On a single afternoon in May 1996, 23 climbers reached the top of Everest. But eight of them lost their lives on the summit. In this extract from his gripping autobiography, David Breashears, an award-winning filmmaker, reveals how confusion, team rivalry and blind ambition turned a triumph into tragedy...

We woke up late, after dawn, on 10 May. It was another rest day for our team. The day before, on his way to Camp IV, one of our Sherpas, Jangbu, had reported strong winds above 25,000ft. This morning was beautiful, however, not a cloud in the sky. High above, the summit pyramid was crystalline and still, without a hint of a plume.

Robert Schauer, one of our team, set up the telescope at Camp II. Through a fluke of topography, you can look 7,400ft straight up Everest's southwest face to the traverse from the South Summit to the Hillary Step, 300ft below the summit. The traverse appears as a crescent of snow against the dark blue sky and is the only place you can glimpse climbers on summit day. We knew that Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants, Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness, and Makalu Gau's Taiwanese team had been climbing since before midnight, but it was still too early for us to be able to see them on the highest part of the mountain.

Since each expedition communicated on different radio frequencies, we didn't receive any dispatches directly. We had no idea what kind of progress the climbers were making. We could make certain assumptions. In a group so large, some people would surely have turned around by this time. Those last 3,000ft above the South Col are many times more strenuous than any other climbing on the route. Then, at around noon, we spotted the first climbers profiled along the white crescent.

At about 2pm, we got word that Anatoli Boukreev and Neal Beidleman, both guides for Mountain Madness, and some others had reached the summit. That meant several things. They'd have installed fixed ropes for clients to follow. And, if they were the first on top, it was already getting late. It was none of our business what Rob or Scott had decreed as their turnaround time, but we knew they would have one and that it was probably one or two o'clock. That would leave only a window of 30 to 90 minutes for their clients to finish the climb.

It was windy up high, but not fiercely so. As the condensation rises up the Kangshung Face on the Tibetan side, it creates a strange boiling effect above the crescent's skyline. You can measure the wind pretty effectively by watching how it blows that whitish nimbus. We estimated the speed at about 30mph, quite normal for the beginning of an afternoon on Everest.

But an hour later, at 3pm, we looked up and could see climbers still forging across the traverse to the Hillary Step. I was alarmed. I knew that it would take at least another hour for them to reach the summit, that they wouldn't descend back across the crescent to the South Summit until at least 4pm. That still left the descent to Camp IV, a matter of three to six more hours, depending on the remaining strength and willpower of the climbers. Before our eyes, we could see people wilfully giving away their small margin of safety for success on the summit. What they were sacrificing was the ability to return to Camp IV in the safety of daylight.

It can't be overstated how light provides an asylum up there. Night creates a different mountain. Unless you've managed to memorise the labyrinth, really gathered the landmarks into your mind, you can be lost in an instant.

All of this was playing out in lovely, sunlit conditions. Tiny figures slowly continued across the crescent toward the summit. We could only imagine the bottlenecks at key passages. Later we'd learn of the traffic jam at the base of the Hillary Step, when a dozen or more climbers came to a standstill waiting in line to use the single rope. The climber Jon Krakauer would relate the horror of standing at the top of the Hillary Step while his oxygen ran out, unable to descend because of the people coming up.

We later learnt that 23 climbers reached the summit that afternoon. At Camp II, we were in disbelief. At 3pm, some climbers were still struggling to the summit, Scott Fischer and Rob Hall among them. At 3.40, Scott radioed to his Base Camp manager and reported that his entire team had reached the top. Makalu Gau arrived a lit tle later. Last to get up was Rob's client Doug Hansen. Rob had waited for Doug near the summit. It was shortly after 4pm.

About this time, a mass of clouds was building to the west. The cloud band started crawling up the Western Cwm toward us, darker than the normal afternoon clouds. These had the look of thunderheads, dark purple, almost black. Our view of the summit was obscured and we went inside our dining tent.

At Camp II, the storm was little more than another squall. It was quiet enough so that we could hear the wind starting to howl across the Southeast Ridge. This wasn't the jet stream hum. It was a localised weather pattern. High wind - whether it was mixed with snow or not - is a common afternoon feature. It would have been extraordinary to not have wind playing on the Everest heights. What made it ominous today was that there were people climbing in that dark broth.

