In addition to her espresso maker, Pittman brought along some $50,000 worth of high-techery courtesy of NBC. Pittman was on her stomach, and Fox had just given her a shot of dexamethasone, unzipping a back corner of Pittmans suit and jabbing the needle into her buttocks right through her other clothes. She believes the motion got the attention of brave Russian guide Anatoli Boukreev, who managed to drag Hill and two other climbers back to their camp at 28,000 feet. Some of Fischers friends were sickened to see his team referred to as the NBC Everest Assault expedition. She remarried and divorced again, and eventually moved to Venice, Calif., in 2009, where she now lives with a bird and two dogs in a villa filled with art and light on the canal. Beidleman rounded up the group and got them to huddle together, backs to the wind. The luxuries came to symbolize Hills privileged position, having paid, like the rest of the team led by Scott Fischer, around $65,000 for her place in the group. (Other folks at base camp had to make do with Starbucks.) Years earlier, bored with life as the socialite wife of MTV creator Bob Pittman (estimated worth, more than $40 million), she had transformed a girlhood enthusiasm for mountaineering and adventuring into a high-profile outlet for her energy and ambition. At the ceremony, the Sherpas chanted a Buddhist prayer, and Fischers closest friends recalled his love of the mountains. May 13, 1996: Beck Weathers, who staggered back to Camp IV after regaining consciousness, is airlifted off the mountain at 19,000 feet while Hill and fellow survivors trek back to base camp. WebSandy Hill net worth is $13 Million Sandy Hill Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family Sandy Hill was born in 1946 in Centralia, Washington, USA. Three Indian climbers on the north side of the mountain had also perished. The phone was carried as high on the mountain as Camp IV, but it didn't work there. Sandy and I thought this was the end and just curled up in a ball and waited to die, says Fox. Forensically examining Instagram accounts, interviews, and police reports, author Kathleen Hale reconstructs their relationship, and ultimately Petitos murder. Scott had a big, winning personality, and was the type of person that movie stars want to portray.. We made summit!" Instead, the focus is Rob Hall, then 35, one of the lead climbers, whose dying words to his expectant wife in New Zealand were spoken over his radio. He walked with her as far as the South Summit, where he stopped to check on the others. Sobered, maybe. For his part, the tireless Russian Anatoli Boukreev has remained almost silent about the woman whose life he saved. Sandy Hill, 51 Journalist Jon Krakauer, who was part of the New Zealand team and the second to summit that day, filed a raw, emotional account of the tragedy on Outside magazines Internet publication. The only partner NBC had was Pittman. On Monday, May 20, Fischers team gathered in the Yak and Yeti garden for a group picture. Sandy Pittman is a retired American soccer player and current coach. He was born in 1968, making him 45 years old. His net worth is estimated to be $20 million dollars. Sandy Pittman arrived with Todd Harris, a senior producer at NBCs on-line interactive service who designed Pittmans Everest Web site. Shane Connell, 54 - Far Hills | Free Public Reputation Profile Sandy is unfortunately totally self-absorbed, explains an old friend who forgives her for it. The Years Juiciest Blizzard Books Tags: Personally, I would trade Everest and every other summit for Scotts life, says Neal Beidleman, his voice catching. In between, there was Sandy Hill Pittman. Quickly, he gave Pittman oxygen, left Madsen with her, and took Fox to camp, covering the quarter-mile in 40 minutes. When he started down 20 minutes later, he saw Fox standing over her friend waving a hypodermic needle. I felt close to dying, but then hypoxia [oxygen deprivation] took over my brain and I started hallucinating I was in a tea house with a warm fire in it, so I stopped being afraid. Everyone was well aware that David Breashearswho was also on the mountainwas a friend of Pittmans. One fellow climber suggests that, even at the time of her departure, Pittman was still reeling from the shock, that she had been truly humbled by the ferocity of the mountain. Sandy is an amateur who has been able to manipulate the press and promote herself because most of the people she was talking to didnt know much about climbing., Some people climb for the publicity, not the experience, says David Swanson, a past Explorers Club president and former publisher of Summit magazine. After, the trip, Pittman appeared in a commercial for Vaseline that billed her as a world-class climber, an outrageous boast that has been the subject of endless jokes. It had been the start of the hell. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Sandy had used her full physical and mental resources to attain the summit.. We were fixing all the ropes, and she was following after us, he concedes, but she contributed as much as anyone to the trip in terms of fund-raising, dealing with the sponsors and media issues., There is a long history of wealthy amateurs who are passionate about climbing, including Texas financier and oilman Dick Bass and the late Disney president Frank Wells, who co-authored Seven Summits (with Rick Ridgeway). But I had no doubt that if we got in trouble Sandy could have carried me right off that mountain.". Hill, ex-wife of the media czar Bob Pittman, and Dittmer met 10 years ago. They fell into a huge dog pile, sitting or lying in one anothers laps, beating their friends and acquaintances, yelling profanitiesanything to stay awake. Hill struggled to keep her sanity during the ordeal in 88-mile-per-hour winds and temperatures of 30 degrees below zero. SANDY FACING MARITAL MISERY | Page Six It Beidleman asked teammate Lene Gammelgaard to trade oxygen tanks with Hill, as Gammelgaard's tank had more oxygen left and unlike Hill, she was able to walk on her own. When I inquired how she was, she answered with an impatient How do I sound? Then, more calmly, she said she was fine, adding that her injuries had been greatly exaggerated. Neal Beidleman, an elite climber from Aspen, helped Pittman down the Hillary Step, a 40-foot crack in the ice named for Sir Edmund Hillary, whowith his Sherpabecame the first person to reach the top of Everest, in 1953. It was 1:30 A.M. Beidleman told Anatoli Boukreev, a burly Russian guide, that the others were in grave danger. Back in those days you could get away with destroying someones life and flogging them with innuendo, adds Hill. There was no way to tell which direction led back up or down. "The embarrassment is just going to keep growing over this," Laura Harth, the campaign director at Safeguard Defenders, told Newsweek. Pittmans reputation from her previous two Everest attempts was already well established. Hill had been short-roped up the mountain by Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa for five to six hours at the outset of the ascent. Yeah, that guy struck me as pretty weird. The other climbers, most of them casually dressed, appeared taken aback. "Media Circus". His marriage to magazine editor Sandy Hill produced one son and lasted from 1979 until 1997. Jon Krakauer responds Who can pitch in and talk to her about climbing K2 at a dinner party? She can back squat an astonishing 206 pounds compared to 75 pounds when in her 30s and is keen to inspire other older women on her blog,sandy-hill.com. She has a lot of courage, and a lot of guts, and no one in New York society has faced the kind of physical challenge she has, says her friend Jurate Kazickas, a writer who has been to Everest, and who is married to investment banker Roger Altman. Boukreev was given an award for heroism by the Alpine Club, and he recounted his story in the book, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest (1997), which was at least partly a response to Krakauer's account, in which Krakauer had laid some of the blame for the disaster on Boukreev, Hill, and a few others. But "out of respect for Scott and the deepest grief and sorrow I've ever felt in my life," she put an end to her chatty postings to NBC Interactive. All were overwrought and extremely lethargic from the high altitude. The Real Story of Sandy Hill Pittman, Everests Socialite We've received your submission. "[18] Highly visible in the media before the climb, she believed she was "pigeonholed as a rich New Yorker", which "painted such an easy picture of a villain right there. Digital camera, laptops, satellite phone -- the works. Hot-air balloonists took people for rides over the fields. Krakauer, author of the best-selling Into the Wild, has no doubt that Scott Fischer died because he was exhausted from guiding amateur climbers. She is Sandy Hill Pittman, a 41-year-old New Yorker whose mountain-climbing career Conant sums up as follows: "Years earlier, bored with life as the socialite wife of Neither ever presented himself as anything but a beginner, and each gave full credit to his guides. Most of Fischers team, as well as the Sherpas, came to pay tribute to their fallen leader. "We behaved like a team at all times," she told NEWSWEEK. Those who stay up too high, too long, will eventually be overcome by the altitude. Into Thin Air "Quotes To this day, the corpses are lying on the route. Shes too much of a good thingshes good-looking, climbs mountains, drives motorcycles, and pilots her own helicopter. For several months, Pittman agonized over her marriage and whether to leave her 12-year-old son, Bo, for the two-and-a-half-month Everest trip in the midst of a divorce. When she planted the garden with flowers, she won blue ribbons at the local fair. Hoge, however, came back singing Pittmans praises, telling spine-tingling tales about her friends prowess and brush with death. But Pittman, 41, was climbing back when Wells and Bass were still working on their first millions. There were photographers everywhere. But the storm had picked up again. Sporting La Perla lingerie under her Gore-Tex, she had, in her own words, traded the escalator at Bergdorfs for more exotic terrain. But no matter how controversial she is, she stood on the top of that mountain, and no one can ever take that away from her..