Word: bourdillon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Died. Thomas D. Bourdillon, 31, British physicist and rocket expert who in 1953, with Dr. Charles Evans, climbed to within 300 feet of Mt. Everest's peak before being turned back by bad weather and lack of oxygen, three days before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norkey made it to the top; in a fall while climbing Ausserberg in southern Switzerland...
...breakthrough-two tiny figures bobbing far above through the ice glare, like spots before the eyes-to the summit ridge. The excitement rises; the onlooker, tensed like the climbers for so long against so many obstacles, pushes forward out of his seat to be with the first assault team, Bourdillon and Evans, as they slog out for the south summit at least, and, God willing, the peak...
...Western Cwm. Here the South Col rose 3,000 ft. sheer. Ice boots were changed for high-altitude footwear soled with microcellular rubber (to keep out - 50° cold). Goggles protected the men from snow blindness; padded smocks enclosed their bodies. One by one, Hunt and Hillary, Bourdillon and Evans, Noyce, Wilson and Tenzing, put on their oxygen masks and learned to sleep in them...
...Bourdillon, a nuclear physicist, and Charles Evans, a Liverpool physician, went up from Camp VIII toward the halfway mark-a rounded shoulder of rock known as the south summit. Stumbling and panting, they made it and vanished in the cloud beyond. No man had been higher and lived, but the pair lacked strength to go on. Back they came...