At 5pm, team mate Ed Viesturs's wife Paula called from Base Camp. A member of Rob's support team had come over with dire news. They had picked up Rob's voice. 'I can get myself down the Hillary Step, but I don't know how I can get this man down,' he was quoted as saying. 'I need a bottle of gas, somebody please, I'm begging you.'

We couldn't quite comprehend this news. A nightmare was unfolding. Rob was trying to rescue a client, Doug Hansen, just below the summit of Everest, with the storm and night closing around them and their oxygen running out or depleted, on the edge of a ridge that fell one and a half miles to either side. In 1983, I'd led a nearly blind, debilitated Larry Nielsen down from the South Summit, but I hadn't done it in a wind like the one we could hear up there.

Paula called up to us again that night, at around 8pm. The first few of the returning climbers were starting to filter back into Camp IV, those who'd tagged the summit and come back down - people like Jon Krakauer - or who had turned around in the early afternoon. The rest were missing in action. No one knew who had returned, or how many.

Ed, Robert and I knew how fatigued each would be. You haven't slept for two days or more. Your stomach is empty. Your strength is gone. Once inside your tent, you don't want to go outside. That's on a good day. This was night. A bad night. I went to bed preparing for the worst.

Next morning, at 5.30am, Jangbu violently shook my tent and said, 'David, David, get up, you must come to Rob's camp.' In the blue dining tent that doubled as Adventure Consultants' communications tent, Ed and I found a distraught Finnish climber named Veikka Gustafsson. He was a close friend of Rob's. Veikka had been up all night monitoring the radio for further news. He told us that an hour earlier, Rob had broken the terrible silence to ask, 'Won't somebody come and help me?' It was one of the most chilling moments of my life. Rob was a powerful man. He functioned superbly at high altitude. If anyone belonged on this mountain, it was Rob, always in command of himself. And yet he'd lost control.

We kept vigil through the morning as Rob's sporadic radio dispatches came through. His voice was thin and hoarse. I couldn't reconcile the voice I was now hearing with the cheery, confident leader I'd passed two days earlier.

'Doug is gone,' Rob had reported. We didn't know what that meant. The last we'd heard, Doug needed oxygen. Rob had made his emergency bivouac just below the South Summit, at the start of the traverse to the Hillary Step. Ed and I knew exactly where he would be sitting, and why. Just below the South Summit is a slightly protected crook in the ridge. He had chosen his defence against the wind as well as anyone could.

Ed got on the radio, repeatedly urging Rob to stand up and get moving.

'Where's Harold?' Rob asked. Harold was guide Andy Harris's nickname. Rob sounded disoriented and confused.

Ed didn't hesitate to lie. 'Andy's down here with us,' he assured Rob.

Several hours later, at 9am on the morning of 11 May, Rob was still sitting at the South Summit. He was still without shelter, 34 hours after leaving Camp IV. Rob was asking the same questions. 'Rob,' Ed said. 'Just get yourself down.'

To our knowledge, at least 17 people had not returned to Camp IV as the morning sun began to warm Camp II. The sky was clear and innocent, but the wind was roaring high overhead, ripping snow and mist across the Lhotse spires. Looking up, I felt helpless. What was going on up there?

There was no communication at all with anyone from Scott's expedition. Finally information began to trickle down, much of it from Jon Krakauer. Even in his state of exhaustion and shock, Jon was one of the first - with a Canadian physician named Stuart Hutchison - to begin feeding down bits and pieces of what it was like up there. We began to assimilate the facts: Scott Fischer and Makalu Gau had never returned to camp. Andy Harris had possibly descended and walked off the Lhotse Face.

