BLAST FROM THE PAST: Beck Weathers, his face blackened from severe frostbite, sits with his wife Peach, as he talked about his Mount Everest ordeal then.
David Tarrant
He was already dead — of that, he was certain. Ice covered his face. His right hand was frozen solid in the shape of a claw. And yet, he felt no pain. None at all. He must be dead.Nevertheless, as Dr Beck Weathers lay in the snow high up on Mount Everest, he did feel something: His heart ached with deep regret as a vision came to him of his wife, Peach, and two children waiting for him at home in Dallas. For her part, Peach felt she had already lost her husband years before.A pathologist, Weathers worked long hours in his medical practice. That would have been fine if he’d spent his free time with his family. But for the last eight years, he’d become obsessed with mountain climbing. Nearly every waking hour that he wasn’t working, he spent training and preparing for his next summit.Peach had come to a decision. When Weathers returned from Everest, she would tell him she wanted a divorce.The story of what happened to Weathers and his expedition on May 10, 1996, was made famous by writer Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book Into Thin Air. Eight climbers in the expedition died.Now the story has been made into an IMAX film, Everest, which opened last week in IMAX 3-D and select locations before showing in wide release on Friday. In the movie, Josh Brolin portrays Weathers.Most of his life, Weathers suffered from severe depression. He eventually made a discovery that changed his life: If he drove his body to exhaustion, he didn’t feel depressed anymore.When his kids were young, he would take them to the YMCA of the Rockies in Colorado. One year, he signed up for three days’ worth of mountain climbing classes. He was hooked.Training for mountain climbing was the strenuous physical exertion that kept his depression at bay. The bigger the climb, the greater the training required.Around this time, Dick Bass, a colourful Dallas character, became the first man to complete the Seven Summit challenge by climbing the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Bass was 55 when he completed his quest.Beck was in his early 40s when he started the Seven Summits. Over the next eight years or so, he completed five. If he finished Everest, the hardest, he would have only one other. It would cap a life of achievement.As his list of accomplishments grew, however, he became more and more detached and withdrawn from those who should have been closest to him — his family. As he prepared for Everest, he was the most successful but loneliest man he knew.May 10, 1996, started as a clear, sunny day.Weathers was one of eight climbers guided by Rob Hall, a well-known, experienced guide from New Zealand. Hall’s group was one of three on Everest that day.But the higher Weathers climbed, the less he could see.It was an unexpected effect of radial keratotomy surgery a year and a half earlier to correct his myopia. It turned out that the high altitude left him nearly blind and forced him to stop at 27,600 feet, about 1,600 feet from the summit.Hall, his guide, made Weathers promise to stay where he was until Hall returned after helping the others to the summit. Hall vowed he would help Weathers back down the mountain.Because of the large number of climbers, the trip to the summit took longer than scheduled. Hall was still near the summit, helping one last straggler to the top, when a ferocious storm suddenly moved over them.With nightfall, the storm intensified.Weathers found himself trudging down with a group of climbers trying to find the tents from their highest camp site, from which they had embarked that morning.But they could see nothing in the swirling snow and wind and decided to stop and huddle for warmth.Several of the climbers eventually made it to the tents that night. A Russian climber, who had returned to the tents before the storm, helped rescue three others.Another climber, accompanied by two sherpas, returned the next morning but decided that Weathers and another climber, a Japanese woman, were too far gone to save.They reported that Weathers and the woman were dead — news that was eventually relayed to Weathers’ wife.Somehow, spurred by the vision of his family, Weathers managed to stumble into camp and the relative refuge of the tents. His fellow climbers took note of his frozen limbs and his face blackened and destroyed by the cold.They concluded he would not live through the night. They helped him into a tent and left him alone with blankets and hot tea.Against all odds, Weathers survived the night, but when he awoke, several of the climbers had already left. Finally, with help from members of the IMAX film crew that had come along on the expedition, Weathers made it to a lower camp, from which he was evacuated by helicopter.Mount Everest changed his life. Of that, Weathers is certain.“If you can’t learn something from dying, then you are seriously a slow learner,” he said recently, chuckling.Sitting in his study at his North Dallas home, Weathers, now 68, talked matter-of-factly about the eight operations to deal with his physical wounds.Doctors amputated his right hand. They turned his left hand into a mitt with two fingers and a thumb — enough to allow him to do everything he needs to do, including drive.Later, doctors fashioned a new nose to replace the hole left in the middle of his face.He still works as a pathologist at Medical City Dallas Hospital, but he spends more time now with Peach. “We’re now just like a pair of old shoes growing old together comfortably,” he said.His grown children live nearby, and he’s recently become a grandfather who dotes on his baby granddaughter.He knows that he should not be here today.“When I was out on the ice in the storm, I was unconscious and in hypothermic coma for 15 hours,” he said. “Why I woke up, I don’t truly know.”He lives with the lesson he learned on Everest imparted by the vision that came to him of his wife, son and daughter.“You can love somebody immeasurably and it’s just not enough. You’ve got to be there for them. And if you’re not there, you force them to make a life without you,” he said.“I had alienated my wife, Peach, and I was estranged somewhat from my kids,” he says. “So I came back from Everest with no other choice other than to change my life.“The path I was on would have ended in a bad way. It changed my priorities. Life is good.”Q&A WITH BECK WEATHERSBeck Weathers shared his thoughts on the new film Everest with staff writer David Tarrant.What did you think when you heard that the film was being made about the ill-fated climb you were on?When they came to me years ago and talked about making this film, I didn’t think they could do it. I’d never seen a good mountaineering movie. The (Everest) screenwriters had good material to work with, and then you need a director who’s willing to make the story real and demand that every detail be just as it was.You add onto that a superb cast. And that’s one of the delights of the film. It’s an ensemble event, it’s not just one individual. Of course, my favourite actor, besides Josh Brolin (who plays Weathers), is the mountain itself.Does the mountain seem real to you in the film?One of the reasons it’d taken so long to make (the film) was they simply did not have the technical ability to re-create Everest. They could make a mountain, but it wasn’t going to be Everest. And now they’re able to re-create Everest (using IMAX footage filmed during the actual 1996 climb). It looks absolutely real.And the storm is real. People don’t understand just how ferocious a storm like this can be. These are hurricane winds. And you’re standing on ice. This stuff can blow you all over kingdom come.What do you think of the way your character is portrayed in the film?The character starts off being a bit of a jerk but then becomes more human as the movie progresses. It was a little jarring, because the character says things it wouldn’t even occur for me to say. But as I thought about it, I figured, well, at least for one period of my life, I’ll be devilishly handsome. … I’ll accept that. — The Dallas Morning News/Tribune News Service