By Lindsey Schibelhut, Staff Reporter.
For Delta Alumnus Lou Kasischke, being able to climb Mount Everest was going to be the opportunity of a lifetime. However, due to failures in expedition leadership, May 10, 1996 would become a nightmare. Eight people would perish on the mountainside – one of the worst tragedies in Everest’s history. On Monday, Nov. 9, Delta welcomed Kasischke as part of the President’s Speakers Series, to talk about his experience on Everest and what led him to “live a story he could tell.”
“The frigid dry air burned inside me like cold fire. Four or five ragged breaths,” begins Kasischke, “Shift my weight and step. My fingers were white and stiff. Frostbite…I was 400 vertical feet from achieving my goal. The top of Mount Everest. Four or five breaths. Then step. Sheer will. Nothing could stop me…I looked at the climbers above me. I realized things had gone wrong. Very wrong. Climbers were still climbing up, but it was late.”
Kasischke started his presentation reading excerpts from his memoir “After the Wind.” He then spoke candidly about what went wrong on summit day, considering everything went well up to that point.
“We trained together, we prepared together and now we had a very specific plan to achieve our goal,” says Kasischke.
He says the idea was to leave camp by 11 p.m., a few hours after they had arrived. From there they would go on to reach the balcony (approx. 27,000 feet) by daybreak, go up the ridge to the south summit, then traverse over to the Hillary step. Ideally they would be only a short distance from the top by 11 a.m.
“12 hours that was the plan, 12 hours after we started,” says Kasischke.
The next thing the team agreed upon was a survival plan in case things went wrong during the summit to the top.
“And that was the 1 p.m. turnaround time,” explains Kasischke, “No matter what, from wherever you are, at any time, for any reason you do not reach the top at 1 p.m. you must turnaround right then and there.”
He says the importance of the turnaround time is to make sure climbers are able to safely summit and descend, and make it back to camp before dark. The team sat down in a circle in the tent and made the pact to follow this rule before they set out on their ascent.
“One by one we promised each other, looking each other in the eye, to follow the turnaround time,” says Kasischke.
For audience attendee, Jerry Janowicz, 52, Kasischke’s story redefined what he thought about life and death.
“There’s a fine line between living and dying and self determination,” says Janowicz.
On May 9, when the team had gotten to high camp in the mid-afternoon, it was storming. Kasischke says there were high winds, snow and no visibility so they all decided it was best to ride it out and wait. However, by 10:15 p.m. plans would change and leadership made the call to begin heading out at 11 p.m.
“I said, ‘No. This is a very bad idea,’ ” Kasischke explains, “We have no evidence of the weather’s stability, everyday for the last week we’ve had late afternoon high winds. We have the resources to wait; but everyone started to get ready.”
Kasischke says in that moment he started to question himself. His wife Sandy always had a ritual they did before going climbing. Sandy would make him promise to do the right thing and to make sure his actions were consistent with high standards so he could live. Yet, after contemplating this in his tent he made the decision to depart for the summit.
“We planned for an 18 hour continuous push, 12 to the top and six down,” explains Kasischke, “Everything started out pretty well. Then after seven hours, as we climbed up this steep gully – we were now coming up to the southeast ridge, the area called the balcony – we were on time.”
As Kasischke kept climbing he began to notice climbers up ahead starting to slow down.
“Climbers, many of which were out of my line of sight, had become mixed together with another team of climbers – something that was not supposed to happen. Confusion resulted and then climbers began bunching together,” explains Kasischke.
Under normal circumstances, says Kasischke, climbers should be more spread apart to accommodate fluidity of movement so that these delays don’t occur.
“What was coming up ahead was a major terrain choke point known as the Hillary step,” Kasischke says.
They had been climbing for over 13 hours and it was getting close to noon. For the first time since daybreak he looked at his watch and realized that it was too late to make it to the summit before the turnaround time.
“The leadership had decided to keep going, disregarding that as a team and converting that now as whether to keep going as a matter of individual choice,” explains Kasischke.
The nature of the challenge was no longer what he had planned or trained for. It was no longer about the physical strength to climb but the inner strength to make a hard choice.
“The challenge wasn’t with the mountain, it was with myself,” he says, “I knew turning back was the right thing to do, but I didn’t want to.”
Alex Campbell, 19, was inspired after hearing Kasischke’s story.
What Campbell learned was “basically, to go with my gut instinct.”
Kasischke was determined to go forward, not wanting to turn his back on everything he had trained months for.
“But then after a short distance it happened. My heart started to pound out of control, I could feel it jumping, I could hear it beating. Never before had I experienced anything like this,” explains Kasischke, “A gale force was actually overpowering me. I jammed my ice axe directly in front of me with both hands like a spike into the snow. I held tight and simultaneously buckled to my knees. And then everything went quiet. Stone silent.”
As he looked on at the climbers above Kasischke says he heard an inner voice say “not today.” The summit of Mount Everest would be a place he would never stand.
“The mother of all bad decisions that was made on Everest was the decision for those two leaders to go on the same day,” explains Kasischke, “We argued about that as team members, and the resolution to that was ‘don’t worry, don’t worry, we are all going to be climbing separately, you won’t even see them.’ First of all, they made that decision for business and competitive reasons. So they made the decision to go on the same day in order to have a shared outcome.”
11 years after the tragedy, Kasischke climbed some of the most sacred mountains in the world – Mount Sinai in Egypt would be one of them. He says he stood at the top remembering his friends who never came home, never forgetting the unbridled ambition that almost killed him, never forgetting the “voice of the heart” (which he credits to his wife Sandy) that saved his life and how Everest taught him to “live a story you can tell.”
“To not just follow what others are doing, to keep your promises, to look beyond yourself and the choices that you make. Life isn’t just about you, and to listen – listen to the voice of the heart,” concludes Kasischke