Between his failing batteries, the sound of the wind, and the chaos at Camp IV, Jon's reports were truncated, like pieces of slashed newspaper. It seemed no one knew where anyone was. The tents were being flattened in the wind. Communication with another tent 20ft away was nearly impossible. Going outside to find out who had returned was even more difficult. But after three hours of gathering little pieces of information, here's what we knew: Rob was stranded on the South Summit; Doug Hansen was dead; Andy Harris was missing. It was assumed he had walked off the Lhotse Face after Jon Krakauer had reported seeing him just above the South Col. Scott Fischer and Makalu Gau were sitting on a ledge at 27,200ft without a radio. We didn't know if they were dead or alive. Two other clients from Rob Hall's team had been left on the far side of the South Col, a few yards from the Kangshung Face, and were presumed dead. Everyone else had straggled back to camp, but there was great concern over their condition: frostbite, exhaustion, dehydration.

I instructed Jon to take whatever he needed, batteries, oxygen, fuel, food. We had 42 oxygen bottles cached in duffel bags beside our tent and a small bag of spare AA lithium batteries inside the tent. Even though I guided Jon on a search of the tent, he couldn't find the batteries. We were getting more concerned he might get cut off.

It was essential that we kept communications open, and so I approached the South African team at Camp II. Like forgotten characters, the South African climbers at Camp IV had postponed their summit bid of 10 May and remained in their tents. While all this was going on, they were lying in sleeping bags. I contacted their leader at the South Col. They had fresh batteries and a radio that would keep the lines open. But when I asked that Jon Krakauer be loaned the radio for this emergency, only a few feet away from where sur vivors of the storm lay huddled and crying, the leader, Ian Woodall, refused.

Meanwhile, various rescuers were heading out from Camp IV. Two Sherpas, still exhausted from their climb to the summit two days before, climbed up toward the South Summit with thermoses of tea and oxygen bottles, hoping to reach Rob in time. Three other Sherpas set off to find Scott and Makalu Gau, who had spent the night on a ledge 1,200ft above camp.

Dr Stuart Hutchison recruited several Sherpas and walked through the wind a few hundred yards across the South Col plateau to where two people still lay. They had been part of a desperate, lost group, including Sandy Pittman and Neal Beidleman. Presumed dead, they had been left on the brink of the Kangshung Face. But Stuart wanted to make sure. He found them, a Japanese woman, Yasuko Namba, and a Dallas pathologist named Beck Weathers. To his horror, both were still breathing, but only barely. It was decided that, given their condition, there was no hope for survival. They were left where they lay and, once again, reported dead. Beck's wife was informed by telephone that her husband was dead.

On the day before, 10 May, Pete Athans and Todd Burleson had reached Camp III with a fellow guide and their clients. Hearing of the disaster above, Pete and Todd immediately suspended their own expedition and headed up into the wind. They reached the South Col and found Camp IV devastated and in tatters. Going from tent to tent, they saw climbers huddled, unable to move. The two guides quickly began bringing order and relief, delivering oxygen bottles from our expedition to the exhausted survivors 'like pizzas', according to Pete, plus brewing tea and soup.

As they revived the climbers, Pete and Todd encouraged them to descend. Another night at the South Col would only deplete them more and strain the camp's meagre resources. Neal Beidleman started down the ropes toward Camp III, escorting all the clients who could come with him. At the same time, we were starting up towards Camp III. Before heading up, we'd tried to co-ordinate the communication net and get as much information as possible. There was no point heading up the mountain without knowing what was needed. This wasn't about going to the rescue, it was more about positioning ourselves to assist the survivors on their way down.

Ed, Robert, Araceli and I set out from Camp II. Veikka went with us. Others stayed at Camp II to monitor radio calls coming in to Scott and Rob's camps and then relay that information up to us.

On our way to Camp III, we received occasional updates on the radio from Paula at Base Camp. Three Sherpas had managed to bring Makalu Gau down from his ice ledge; he was severely frostbitten. But they'd had to leave Scott up there, eyes fixed, jaw clenched - dead. I got the awful news over the radio and relayed it to Ed. Scott's death hit us hard, especially Ed who'd climbed K2 with him in 1991. Our friend was gone. We stood there and cried.

After a few moments we managed to turn back to our task. Continuing higher to Camp III, we began meeting the first of the survivors as they descended. The Sherpas came first, hurtling down the ropes, just getting the hell out of there. Next came two of Scott's clients, Charlotte Fox and Lene Gammelgaard. It was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had. They were almost giddy, as if in some mind-altered state. Charlotte kept going on and on about reaching the summit on her 39th birthday. It was surreal. They continued down the ropes to Camp II.

