Rob Hall

Who was Rob Hall?

Robert Edwin Hall, MBE, was a New Zealand mountaineer best known for being head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition in which he, a fellow guide, and two clients perished. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer.

Hall met his future wife, New Zealand medical doctor Jan Arnold, during his Everest summit attempt in 1990. Hall asked Arnold for a date on a climb to Mt. McKinley and later, the two married. In 1993, Rob Hall summited Everest along with Arnold. In the catastrophic 1996 season, Arnold would have accompanied Hall on his Everest expedition, but she was pregnant. Two months after Hall died on the descent from Everest she gave birth to Sarah, their daughter.