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NEVEREST III New Insights: Beidleman vs Groom

Written on the 20th anniversary of the ’96 Everest disaster, South African photojournalist Nick van der Leek cunningly unravels the devil hiding in the details of a mountaineering classic. In NEVEREST III two guides are investigated for potential dereliction of duty. Was there negligence on the way to the summit, or simple resignation to charismatic leaders, paying clients and a tightly controlled and choreographed summit bid? If so, how and why did it all go wrong, and can anyone really be blamed under the extenuating circumstances? “Unlike NEVEREST II where we sat on the shoulder of a client climber and saw and felt the expedition ethos embedded in the team, in this narrative we’re going to sit higher up, on stronger, more nimble shoulders. If we don’t have Hall or Fischer’s testimonies, the next best thing is the top guides.” In absence of two leaders on two teams, and subsequently the exit of Anatoli Boukreev, the senior Mountain Madness guide [who elected to descend ahead of everyone else], did a leadership vacuum emerge? And if so, did the guides step up to fill it? “Groom, a typical strong silent type, has written his own narrative about ’96, and once again, each first-hand experience is at once illuminating and yet another single fragment of a whole. None of the fragments add up to an integrated whole, perhaps because the climbers involved cannot [or will not] reconcile themselves to what happened, to what really happened to their comrades or how they genuinely responded to what happened. Perhaps the only way to fit all the narratives together into a cogent whole is for an outsider to examine the evidence, and attempt to reconcile it.” Van der Leek has attempted to do this, and in his third narrative on the Everest disaster, more missing pieces have been added to the puzzle. "NEVEREST III contains shocking revelations clearly laid out, but they're only shocking because of a concerted effort to conceal certain motives and mistakes from view. The mistakes themselves are less an indictment than the attempt t

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