I was climbing a little behind Ed and Veikka when Paula came on the radio again. The Sherpas trying to rescue Rob Hall had turned around, 700ft below the South Summit. The winds had continued with great ferocity. Exhausted and freezing, they had been unable to go any further. Rob was marooned at the top of the world.

It was such an unbearable moment, almost impossible to comprehend. Rob was still alive and able to speak, but unable to move. The Sherpas had been his last hope. No one has ever survived two nights out above 28,000ft. The radio call was his death knell. Ed and Veikka knew they would never see him again. They stood there weeping, clipped to the fixed ropes.

Our sense of hopelessness was overwhelming and humbling. With a glance up and to our left, we could see to just below Rob's position, 4,700ft above us. I felt as if I couldn't share their grief with them. I hadn't known Rob as well as they had, and I had already accepted his death. Earlier in the morning, when I first heard Rob's weak voice calling from the South Summit, I knew I'd never again see him alive. I turned my thoughts to those we could help.

We got to Camp III and I stuck my head into one of the tents. Four survivors were in there, Sandy Pittman, two other clients and Neal Beidleman They were lying in one another's arms, draped in a pile. They looked like the back end of a death march, shell-shocked, ravaged. They'd all been out in that wind and their faces were drawn and discoloured with frost nip. They'd been without sleep for 60 or 70 hours.

We immediately set to work, firing up the stoves to melt snow and make tea and warm Kool-Aid for them. We wanted to rehydrate them, get some sugar in their blood, then get them back on their feet and moving down the ropes again. There was no sense having them spend a night here at Camp III. At Camp II, 2,700ft lower, they'd be able to sleep better and people could feed them and tend to their frostbite. Once Sandy and Neal and the others were feeling better, they continued descending.

As evening arrived, Rob Hall made a final radio call from his tiny perch below the South Summit. His wife, Jan Arnold, who was pregnant with their first child, had been patched through via satellite phone and radio from New Zealand. 'Hi, my sweetheart,' he said. His words were almost slurring. 'I hope you're tucked up in a nice warm bed. How are you doing?'

Jan made her voice positive and strong, even though it was clear Rob could never make it through another night. 'I can't tell you how much I'm thinking about you,' she said. 'You sound so much better than I expected. Are you warm, my darling?'

Their exchange went on. 'I love you,' Rob signed off with Jan. 'Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much.'

That afternoon, we got another radio call. On the South Col, someone referred to as 'the dead guy' had staggered into Camp IV. When they mentioned his name, I had no idea who he was. But I would come to be very familiar with him. There was no greater miracle that year than Beck Weathers.

He had been part of that lost band groping through the blizzard. Along with Yasuko Namba, Sandy Pittman, Neal Beidleman, Charlotte Fox and others, Beck had huddled at the edge of the Kangshung Face. Their oxygen supply was gone. They were blinded by the night and storm. No one knew where camp might lie. But sometime after midnight, the sky briefly cleared and Klev Schoening, a client of Scott's, 'saw the way home'. He and Neal assembled those who could walk and staggered straight into the howling wind towards camp.

Yasuko, Sandy, Beck, Charlotte and another client, Tim Madsen, were left behind. Things couldn't have been any more grim. Then Beck took off one mitten to warm his hand inside his parka and the mitten blew away. His fingers instantly numbed with the cold. He couldn't zip his parka shut again. Within moments the wind ripped away his body heat and he began a rapid tumble into hypothermia, delirium and unconsciousness.

Neal and Klev had found camp, and Anatoli Boukreev followed their directions back to the stranded group. Anatoli had managed to rescue three of the remaining five. But Yasuko was unresponsive, and Beck couldn't be found. That was the first time Beck was written off as dead. The second time was the next morning, 11 May, when Dr Hutchison pulled away the ice from his and Yasuko's faces, and they were judged so near death as to be beyond help.

By his own telling, Beck returned to consciousness late in the afternoon on 11 May. He saw a vision of his family and mobilised himself. Hallucinating, he staggered across the rock-strewn South Col and, through sheer luck, strayed into camp. At first, Todd Burleson thought the mutilated figure - his face swollen, one arm bared and frozen solid in a semi-salute - must be Scott. Pete and Todd placed him in a tent. Everyone was traumatised and in a hypoxia-induced haze, and now Beck arrived in this horrific state. He was put into two sleeping bags with a tank of oxygen turned to full flow and some hot water bottles.

