There is one thing everyone agrees on. On 13 May 1999 Michael Matthews, recently turned 23, became the youngest Briton to climb Everest. Everyone also agrees that Matthews was a likeable and popular man, good-looking and enthusiastic. People came alive in his company.
The son of a self-made millionaire, who shared his father's ambitious drive, he was already a successful trader in the City of London. Standing with Mike Smith, the mountain guide who had shared his final climb to the summit, Matthews quite literally had the world at his feet.
It is what happened next, as the two men descended from the summit in the region above 8,000 metres called the 'death zone', that has caused a bitter row between the Matthews family, the guides that travelled with Michael on that fateful climb to the summit and the company that organised the expedition he joined.
Three hours after he reached the top of the world, Matthews disappeared while fighting his way down in the teeth of gales and blinding snow. He was the 162nd person to die on Everest.
The Matthews family are so convinced that their son was let down by his guides that they are bringing a legal action against them. But the guides have been cleared by the British Mountain Guides professional standards committee. They intend vigorously to defend the action, pointing out the dangers inherent in climbing the world's highest mountain. A Channel 4 documentary outlining these allegations is scheduled on Thursday. The guides are concerned that it could misrepresent what happened.
This is a story, played out in the mind-fogging confusion of extreme high altitude, of how Everest became a market place for adventure, in which millions of dollars are spent by comparatively inexperienced climbers for a chance to follow in the steps of men such as George Mallory and Sir Edmund Hillary.
'Some will suggest that we're wealthy people who want to make people suffer for the death of our son,' said David Matthews. 'But our boy died, we've looked into the reasons why, as most loving families would do, and we believe this is a shocking tale of deceit, desertion and a cover-up.'
The Matthews family are preparing their case against three guides, Nick Kekus, Martin Doyle and Mike Smith, who were on the mountain that day, and Jon Tinker, former co-director of OTT Expeditions, the company organising the expedition, which is now in administration. Kekus had taken over as leader of the climbing team after Tinker suffered a mild stroke camped at 8,000 metres on the South Col and returned home.
'Obviously, we have the deepest sympathy for the Matthews family,' said Tinker. 'But we reject the allegation that the expedition was badly organised. Climbing Everest is an extremely dangerous enterprise and we made that perfectly clear to the Matthews family before Michael joined the expedition. We will vigorously defend any action brought against us.'
The tragedy began with an article about climbing Everest in a men's lifestyle magazine that friend and co-worker Jamie Everett dropped on Michael Matthews's desk one day. He had done some climbing at Uppingham, his public school, and had spent his gap year driving the length of Africa. It was in his nature to accept challenges.
David Matthews, a motor-racing enthusiast, decided to join the two young men, and to make sure he and his son had the best support on Everest he could buy. OTT Expeditions, based in Sheffield, had successfully put 29 people on the summit over the course of three accident-free expeditions and was charging $40,000 for a place on its 1999 trip.
Matthews senior did not go to Everest. On a training climb up Aconcagua he discovered that surgery he had had on his carotid artery prevented him from climbing well at altitude. He was forced to drop out.But he met OTT's Everest guides to see for himself the men who would look after his son on the deadly slopes of the world's highest mountain.
'I felt they were fine,' he said. And when he took the call from Jon Tinker the morning after his son reached the summit to hear that Michael was missing, presumed dead, he accepted Tinker's assurance that everything had been done that could have been. 'If the lad had to go, then we wanted to feel he had gone surrounded by good people. I was trying to see the best in everybody.'
Then, two months after his son's death and more assurances from OTT, David Matthews got a call from John Crellin - another of OTT's clients who had been on the mountain when the 23-year-old disappeared. He claimed that oxygen sets used by the team were not up to the standards promised by OTT. 'It was our worst fear,' said Matthews. 'We started to look into it and discovered that every single client said one thing, and every single professional Western guide said exactly the opposite.'
Subsequently two Canadian clients, Dave Rodney and Dennis Brown, also alleged that oxygen sets were inadequate. They also claim that the organisation of the expedition by OTT fell apart on the day Michael Matthews reached the summit. Rodney said that Kekus attempted to strike him with an oxygen bottle at the South Col, an incident recreated for the cameras in the Channel 4 documentary. 'That's pure fabrication,' Kekus told The Observer.
Kekus is an experienced mountaineer, described by one colleague as the strongest high-altitude guide in Britain. Doyle is director of training at the National Mountain Centre at Plas y Brenin in Snowdonia. Both are qualified British Mountain Guides and so an investigation into their conduct by the BMG's professional standards committee was automatic. The committee ruled there was no case to answer.
'We understand they held an inquiry,' said Matthews. 'We weren't invited to attend and we've had nothing on paper from anybody. It was held in camera. It called no witnesses, none of the clients, it only dealt with the professionals. And the professionals closed ranks and refused to speak to us, or to our lawyers, or to the press, or to the television people.'
'We would be happy to investigate any allegations,' said Peter Cliff, president of the British Mountain Guides, 'although none have been made to us. But if our members are defamed, then we will take action.'
David Matthews's most sobering and controversial accusation is that Mike Smith, who had joined Michael on the Hillary Step, the last obstacle before the summit, abandoned his client as they struggled down the mountain in the storm that swept across the mountain that afternoon. 'My belief is that Mike Smith saw Michael was slow. He saw the storm coming in, experienced its increasing severity, and decided he couldn't get Michael down.'
Smith, a former territorial soldier in the Parachute Regiment, is said to have been devastated by the death of Michael Matthews and by the accusations, which he completely rejects. In a note made after returning to the summit, he recorded that he climbed down in front of Matthews to clear fixed ropes that were being buried by drifting snow and then lost sight of the younger man.
Deep new snow stopped him climbing back up, and he waited at a point on the summit slopes called the Balcony, at a height of 8,500 metres, for over an hour. 'I was getting plastered with snow and I tried to get back up the hill, but it wasn't feasible,' he said afterwards. 'I had to make a decision: do I stay there and wait ad infinitum and fall asleep and never wake up, or go down?'
Smith descended and later had a toe amputated after suffering from frostbite. All his colleagues believe that he could not have done more. On the way up, Matthews had been told by the expedition's lead Sherpa, Lhakpa Gelu, that he was moving too slowly up and should descend.
What of the malfunctioning oxygen sets? OTT admits that there were problems with a new system, but that only one client complained on summit day about faulty oxygen equipment. The oxygen was provided by Henry Todd, who told The Observer: 'My business is tested and proven. People who use my service take huge risks; I can't afford to let them down.' Todd said that although there was a problem with the new system, which linked a Russian demand valve with British tanks, he adapted the sets satisfactorily.
'Plenty of clients reached the summit with this system,' he said. 'John Crellin's problem was caused by damage to an oxygen line, not by a faulty regulator. None of the systems used by climbers are specifically designed for high-altitude use. Things can go wrong with them. But more than 50 climbers used the oxygen I provided to reach the summit last year.'
There is nothing to indicate anything was wrong with Matthews's equipment. Smith said he checked Matthews's oxygen set at the summit, and it still held six hours of gas. A climber who reached the summit days after Matthews reported seeing an ice axe some distance from the correct route, close to the edge of a steep drop. Other Everest guides believe that Matthews, already exhausted, probably became disoriented and stepped through a cornice or was blown from the ridge.