Annapurna IV | 1996 NW Ridge

A USA expedition to Annapurna IV in 1996 via NW Ridge, led by Cleve Armstrong, Chad Alber. Summit reached on 1st October 1996. 7 members recorded.

Expedition Details

Field Value
ID 1932
Imported 2026-03-06 18:04:49.359634
Expedition ID ANN496302
Peak ID ANN4
Year 1996
Season 3
Host Country 1
Route 1 NW Ridge
Route 2 -
Route 3 -
Route 4 -
Nationality USA
Leaders Cleve Armstrong, Chad Alber
Sponsor 1996 C.M.C. Annapurna IV Expedition
Success 1 False
Success 2 False
Success 3 False
Success 4 False
Ascent 1 -
Ascent 2 -
Ascent 3 -
Ascent 4 -
Claimed False
Disputed False
Countries -
Approach -
Basecamp Date 1996-09-24
Summit Date 1996-10-01
Summit Time -
Summit Days 7
Total Days 12
Termination Date 1996-10-06
Termination Reason 6
Termination Notes Abandoned at 6100m due to death of two members
High Point (m) 6100
Traverse False
Ski False
Paraglide False
Camps 1
Fixed Rope (m) 0
Total Members 7
Summit Members 0
Member Deaths 2
Total Hired 3
Summit Hired 0
Hired Deaths 0
No Hired False
O2 Used False
O2 None True
O2 Climb False
O2 Descent False
O2 Sleep False
O2 Medical False
O2 Taken False
O2 Unknown False
Other Summits -
Campsites Pre-BC(23/09,3965m),BC(24/09,4665m),C1(27/09,5400m),xxx(01/10,6100m)
Route Notes C1 at North Face of NW Ridge C2 (never occupied) North Face of NW Ridge. High point at site for C2. Armstrong - 10 Oct 1996 1 Oct C2 site reached in moist deep snow and loads buried there (buried to protect from birds) and down to C1. Route was not technically difficult but laborious climb because of deep snow; there was some avalanche danger on way to C2. 2nd down to BC while some carried loads to C1. On 3rd Armstrong, Davidson, Marshall + Alber and 2 Sherpas up to C1, Alber and Sherpas dumped loads and descended to BC leaving Armstrong, Davidson and Marshall. Avalanche 10m wide & 3m deep swept on 3rd to right of route. Armstrong lifted off by helicopter from C1 and brought to KTM on 6th Oct. * For details of death of Marshall and Davidson, see attached account by Armstrong dated 6 Oct '96. They suffocated in their tent while sleeping early in the morning of the 4th. Ministry of Tourism - 6 Oct 96 Rich Davidson, Aspen, 50 Miss Debbie L. Marshall, Denver, born 12/62, Teacher 4 Oct 11 am hit by avalanche between BC and high camp - same day Cleve Armstrong leader swept by avalanche and today rescued by army helicopter from 17,000 feet above BC and brought to KTM. Total 3 hit by avalanche Davidson & Marshall are missing BC - 4400m C1 - 4900m planned Kathmandu, Nepal 2:55 pm, 06 October 1996 The Tragic 1996 CMC Annapurna IV Expedition This morning I was dusted off Camp I (approximately 5400m) by Lt. Colonel Lama and Major Thapa colleagues of the same Nepal Army helicopter pilot that did the record rescue on Mt. Everest last spring. Other than one hour of slight clearing yesterday afternoon this was the first feasible weather for such an attempt. Last night was the first one (of three) that heavy, wet snow was not falling at the rate and 1-1/2 meters plus per night. All stoves and pots had been covered up so there was no way to melt snow into water, resulting in my severe dehydration. I diluted my warm urine with snow to drink. I could not eat much and had used my all available energy to continually dig out the tent that was my life haven. When I heard the chopper I hurriedly put on my seat harness, should they have to winch me in, and put a few things in my day pack. After two observatory runs they approached Camp I low from the east and hovered with runners just off the snow about fifteen meters from the edge of the two to three-meter deep hole where my tent was. They motioned for me to come to them and opened the right hand door. I jumped and clawed my way out of the tent hole on to the sinking ambient snow surface. This was my one chance to live and it was obvious they couldn't stay there very long. The swirling snow from the chopper made my objective barely visible. After a maximum effort of clawing and swimming on my belly my hand finally grabbed a runner and I did a pull up to where it was a possible to grab a seat brace with my left hand and do a higher pull-up, lunging onto the floor of the back seat. The door slammed shut and we lifted up. I could taste the blood I was coughing up as I rose to a seat and removed my day pack, put on the seat/shoulder belt. The co-pilot asked "where do yo want to go?" I said, "Kathmandu" feeling sad and guilty about leaving our four remaining teammates to "clean" the mountain, but realising I would present more of a liability than an asset, a danger and casualty to both them and myself. There would be important official business to take care of in the Kathmandu and the sad task of informing the families of those two who had died six meters away from me at about 05:00 4 October 1996 before or when the VE-25 tent they were sleeping in collapsed under heavy snow load. We dropped quickly down to the runway at Hongde to pick up the liaison officer of a failed one-man Finnish attempt (he had helped arranged my dust off) and injured Australian trekker and his wife. Arriving at Kathmandu Airport I was met by David Schensted, Consul, and Gary Berntsen, First Secretary for Political/Military Affairs of the US Embassy, who took me to the medical clinic. Later, at lunch in the wonderful hospitality of Gary and Rebecca's home, they informed that they had not earlier been informed of our expedition or our plight and explained how much faster and surer my rescue might have been had I registered our team with the US Embassy