Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

Johnny Hawk is taking us back to 1996 to a tragedy on the slopes of Mount Everest, the

tallest mountain in the world.

In 2010, he spoke to one of the survivors, Michael Roomb.

It started to cloud in quite quickly, and then I recall some snow falling, I recall some

thunder claps.

It's May 10th, 1996, Michael Grume is at 8,000 meters on the world's highest mountain,

and a storm has broken.

The wind, the storm driven snow had become so intense, the darkness became incredibly

confusing and we were hopelessly lost somewhere on the south of Everest.

Just a few hours earlier, everything had been going well.

Michael was working as a commercial guide on an expedition run by his friend, Rob Hall,

at 10 o'clock on the evening of the 9th, their team set out from camp four on their summit

bid.

There was a lot of sparkles in the snow from the full moon sparkling off the ice in the

snow, and we made fairly good progress until about dawn.

I think we had eight clients and three guides.

My role was to set a pace that kept all those people from the first person, myself, to

the back person, which was Rob Hall, within a hundred meters of front to back.

When did you realise that things that had started off looking so organised, so simple, if

you like, were starting to go wrong?

I had to wait about 45 minutes for Rob to catch up to me on the south summit, and during

...