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Authors: Conrad Anker, David Roberts
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from the expedition members (mostly Simo) to a voice mailbox; the dispatches were then edited in Seattle and posted on the Internet. Dave Hahn put a lot of extra energy into his dispatches. This was Dave’s second stint reporting for MountainZone on Everest. Instead of just calling in the first thing that came to mind, he’d stay up as late as 1:00 A.M. some nights typing well-crafted, very detailed reports onto a laptop, then sending them to Seattle.
So the expedition was being jointly covered on the Internet. When I got home, I read all the dispatches for the first time. Liesl’s a good writer: her dispatches were lucid, comprehensive, and informative; she also transcribed interviews with us climbers. The MountainZone dispatches, on the other hand, tended to be fragmented and casual—which is understandable, given that the guys were usually calling Seattle at the end of a hard day. Just as understandably, they didn’t take the broad view; even Dave’s well-written reports tended to reflect whatever he’d been doing that day.
On May 1, the day of the search, Simo was tuned in at ABC, while Liesl listened at Base Camp. Jochen Hemmleb was right beside her, peering through his 200-power telescope, commenting over the radio on everything we did. During the early stages of the search, we were reporting our progress to Simo and Jochen. The conversation between Jochen and Jake about the oxygen bottle with blue paint on the end, identifying it as from the Chinese ’75 expedition, was on the air. So was my discovery of the two modern bodies and the exchange between Andy Politz and me about where I was searching. It was only when I found Mallory and lapsed into the coded messages that we put up our guard.
Liesl wrote a clear play-by-play of monitoring our progress by radio and telescope from Base Camp. She reported my cryptic message, “Let’s get together for Snickers and tea,” and my call right after that for a “mandatory group meeting.” Then she wrote, “This was the last we heard from the climbers for the day.”
Liesl knew we’d made some kind of discovery. In her dispatch, she speculated out loud:
It became clear that what seemed like a normal series of radio calls was actually a signal that something was up. From his telescope, Hemmleb could see the five climbers coming together on the bottom edge of the snow terrace where Anker stood. Was “Snickers and tea” a code for something found? We are very aware of other expeditions listening in on our frequency, and had previously agreed that if the body were found we would keep the radio transmissions to a minimum. This “mandatory group meeting” which sent [Andy] Politz some 330 feet down from his search position could only mean that Anker had found something. But what?
At the end of that day, when we’d reached Camp V, we got on the radio, just to let Simo know that everybody was safe and sound. We kept mum about Mallory, but Dave couldn’t resist sneaking in, “Jochen, you are going to be a happy man.”
Liesl closed her dispatch with that provocative teaser. She sent it off, and
PBS/NOVA
must have gotten it up on the Internetlate on May 1, U.S. time. The dispatch proved indeed to be a bombshell. Meanwhile, between April 29 and May 2, the MountainZone site had no dispatches at all. Dave, of course, was busy with the search, and once Simo learned about our discovery, he wanted to decide how best to break the news to the world.
When Simo found out from Erin that
NOVA
had scooped MountainZone, he was furious. It wasn’t simply that he was the chief reporter for MountainZone; Simo had entered into an exclusive agreement with the company and felt betrayed. The only private way to communicate with Liesl, across the thirteen miles from ABC to Base Camp, was by e-mail. So on May 2, Simo sent her a really frosty e-mail message. After reprimanding her for “cybercasting (as opposed to running an educational Web site, as you professed),” he made this
So the expedition was being jointly covered on the Internet. When I got home, I read all the dispatches for the first time. Liesl’s a good writer: her dispatches were lucid, comprehensive, and informative; she also transcribed interviews with us climbers. The MountainZone dispatches, on the other hand, tended to be fragmented and casual—which is understandable, given that the guys were usually calling Seattle at the end of a hard day. Just as understandably, they didn’t take the broad view; even Dave’s well-written reports tended to reflect whatever he’d been doing that day.
On May 1, the day of the search, Simo was tuned in at ABC, while Liesl listened at Base Camp. Jochen Hemmleb was right beside her, peering through his 200-power telescope, commenting over the radio on everything we did. During the early stages of the search, we were reporting our progress to Simo and Jochen. The conversation between Jochen and Jake about the oxygen bottle with blue paint on the end, identifying it as from the Chinese ’75 expedition, was on the air. So was my discovery of the two modern bodies and the exchange between Andy Politz and me about where I was searching. It was only when I found Mallory and lapsed into the coded messages that we put up our guard.
Liesl wrote a clear play-by-play of monitoring our progress by radio and telescope from Base Camp. She reported my cryptic message, “Let’s get together for Snickers and tea,” and my call right after that for a “mandatory group meeting.” Then she wrote, “This was the last we heard from the climbers for the day.”
Liesl knew we’d made some kind of discovery. In her dispatch, she speculated out loud:
It became clear that what seemed like a normal series of radio calls was actually a signal that something was up. From his telescope, Hemmleb could see the five climbers coming together on the bottom edge of the snow terrace where Anker stood. Was “Snickers and tea” a code for something found? We are very aware of other expeditions listening in on our frequency, and had previously agreed that if the body were found we would keep the radio transmissions to a minimum. This “mandatory group meeting” which sent [Andy] Politz some 330 feet down from his search position could only mean that Anker had found something. But what?
At the end of that day, when we’d reached Camp V, we got on the radio, just to let Simo know that everybody was safe and sound. We kept mum about Mallory, but Dave couldn’t resist sneaking in, “Jochen, you are going to be a happy man.”
Liesl closed her dispatch with that provocative teaser. She sent it off, and
PBS/NOVA
must have gotten it up on the Internetlate on May 1, U.S. time. The dispatch proved indeed to be a bombshell. Meanwhile, between April 29 and May 2, the MountainZone site had no dispatches at all. Dave, of course, was busy with the search, and once Simo learned about our discovery, he wanted to decide how best to break the news to the world.
When Simo found out from Erin that
NOVA
had scooped MountainZone, he was furious. It wasn’t simply that he was the chief reporter for MountainZone; Simo had entered into an exclusive agreement with the company and felt betrayed. The only private way to communicate with Liesl, across the thirteen miles from ABC to Base Camp, was by e-mail. So on May 2, Simo sent her a really frosty e-mail message. After reprimanding her for “cybercasting (as opposed to running an educational Web site, as you professed),” he made this
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