Rob Hall
Climbing with Gary Ball
Hall and Ball had climbed 16 mountains together and were celebrities in New Zealand.1
In 1990 Ball summited Mount Everest with Peter Hillary and Rob Hall. Ball and Hall also climbed the Seven Summits in seven months that year.2,3
Ball died in October 1993 of high-altitude pulmonary edema while climbing Dhaulagiri with Hall. Hall buried Ball's body in a crevasse on the mountain, and it was rediscovered ten years later.4,5
Honours
Hall was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to mountaineering.6
He was posthumously awarded the New Zealand Bravery Star in the 1999 New Zealand bravery awards.7
Everest in 1996
Jon Krakauer took part in a guided ascent of Mount Everest in 1996 and was caught in the disaster. Krakauer reached the summit and returned to camp, but four teammates, including group leader Rob Hall, died while descending in the storm.8,10
Fifteen people died on Everest by the end of the 1996 climbing season, the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point.9