On May 10, 1996, four groups of climbers set out to summit Mount Everest – one group led by Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants, another led by Scott Fischer of Mountain Madness, an expedition organized by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and a Taiwanese expedition. The day would turn out to be the single most disastrous event in the mountain’s history, killing 8 and injuring others after an unexpected blizzard ravaged the climbers, trapping them high on the mountain. This analysis recounts the official accounts of occurrences between May 10, 1996 – May 12, 1996 and the telling of the events from two sides of the same tragedy written into two books: “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer and “The Climb” by Anatoli Boukreev – accounts that have remained controversial and conflicting in their beliefs of what and who was to blame for the tragedy.