Todd and Pete radioed down that Beck probably wasn't going to make it through the night. Even if he survived the night, it seemed certain Beck would never have the strength to descend the Lhotse Face, and there was no chance of lowering him the whole way. Alone in a tent, Beck couldn't open the water bottles to drink because of his hands. As his arms warmed up, they swelled. He tried to chew off his wristwatch knowing it would constrict his circulation. It only got worse. Beck screamed helplessly as the wind blew his tent doors open, and then blew the sleeping bags from his body. On the morning of 12 May, just before leaving the South Col, Jon Krakauer peered inside the tent, expecting a corpse. But once again Beck had refused to die. Jon alerted Pete, who brought hot tea, and injected Beck with a syringeful of dexamethasone, a steroid with a miraculous ability to revive hypoxia-stricken climbers. To their surprise, Beck was able to stand and walk. At 10.30am, Pete and Todd started down with Beck. Ed Viesturs and Robert Schauer went up the ropes to meet them at the Yellow Band, at 25,000ft, to assist with Beck's descent.

Waiting at Camp III, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd been told of Makalu Gau's and Beck's grisly frost-bite injuries. Makalu's rescue team descended past Camp III first. As they passed by, Makalu looked at me. We knew each other slightly. I asked him how his feet were doing and he said, 'Fine.' (He lost most of his toes later.) He said, 'How's my nose?' I looked at him and said it was fine. But it was black as charcoal, flush to his face.

In the early afternoon, Beck arrived. I was horrified by the sight of his gloved hands. They were stiff and unmoving, like steel claws. His cheeks and nose were black with frostbite. I refuelled Beck with a cup of hot black tea with sugar. He couldn't hold the cup, so I held it for him. He was in remarkably good spirits. He said, 'Guys, I'm gonna lose my hands, but I just might see my wife and kids again, if I can make it down.'

'You can do it,' I told him.

'If you think I can do it, I bet I can,' Beck replied.

Beck was not sure he could face the long trip down the Lhotse Face to Camp II, but it was not an option for him to remain at Camp III. Ed and Robert took turns supporting him from behind, holding on to his harness. We were all clipped into the fixed ropes. I went first, with Beck just behind. He braced his forearms on my shoulders as we started down. One glance to my left or right and I was staring at Beck's frozen claws.

Beck didn't have the strength, nor the eyesight, to pick his foot placements. On the low-angle sections covered with a little snow, he could walk on his own. But on the steeper sections, the ice was hard and blue, requiring a good stomp with your crampon points at each step. Sometimes I had to turn and set his boots with my hands. I kept waiting for him to complain. He never did.

It wasn't long before I began to understand how remarkable this stranger was. We'd just started down, when Beck said, 'You know, David, I paid $65,000 to climb Everest. And when I left Dallas, I said to my wife: "Peach, $65,000 to climb Everest! It's costing me an arm and a leg!"' Then he added, 'But I guess I bargained them down.'

I was astounded. This man, this mutilated survivor, was telling me a joke? About his own injuries? He was a pathologist. He knew exactly what lay in store. Both hands were frozen through to the bone. He knew he'd lost them. He still had no idea about his face. We weren't about to tell him.

It went on, pretty much non-stop the whole way down. He was funny as hell. He compared our little string of climbers to a conga line. He wanted to sing 'Chain of Fools'. It kept his mind agile and his body moving. He had a profound effect on me. After all that death, after being judged dead himself, this man's spirit was transcendent. He never should have survived. How can I say that? Because Rob Hall didn't survive. Because Scott Fischer didn't. They, too, spent the night outside, exposed to the elements. But neither of those experienced, resourceful men had been able to survive. Beck had, though. His first night was spent lying on the edge of an abyss, his second screaming in a tent with the doors blown open, his sleeping bags torn away.

We reached the glacier in the Western Cwm and Beck was weary. But we kept him moving. A physician, Ken Kamler, and others were waiting. They immediately started the tortuous process of thawing his arm and hands in pans of lukewarm water.

