Background

Anatoli Nikolaevich Boukreev was on January 16, 1958 in Korkino, Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation to the family of Nikolai Vasilievich Boukreev and Valentina Andreevna Boukreeva. Her father was engaged in the repair of musical instruments, his mother worked in the local transport administration, and later in the local club. He had four siblings.

Education

Anatoli Boukreev studied at Korkino Secondary General School №2, which he graduated in 1975. In accordance with his teachers' advice, he entered Chelyabinsk State University to be trained as a physics teacher achieved a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979. At the same time, he also completed a coaching program for cross-country skiing. Anatoli Boukreev studied mountain climbing at Soviet state-supported programs.

Career

Boukreev was called up for military service in the Soviet army (1979-1981). Under the patronage of Yervand Ilinsky, the head coach of the Republican Central Army Sports Club (CSKA) and the Kazakhstan team in mountaineering, he was sent to the sports troop of the Central Asian Military District. While serving in the army, Boukreev fell ill with meningitis, which was the reason for him being expelled from the Central Asian Military District team, and doctors forbade him to do sports at all. Nevertheless, he managed to recover almost completely. After being discharged to the reserve, he stayed in Kazakhstan and lived near Alma-Ata. He worked at Central Army Sports Club (CSKA) as a skiing coach in the regional children sports school, as well as an instructor in mountain training, which let him combining work with his passion for mountaineering. After the collapse of Soviet Union, he remained in Kazakhstan and received dual Russian Kazakhstani citizenship. In the 1990s, Anatoly moved to the United States.

In May 1996, Boukreev was the second-in-command to leader Scott Fischer on the fateful ascent of Everest that killed eight climbers from Fischer’s expedition and the expedition of another climber, Rob Hall. Both Fischer and Hall were killed. That climb became the subject of participant-journalist Jon Krakauer’s number-one bestseller, Into Thin Air, in which Boukreev believed he bore some of the brunts of Krakauer’s criticism for not using supplementary oxygen. There was no dispute, however, about the fact that Boukreev, after climbing down from the summit that day, returned upward and successfully rescued several of the expedition members, who would doubtless have died otherwise. For his courage, he was awarded the 1997 David Sowles Award for valor by the American Alpine Club. Krakauer’s criticisms had been based on two items: Boukreev’s nonuse of supplementary oxygen, and his attire. Boukreev had never hidden his preference to go without extra oxygen, however. He had repeatedly conquered the world’s highest peaks without it, and he asserted, in a Mountain Zone open forum and elsewhere, that this practice was sensible given his high degree of acclimatization and the sharp reduction in acclimatization that overtook mountaineers whose supplemental oxygen ran out. To Krakauer’s statement that he had dressed too thinly, Boukreev effectively offered a photograph that demonstrated otherwise. To those who claimed that he had descended from Everest too soon, Boukreev countered that he had remained on the summit for an hour and a half, had received the go-ahead to descend from Fischer, and would likely have died, rather than being able to rescue others, if he had remained longer.

After the Everest tragedy, Boukreev’s spectacular climbing career continued. In 1997 he summited successfully four eight-thousand-meter peaks, including Everest, in eighty days. He died, however, on Christmas Day, 1997, while attempting an extremely difficult winter ascent of a new route up Annapurna, an eight thousand-meter peak in Nepal, in what Mountain Zone termed “a modern, lightweight style.” An avalanche caught Boukreev and a Russian cinematographer, Dimitri Sobolev. Another climber, Italian Simone Moro, survived after being carried eight hundred feet down the slope.

Upon Boukreev’s death, his co-author, G. Weston Dewalt stated: “I haven’t the words to express how much he will be missed.” Boukreev’s death came at a time when his book, The Climb, had just been released and had been well received. In it, Boukreev offered his memories and reflections, while journalist Dewalt’s contribution included several interviews he had conducted.

Achievements

• Anatoli Boukreevis was the conqueror of eleven peaks above 8,000 m (26,247 ft) of the planet without supplemental oxygen. He completed a total of 18 ascents on them. His high professionalism helped him to save the lives of his colleagues in extreme situations.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer

    (When Anatoli Boukreev died on the slopes of Annapurna on ...)

    2001
  • The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

    (Everest, the major motion picture from Universal Pictures...)

    1997

Views

Anatoli Boukreev often expressed the idea that mountaineering wasn't just a profession for him and constituted his life philosophy.

Quotations: "Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion."

“I am a citizen of the world. They say to me: "Anatoly, you train in America, you live in Kazakhstan, you were born in the Urals." I answer: “Yes, that's how it turns out, and I spend most of my time in Nepal.”

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Anatoli Boukreev managed to almost completely recover from meningitis he fell ill with in army. His first climbing coach Tatyana Retyunskaya recollects that in childhood he looked the smallest, both in appearance and age among his mates.

Interests

• reading, physics

• Sport & Clubs

  skiing

Connections

Boukreev was never married and had no children. Nevertheless, he had a long-time relationship with a physician Linda Wylie.

Father:

Nikolai Vasilievich Boukreev

morher:

Valentina Andreevna Boukreeva

Brother:

Alexandr Nikolaevich Boukreev

Sister:

Liubov Nikolaevna Boukreeva

Sister:

Irina Nikolaevna Boukreeva

Brother:

Nikolai Nikolaevich Boukreev

girlfriend:

Linda Wylie

colleague:

G. Weston Dewalt

G. Weston Dewalt is a Boukreev's co-author.

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998
• Everest
  2015
• Into Thin Air
  1997