upon arrival 18 Sept 96. They can sometimes bring in technical equipment and expertise to vastly improve speed and accuracy beyond what is available to the Nepalis, whose Army DOES work very well with them and is sometimes helped by them. I strongly suggest that all American expeditions and trekking groups register with the US Embassy immediately upon arrival both for rescue and in case of emergency at home. We made two Official calls to my people at home to provide information as to who died and how, as initial reports were incorrect. Nick Cofman, our team's Nepali-speaking youngest and strongest member, and I had arrived in Nepal 18 Sept to make initial arrangements and secure final Governmental permission so the rest of our seven-member team could arrive 20 September and we could all fly to Hongde, 3372 meters and directly below Annapurna IV base camp 21 September aboard a Russian MI-17 chopper. We had bought substantial additional necessary equipment, like Perlon fixed line, more pickets and EPI-gas canisters. As both mountain leader and expedition doctor (I'm actually an optometrist and trained army and high altitude medic), I wanted to establish liaison with the Himalayan Rescue Association in Manang, a one and one-half hour walk upstream along the Marsyangdi Khola, which runs east on a line parallel and north of the Annapurna range crest. Upon arriving there we found them closed until October. The next day I carried a load up to the real base camp 4665 meters. The following night we got all equipment (some via donkey) and personnel to a camp above Birch Flats at about 3965 meters, arriving at the base camp early the following afternoon. It is the cleanest base camp of any World Class Peak I have been to except Peak Lenin. We found a Buddhist chorten and set up our cook tent inside a remaining rock shelter wall built below it. The weather continued to be wonderfully warm and clear, so in the next two days Nick Cofman and Mark blazed a trail across the two-kilometer glacial moraine to the base of a steep scree slope leading to a wet, loose couloir ending with a snow field below our approximately 5400-meter Camp I. Chad Alber, our expedition co-leader (administration) termed it "5.4 loose rock and snow," and we eventually put in fixed line over much of it. The afore-mentioned Finn and his Sherpas had warned us that much of their equipment and food cashes had been ranshacked by large birds and that no tent or other item could be left unattended. This was readily proven by finding Mark's hard hat, harness and other heavy non-edible climbing equipment quite a few meters from where he had left it buried under rocks the previous day at the bottom of the couloir. Our old VE-24, set up as a storage tent at Camp I for non-food items, was torn into by the birds and later repaired with duct tape. It helped save my life. 3 October 96 we had placed fixed line in most difficult and dangerous places on the route to Camp I and were busily stocking it for support of Camp II, approximately 6100 meters, where Nick and Mark had already buried some supplies. It had snowed about one-third meter and made the route to the Camp I easier, but the route to Camp II nearly waist-deep in snow near it's end. Lightly falling snow made it more feasible to continue stocking Camp I, where Nick and Mark had already slept six nights. We decided they would return to base camp and some of the rest of us who had carried up. Rich Davidson, Debbie Marshall and myself would sleep there to acclimatize and guard the camp against invading birds. We conducted avalanche transciever practice, then spent time in their tent late that afternoon when Debbie spoke of the risk/reward balance between the laurel of being the first American women to ascend Annapurna IV versus the possibility of her sixteen-month old son losing his mother. Rich spoke of the love he and Claudette shared. I spoke of my declining membership on the '79 Annapurna I expedition because I alone was raising my twelve-year-old daughter, and each attempt on that mountain had lost at least one person to objective danger. We ate supper together. At midnight I woke up and shoveled the quickly falling heavy wet snow off and from around Rich and Debbie's VE-25 and the same with my old VE-24. We had earlier discussed the asphyxiation possibilities in the VE-25 should it's vestibule become closed off, and when I suggested the back entrance, they showed me that the zipper only opened from the bottom not from the top, like the front of a VE-24. A zipper which opens from the top allows you to breathe or escape from when a meter of snow rapidly accummulates. Rich asked me to shovel out the Mega-mid that enclosed our cooking operation, but I replied that it was collapsed by the heavy snow, including a snapped center pole, that we would have to deal with it in the morning under day light. It was now 01:30 4 October 1996 and before I turned to my tent and sleeping bag Rich agreed to get up at about 02:30 or 03:00 and shovel off and out both our tents which I heard him do. Debbie's turn would presumably come about 06:00. Waking about 08:00 and knocking the snow off my tent from the inside I made a radio call to Chad Alber, expedition co-leader, at base camp, saying that we had spent the night taking turns shoveling and that after we did a lot more we might try our Sherpa Snowshoes out on the now deep route to Camp II. Chad and I agreed to another radio call at noon. Rich also had a radio and I had heard him make the call the previous evening. That Rich had not participated in