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If there was one guy last summer who really had his act together, it was the Basque mountaineer Alberto Zerain, who started his own summit push from well below the Shoulder, leaving Camp III at 23,600 feet. Operating as a soloist without teammates, Zerain got moving by 10:00 P.M. on July 31, and he climbed the 2,400 feet up to the Shoulder in the astonishing time of only two hours. When he reached the other climbers’ Camp IV, he found them still struggling to get ready. According to Freddie Wilkinson, who covered the tragedy for the magazine Rock and Ice, “Zerain called out to the others still in their tents, trying to cajole them into hurrying up to leave with him. He received few responses…. After an hour of waiting, Zerain finally continued alone.”

I must admit that when I first saw photos from last summer, I was shocked. There those guys were, still crossing the Shoulder, and it’s already broad daylight! As I said, I’m generally not comfortable criticizing other climbers’ decisions. But that late start on summit day meant that the climbers had reduced what was already a small margin of safety by that much more.

It’s easy to succumb to high-altitude lassitude. You lose your motivation. It takes longer not only to do something but even to think about doing something.

It’s no fun getting off in the middle of the night from a high camp on an 8,000er. You’re in this closet-sized tent with your buddy. It’s dark, it’s cold, there’s ice everywhere. You have to brew up a drink—something warm, like a cup of tea. And that seemingly simple task alone can consume an hour of precious time. If your partner has to take a crap, you have to move aside and let him go out and do that. Then you have to put on your boots, your overboots, the rest of your clothes, and your harness. I always sleep with my boots in my sleeping bag, though not on my feet. Lots of climbers don’t. So in the morning they have to put on cold boots, which will instantly suck precious warmth from their feet, whose blood circulation is sorely taxed to begin with. That contributes to a bad start.

On my expeditions, I’ve always been the clock-watcher. I always have a plan. I want to be in control of the time. In a way, that’s just part of my nature—I tend to be punctual. The night before, I’ll remind my partners, “We need to be out the door by one or one-thirty A.M.” Other climbers seem to have the attitude of “Oh, I’ll leave when I’m ready.” Next thing you know, they’ve lost two or three hours.

So I have to think that a crucial mistake made by nearly all the climbers on August 1 was getting off late from Camp IV. That delay was compounded by what happened when the first climbers reached the bottom of the Bottleneck.

As you head up that steep couloir, you’re excruciatingly aware of the huge ice cliff hanging over you. It’s a monstrous-looking thing, some 400 feet high, and the whole time you’re under it, you can’t help wondering, What’s holding that damned serac in place?

In 1992, I nicknamed the ice cliff “the Motivator.” It certainly motivated Scott, Charley, and me. It threatens you the whole time. You don’t want to stop, you can’t take a break, and as you kick steps up the couloir, you’re literally holding your breath while you climb as fast as humanly possible. Your muscles almost scream from oxygen deprivation.

The first mountaineer who ever came to grips with the Motivator was the great Fritz Wiessner, in 1939. He was so leery of it that he chose to climb a different route, on the rock bands well to the left of the Bottleneck, even though that forced him onto much more difficult terrain.

Before our 1992 expedition, I’d studied every photo I could find of that serac. Oddly enough, the Motivator looked much the same year after year. It seemed to be pretty stable. It had a fairly smooth face—there weren’t big broken chunks that looked ready to plunge with the first gust of wind. And in more than fifty years, no one had ever reported seeing ice calve away from that face.

Since we had the Bottleneck