Edmund Hillary, on first climbing Mount
Everest
Perhaps the bravest thing to be said
in reference to Everest:
"Pissing through 6 inches of
clothes with a 3 inch penis",
Anonymous Everest summiteer when asked what was the hardest thing about
climbing Mt Everest
Everest topography l to r West ridge, Summit, Hillary step, summit
ridge, south summit, southeast ridge, south col, Lhotse ridge.
Cassi Creek: 60 years
ago today, 29 May 1953, two men first reached the summit of Mt. Everest. They used the routes pioneered by previous
assaults upon the mountain then forced the final part of the route beyond the
South Summit, up the Hillary Step, to the actual summit, They spent about 15 minutes at the summit and
descended safely. The news of the summit
being reached by a British expedition was relayed from the mountain by runner
to a more modern communication network in time to be announced before the
Coronation of Elizabeth II.
Since then,
hundreds of people have officially reached the summit of Everest by various
routes, by means of fixed ropes, by being essentially dragged up the mountain,
and without supplemental oxygen. Ca. 500
or so people are reportedly dead on the mountain.
Everest does
not care who climbs it or by what route and manner. However, altitude, local, and regional
weather, cold, wind, snow, and hypoxia have a lot to say about who climbs and
who fails on the mountain. Professional
guiding companies will take payment to push and drag someone up the
mountain. They cannot guarantee that
their clients will make it to the summit or descend alive. Even successful summiteers may suffer severe frostbite,
loss of body parts, pulmonary edema, HACE (high altitude cerebral edema) with
subsequent brain damage and other consequences.
I first read
of the early British expeditions and the Hillary-Norgay success about the age
of 10. Since then mountaineering and
climbing have fascinated me. There was a
large period of my life when I would have chucked everything for the chance to climb
with the likes of Hillary, Whittaker, and Haston, to at least reach the Western
Cwm through the Khumbu Icefall. I never
became nearly good enough a mountaineer to be considered for inclusion in a
Himalayan expedition. I’d like to tell
myself that I could have made the climb.
Truthfully, I’d probably have committed some grievous technical error
and bought myself a glacial farm, assuming that I even made it into the icefall.
The men
mentioned above lived to climb and found ways to finance their habits so that
they could essentially turn from one expedition to another. Not a bad way to live. Hillary built many schools and clinics in
Nepal. Whittaker wound up in the JFK/RFK
outer circles and worked for REI. Haston
became director of the International School of Mountaineering at Leysin in Switzerland, a position he maintained until his death in
1977, in an avalanche.
Some of the quotes found by following the 1st
link below are worth reading. The 2nd
link leads to a very exacting timeline of Everest expeditions and other
climbs. Interesting if you are a
mountaineering junkie.
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