this morning's radio call meant they were still sleeping or something was wrong. I dressed and unzipped the top opening door of the VE-24 and found a meter-high wall of consolidated snow which was laboriously pushed away until a escape was possible. Wading towards Rich and Debbie's tent, then seeing it collapsed with no human movement made apparent the tragedy that had occured between 04:30 and 08:00. They had suffocated in their sleep before or after the heavy snow collapsed their tent. Their feet were toward the vestibule, so they if had become conscious when the tent collapsed they still could not have a escaped through it because one cannot crawl and claw feet first. The bottom opening zipper of the VE-25's back door would have opened toward a consolidated snow wall and without a two-way zipper, could not allow the upper vent hole that might have saved their lives as the top opening of the front door of my VE-24 had likely saved mine, both through ventilation and escape possibilities. Initially I could only reach the bottom end of one sleeping bag through the collapsed vestibule, as I frantically kept screaming their names and praying there might be SOME response. Pulling on the foot of the sleeping bag only it came out of the tent, revealing a pair of stocking covered, cold feet with no ankle pulse. I could not pull their owner at all. Digging deeper and pulling away tent fabric revealed Rich's still warm head and upper trunk, cold extremities, no neck pulse, fixed and dilated pupils, nearly black blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Continued exhaustive digging and pulling away of tent fabric gained the foot of Debbie's sleeping bag. This time instead of pulling on it I unzipped the bottom of it and pulled it out via the cold feet inside. Debbie's body was in a same condition as Rich's except that rigormortis had already set in her extremities. Her camera remained between her legs where she had placed it to keep the batteries warm. Anohter half-meter of heavy, wet snow fell during this time and I was exhausted and soaked. My Moonstone Gortex parka had failed miserably and life partially depended on my staying dry while continously shovelling the rapidly falling wet snow, I grabbed Rich's North Face Gortex parka, which fully did it's job and helped save my life along with some other clothes which I never used, and the other radio should mine give out. Noon radio contact relayed the shocking information to Chad, Mark, Nick and Tom that Rich and Debbie were dead and by what means. Chad was so blown away he could not speak, so he gave the radio to one of the others. They agreed to keep their radio on so I could contact them at any time. We realized that the route from the base camp to Camp I had become impassible because the fixed lines were buried and extreme avalanche hazard existed; that my only chance of survival would be if I could continue to shovel the on-going heavy snowfall without much water, food or sleep until it cleared enough for a hoped-for helicopter dust off. Ang Kami, one of our Sherpas was despatched from BC to Hongde to relay such request, through channels, to the Army. Shoveling snow off and around my tent until exhaustion and darkness, I crawled in and changed into drier clothes, tried to sleep, but was too afraid to. Prayed for help and guidance and that I would listen, recognize and obey immediately. I got guidance that my sleeping arrangement must be turned around, so that my head was at the door, and that all vents must be maximally open to air circulation without allowing in snow or liquid. My watch alarm was set to go off in one and a half hours, whereupon dressing and a two-hour snow shoveling shift began. This was repeated throughtout the night. Basecamp urged me to dig for the stove and the pot in Nick's tent or the trashed Mega-mid, so I could make water, but it was too great a gamble. It would involve the energy of swimming through deeps snow, then guessing where to dig the three-meter deep exploratory hole... and likely missing; or if a stove and pot were found, maybe burning up my tent and myself in my weak fumbling state. A couple partially filled water bottles have been salvaged from Rich and Debbie's tent. Between them and my warm urine diluted with snowballs I bet on getting by until the weather cleared and warm sun could melt snow placed in the dark plastic or a helicopter could arrive. Base camp reported one and one half meters of still falling snow. They dispatched another Sherpa, Ang Gelu on Sherpa Snowshoes to Hongde to be doubly sure the helicopter rescue was set for first clearing and to ride with them on their first fly by to locate Camp I for them. Not knowing if my death would come before first clearing I sat down to write Karon a last letter on my one piece of paper, my professional card in the top of my pack. Huge avalanches were now raining down all around Camp I and I was beginning to feel like a mouse, kept alive and tormented by a cat for a long time before it's death and consumption. I almost envied Rich and Debbie for having died probably quickly and easily through suffocation in their sleep. I prayed and cried. That night it cleared and I slept some. Source: Cleve Armstrong
Accidents Fatal event of 4th Oct (Marshall & Davidson suffocated in tent buried by snow)
Achievement -
Agency Himalaya Expeditions
Commercial Route -
Standard Route -
Primary Route False
Primary Member False
Primary Reference -
Primary ID -
Checksum 2455459
Year 1996
Summit Success False
O2 Summary None
Route (lowercase) nw ridge

