The people I worried for the most were those climbers lost in the chaos; they were in fear and emotionally spiralling. I’d often thought that anxiety at high altitude wasn’t too dissimilar to a drowning event. In the middle of the ocean, somebody who thinks they’re about to go under will grab at anything, or anyone, for buoyancy, even their loved ones. They thrash and panic, often yanking the nearest person down with them in a desperate attempt to survive. Mental freak-outs above 8,000 metres weren’t that dissimilar, and people flapped and made reckless decisions, which often impacted the
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