Yasuko Namba

In his early 30s, he battled depression, and he fed his dark obsessions by losing himself in one extreme climb after another.

Now, the team of climbers joining Beck included John Krakauer, a Japanese climber, Yasuko Namba, guide Andy Harris, and six others.

They started their final summit bid in earnest on May 9th after negotiating the Kombu Icefall and the 4,000-foot Lhotse Face.

For the final two days, the climbers would use bottled oxygen full-time.

For any climber looking to conquer the highest peak in the world, the goal is to reach high camp with just enough energy to summit and still get back to camp, and he believed he had just enough left in the tank.

But he wasn't feeling as optimistic about two of his fellow group members, Doug Hansen and Yasuko Namba.

This was a redemption challenge for Doug, as he was turned back within a few hundred feet of the summit a year before.

But Doug wasn't in the best of health, and Beck was worried that despite the fact that he wasn't climbing well, Doug's determination to not get turned back a second time might drive him to do something he shouldn't.

Through a series of miracles and help from selfless companions, he had survived the deadliest storm on the highest mountain in the world.

But others weren't so fortunate.

In total, eight people died during that storm, including Yasuko Namba, whose body was found a year later in 1997 near where she had been left to die.

Later that year, a retrieval operation was funded by her husband to bring her body down the mountain.