of Hall, who ended up trapped at 8700 meters after trying to help one of his clients. Somehow he managed to survive one day and one night on the mountain, but with no way for a rescue team to reach him, he was left stranded; his wife and friends could only accompany him by satellite radio during his final minutes. After its release, Into Thin Air--which later was made into a film--sold over 1 million copies worldwide, making Krakauer a bestselling author.

In the book, Krakauer attempted to piece together the factors that led to the disaster, questioning the qualifications of some guides to tackle Everest, casting doubts on whether they acted responsibly, and outlining errors in judgment by two team leaders. Since the book's publication these accusations have been the source of much controversy.

At several points in the book, Krakauer describes the Taiwanese climbers as too inexperienced, calling them unqualified to climb Everest, and refers to Makalu Gau specifically as being blinded by ambition and more concerned with summiting Everest than the wellbeing of his team members. He also notes that the New Zealand team, showing great foresight, arranged a meeting of all the teams in an effort to stagger team departures and avoid a bottleneck at the Hillary Step, because a bottleneck could cause some summits to be delayed until after 2 p.m., after which the risk of unsuccessful descents rises rapidly. When his team met with Gau, Krakauer says, Gau agreed to give up on the May 10th summiting that had been planned by the American and New Zealand teams, but later went back on his word.

"I had no idea, and hadn't been involved in any discussions," says Gau. As far as the accusations of inexperience are concerned, Gau says he couldn't care less, but he does take issue with how much of the book just doesn't match with reality, as well as Krakauer's reliance on hearsay rather than fact with regard to Gau's experience. Gau has sent letters to Krakauer pointing out several major errors, but has yet to receive a proper response.

So were the predicted bottlenecks directly related to the disaster? Gau believes the correlation is far from absolute. In 2003, for example, on the 50th anniversary of the first successful summiting of Everest, almost 100 people made their way to the top, and thanks to the clear weather everyone made it back down safely. Had the weather turned bad, though, even if only five people had been up there they could easily have died.

Gau says that after David Breashears interviewed him and several Sherpas in 2005, he was surprised to learn that his own stranding happened even higher up than that of Beck Weathers, an American survivor considered a hero for his story. He now hopes that once Breashears' new documentary opens at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado this May, it may help turn around some of the negative impressions of Taiwanese climbers held by readers of Krakauer's book.

Several years ago Japanese-American journalist Yoichi Shimatsu happened to meet Gau and, moved by his story, decided to help him make his own documentary. On the tenth anniversary of the Everest disaster the result, Prayer Flags, which Shimatsu and Gau had spent three years shooting, premiered at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival.

The film not only records Gau's life since the disaster and his return to Everest base camp, but also includes a rebuttal of the biases and errors of Into Thin Air, including the point that Krakauer lays the blame for the disaster on the bottleneck, but never asks the more important question: why were so many teams even on the mountain? The Nepalese government has long had a regulation stipulating that only one team per trail per season is permitted to climb Everest. The Taiwanese team was not only the only team there with legal permission, but had got that permission in 1993, three years earlier. It was only later buckling by the Nepalese government to pressure from commercial teams that led to a change in that law and the subsequent gridlock on Everest. So why is this never mentioned in the book?

Says Shimatsu, "Makalu Gau has remained silent for the past ten years... myself and some of his friends thought 'enough is enough.'"

Shimatsu plans to continue accompanying Gau until he completes his "100 Peaks of China" project in 2010, and hopes that Prayer Flags will get a response and help Gau in his fundraising efforts.

The tales of high-altitude heroes continue being told, and such stories continue to inspire more and more lovers of mountains and lovers of life to join their world!l

IMAX film director David Breashears (left) shot a documentary commemorating the Everest disaster for its tenth anniversary, interviewing Makalu Gau and other survivors in 2005 and revisiting the questions presented by that disaster.