That night, plans were discussed for Beck's and Makalu's evacuation. We dreaded having to take them down through the Icefall, but arranging a helicopter rescue seemed out of the question. Piloting a helicopter up to 20,000ft, much less having it land and take on extra weight, was considered an impossibility. No helicopter had come that high on Everest in 25 years, since an Italian helicopter crashed on the glacier below Camp II.

The next morning, at six o'clock on 13 May, we got Beck on his feet, and started down towards Camp I and the Icefall. Once you begin thawing frostbitten tissue you can't let it refreeze. We needed to get Beck and Makalu off the mountain as soon as possible. Makalu was semiconcious and frostbitten, and couldn't walk, so some Sherpas dragged him in a makeshift sled.

A few hundred feet above Camp I, the teams evacuating Beck and Makalu stopped, having received the remarkable news that a helicopter was on its way for the men. Lt Col Madan KC, a Nepal army pilot, had agreed to attempt the dangerous landing. He'd off-loaded his co-pilot and all but five gallons of fuel to cut down weight. The helicopter rose from the depths of the Icefall. It flew over us and continued toward Camp II, before turning back to our small party. He had appeared so quickly we'd had no time to select a landing zone.

Ed and I found a relatively flat spot between two big crevasses. Madan circled, surveying the landing site, and then made his first attempt. Just as he started to touch down, the tail settled awkwardly and he lifted off, circling to try again. On his second try, Madan warily rested the skids on the hard snow while continuing to apply almost full power to the rotor blades. He gestured emphatically with his upraised index finger: only one passenger could go. We decided that would have to be Makalu, who was semiconscious and strapped into a stretcher with severely frostbitten feet.

With Makalu tied in behind Madan, the helicopter lifted off with a low, loping creep. Beck's spirits sank visibly. By helicopter, he'd have been back in Kathmandu within the hour - warm and sucking in oxygen-rich air. Now we faced an ordeal in the Icefall that could last all day and half the night. Beck's hands were a problem, but he was able to walk, and we felt he could have made it through the Icefall under his own power.

But to our enormous relief, the courageous pilot returned half an hour later. We got Beck on board. The helicopter lifted, pitched forward, and then disappeared over the rim of the Icefall. Suddenly it was silent. As the helicopter disappeared down valley, part of my heart went with Beck. And I thought part of his stayed with us.

After the storm

David Breashears reached the summit of Everest in late May, and completed his IMAX film which was released in 1998. It has become the biggest grossing large-format film ever, taking over $120m at the box office. He returned to Everest in 1997 to climb it for the fourth time.

Jon Krakauer's account of the 1996 Everest season, Into Thin Air, was published in 1997 and became an instant bestseller, with over 4m sales in the US alone. His first book since then, on the Mormons, is published this autumn.

Beck Weathers lost his right arm, much of his left hand, part of his left foot and his nose to frostbite. Doctors grew a new nose upside down on his forehead with cartilage and tissue taken from one of his ears before swivelling it into position and reattaching it. He still works as a pathologist in Dallas, Texas.

Anatoli Boukreev faced criticism for his decisions on the mountain, which some say jeopardised the life of his clients, but he has since come to be regarded as one of the heroes of the tragedy. He died in an avalanche in the Himalayas on Christmas Day, 1997.

Makalu Gau, the Taiwanese climber, spent 10 months in hospital. He lost his arms from above the elbow, his feet and nose, which has since been reconstructed through plastic surgery. His feet have been partially reconstructed using tissue from his arms.

Neal Beidleman is a successful engineer, mountain guide and photographer living with his wife and daughter in Aspen, Colorado.

Ed Veisturs is America's most successful high-altitude mountaineer, having climbed 12 of the world's 14 peaks over 8,000 metres. He has climbed Everest five times and lives in Seattle with his wife Paula and their two children.

Jan Arnold gave birth to Sarah, two months after Rob Hall died on Everest. A doctor by profession, she had climbed Everest herself with Hall in 1993. She still lives in New Zealand.

· Extracted from High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Other Unforgiving Places by David Breashears, published by Canongate Books on April 3 at £9.99.