A CRUSHING WAVE OF SHOW

Thirty-five years ago this July, an avalanche killed forty-three climbers on a mountain called Lenin Peak. I witnessed the disaster and have lived with the memories ever since. Here's the untold story of mountaineering's deadliest day.

- Miguel Helft

BY THE TIME I CAUGHT UP WITH MY TEAMMATES AT AN ELEVATION OF SEVENTEEN THOUSAND FEET, the call had already been made to stop and set up camp. That decision saved my life. We'd spent most of the day inching our way up the slopes of Lenin Peak, a 23,406-foot mountain in what was then the Soviet Union, and were still a few hundred yards short of Camp 2, our intended destination. Progress from Camp 1, around three thousand feet below, had been slow in part because we were struggling to breathe in the thin mountain air, but also because it had been snowing for several days, and making headway in the soft snow was hard work.

It was late in the afternoon, and we'd reached a spot where the steep terrain we were climbing gave way to a gently sloping plateau. Camp 2 had just come into view. It looked crowded, dotted with about twenty tents. A few climbers could be seen milling about. Given our slow pace, the traverse there would have likely taken more than the typical half hour that it would under better conditions. So Mark Miller, a renowned English climber and the leader of our six-person expedition, decided to stop for the day. With our shovels, we cut three flat platforms—each large enough for one of our two-person Gore-Tex tents—and set up our own camp, away from the relative bustle of Camp 2.

We spent the next day resting and acclimatizing. Our bodies needed time to get used to the altitude so that we could make a push to Camp 3 and, eventually, the summit. That meant lying on our sleeping bags, melting snow to stay hydrated, and nibbling at bits of food that the general malaise we felt from the altitude made unpalatable.