Ian
priscilla 1Mount Everest
January 28th 2008 06:43
The photos in today's post are of some of the earliest mountaineering expeditions up Mount Everest.
In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt, returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair (Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans) came within 300 feet of the summit on 26 May, but turned back after becoming exhausted. Two days later, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair. The summit was eventually reached at 11:30 a.m. local time on May 29, 1953 by the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal climbing the South Col Route. At the time, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first. They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried a few sweets and a small cross in the snow before descending.
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, both of the United Kingdom, made an attempt on the summit via the north col/north ridge route from which they never returned.
In 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body in the predicted search area near the old Chinese camp. Controversy has raged in the mountaineering community as to whether the duo may have summited 29 years before the confirmed ascent (and of course, safe descent) of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The general consensus among climbers has been that they did not.
*These images used with permission from Damn Funny Pictures.
**This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Mount Everest.
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