The Harvard Business School case Mount Everest – 1996 narrates the events of May 11, 2006,
when 8 people-including the two expedition leaders— died during a climb to the tallest mountain
in the world (five deaths are described in the case, three border police from India also died that
day). This was dubbed the “deadliest day in the mountain’s history” (at least until April 18, 2014).
The survivors and many analysts have tried to decipher what went wrong that day, find an
underlying cause, and learn from the event.
As the last assignment, this is an integrative case. Please refer to all previous chapters that may
be applicable. The case analysis is worth 60 points.
1. Relying on the book chapter for perception and decision making, describe the role of the
perception biases, “shortcuts”, and errors that the climbers — as individuals and as a group—
made during the 1996 expedition to Mount Everest. Describe at least 5. How did these biases,
“shortcuts,” and errors did contribute to the tragedy?
The first bias that I found to be exceptionally obvious, especially in the case of Hall, is overconfidence
bias. In the entire article, Hall expressed overconfidence, not only in his sale pitch to clients, but
throughout the acclimation process and the ascent up the mountain. He did not care what kind of clients
he had, or their abilities, in his mind he really could make it to the summit and take anyone with decent
physical fitness up to the summit. It was his “guarantee.” Second, anchoring bias came into effect from
camp III when the IMAX expedition decided to stay put at camp III after spending a windy night there. Hall
and Fischer, even though these other teams adjusted their plan due to the change in weather (it had been
thought that the weather would be at its best during this time of year) but Adventure Consultants and
Mountain Madness did not adjust their plan even though their initial information was no longer valid. This
account is all a case of confirmation bias in the context that had them thinking that the weather would
