Everest: first ascent of the West Ridge

On this day in history, 50 years ago, 22 May 1963;! Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein climbed the difficult Ridge route up West Everest on a National Geographic Society-sponsored expedition, whilst Barry Bishop and Liuto Jerstad followed the South Col route established by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay during their 1953 ascent. It was the first simultaneous attempt from two directions. At 06:50 they left their final camp and began the ascent, and although progress was very slow, they reached the summit at 6.15 that night. They found themselves several hours behind the generally accepted schedule and, after spending 20 minutes at the summit, began their descent. Shortly afterwards, Unsoeld began to run out of oxygen. At 09:30, they came across two other Americans from the same expedition, Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad. They had reached the summit earlier that day via the South Col route and by this point were exhausted and almost out of oxygen. The four climbers joined forces on the descent and continued to make very slow progress until they felt it was too dangerous and stopped shortly after midnight. They huddled together until 4.00 am and set off again, encountering members of the expedition carrying extra oxygen cylinders. They made it back to camp to find Unsoeld’s feet hard and frozen. Barry Bishop and Liuto Jerstad also suffered from frostbite, and both Bishop and Unsoeld subsequently lost their toes. Hornbein wrote about this night-time event in his book *Everest: The West Ridge*: “The night was overwhelmingly empty. The black silhouette of Mount Lhotse loomed there, half seen, half imagined, and below us, in general… There was nothing – simply nothing. We hung in a timeless void, pierced by an intensely cold air – and felt we could do nothing but shiver and wait for the sun to rise.” [info; www.8000ers.com, Qwrk, and some help from Wikipedia / image; adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com]