I said to Scott that the ascent seemed to be going slowly and that I was concerned descending climbers could possibly run out of oxygen before their return to camp IV.

He decided on the solo ascent because he hoped that in the process of climbing it he might find some inner clarity to what had just transpired on Everest. They were accompanied by Dimitri Sobolev a cinematographer from Kazakhstan who was documenting the attempt. Boukreev found himself in a dangerous position.

In 1997 Boukreev was killed in an avalanche during a winter ascent of Annapurna in Nepal. Anatoli Nikoliavich Boukreev Russian: Анато́лий Никола́евич Букре́ев (January 16 1958 – December 25 1997) was an ethnic-Russian Kazakhstani mountaineer who made ascents of seven of the fourteen Eight-thousander peaks i. e.