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The high number of deaths during the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing season supplied a tragic plotline for books, movies, and documentaries. Taiwanese climbers did not come out of these accounts looking competent -- to say the least -- but the record may need to be corrected. Here's the story of Makalu Gao, who survived a death sentence: an overnight stay at the top of the world -- without food or oxygen -- as well as the tale of numerous heroes who helped save Gao, and others, over those deadly days in May 1996.
Cover image via Merit Times / Wikimedia Commons
Image below: Makalu Gao shortly after being rescued / Merit Times
During the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing season, 15 people died... this was the highest death toll for a single weather event, and for a single season, until the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mt. Everest avalanche. Info on the 2014 disaster HERE
Below: (Via Everest Basecamp / Facebook)
Below: The large numbers of climbers each year can leave quite a mess
(pic via Facebook/Everest Base Camp 2022 - @Takshilakpasherpa)
Below: Public domain photo of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the pair were the first known humans to make it to the top of Mt. Everest in 1953.
Below: Makalu Gao, now 70, poses for a picture (Pic via Chung Yuan Christian University)
Below: A book by Gau Ming-Ho (高銘和), (also know as Makalu Gao) detailing his remarkable survival in 1996. Book - in Chinese - available HERE
Below:
Mount Everest is also known as:
Nepali: सगरमाथा, romanized: Sagarmāthā;
Tibetan: Chomolungma ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ;
Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰; pinyin: Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng)
Photo source unknown / right: Via Ralf Kayser - Flickr Mount Everest
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Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
