Rob Hall
Robert Edwin Hall (14 January 1961 – 11 May 1996) was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and the expedition has been dramatised in the 2015 film Everest. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth ascent to the summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer. Hall met his future wife, physician Jan Arnold, during his Everest summit attempt in 1990. Hall and Arnold climbed Denali for their first date and later married. In 1993, Hall and Arnold climbed to the summit of Everest together. In the catastrophic 1996 season, Arnold would have accompanied Hall on his Everest expedition, but she was pregnant. Mountaineering Hall grew up in New Zealand where he climbed extensively in the Southern Alps. In 1989, Rob Hall met Gary Ball, who became his climbing partner and close friend. As with most other mountain climbers, Hall and Gary Ball sought corporate sponsorships to fund their expeditions. The partners decided to climb the Seven Summits, but upped the ante by ascending to the summits of all seven in seven months. They started with Everest in May, and climbed the last mountain, Antarctica's Vinson Massif, on 12 December 1990, hours before the deadline. After this success they realised that to retain their sponsorships, each successive climb would have to be ever riskier and more spectacular, increasing the chances of an accident. Hall and Ball therefore decided to quit professional climbing and form a high-altitude guiding business. Their company, Adventure Consultants, was incorporated in 1992 and quickly became a premier expedition guiding company. That year they guided six clients to the top of Everest. In October 1993, Gary Ball died of pulmonary edema on a Himalayan mountain, leaving Hall to run Adventure Consultants on his own. By 1996, Hall had guided thirty-nine climbers up to the top of Everest. Although the price of a guided summit attempt – US$65,000 – was considerably higher than that of other expeditions, Hall's reputation for reliability and safety attracted clients from all over the world. Rob Hall was well known in the mountaineering world as the "mountain goat" or the "show". In the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours, Hall was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to mountaineering. 1996 Everest disaster Adventure Consultants' 1996 Everest expedition consisted of eight clients and three guides (Hall, Mike Groom, and Andy Harris). Among the clients was Jon Krakauer, a journalist on assignment from Outside magazine. Hall had brokered a deal with Outside; he would guide one of their writers to the summit in exchange for advertising space and a story about the growing popularity of commercial expeditions to Everest. Shortly after midnight on 10 May 1996, the Adventure Consultants expedition began a summit attempt from Camp IV, atop the