Members

7 recorded members.

Name Sex Year of Birth Citizenship Status Residence Occupation
Chad Norman Alber M 1948 USA Leader (Admin) Boulder, Colorado Computer supervisor Details Other expeditions
Cleve Erling Armstrong M 1942 USA Climbing Leader Denver, Colorado Optometrist & lower army flight surgeon (Colonel) Details Other expeditions
Nicolas Cofman M 1970 USA Climber Breckenridge, Colorado Pilot Details Other expeditions
Richard (Rich) Davidson M 1950 USA Climber Los Alamos, New Mexico Computer engineer Details Other expeditions
Deborah (Debbie) Marshall F 1964 USA Climber Glenwood Springs, Colorado Forester Details Other expeditions
Mark Mitcheltree M 1970 USA Climber Boulder, Colorado Custodian/superintendent Details Other expeditions
Thomas Walker M 1963 USA Climber Bakersfield, California Petroleum engineer Details Other expeditions

References

5 recorded references.

Expedition ID Journal Author Title Publisher Citation Yak 94
ANN496302 HJ Armstrong, Cleve Tragedy on Annapurna IV - 54:166-172 (1998) -
ANN496302 HIGH - - - 175:90-91 (Jun 1997) -
ANN496302 AAJ Hawley, Elizabeth - - 71:288-289 (1997) -
ANN496302 - - http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12199728802/Asia-Nepal-Annapurna-IV-Attempts-and-Tragedy - - -
ANN496302 - - https://www.himalayanclub.org/hj/54/19/expeditions-and-notes-54/ - - -