Word: everest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...greatest American mountaineer in recent years; in a massive avalanche on Tibet's Shisha Pangma, the world's 14th highest peak. Lowe climbed the nose of El Capitan in 10 hrs. and made the first solo ascent of the north face of Wyoming's Grand Teton. He conquered Everest twice. Despite the superlatives regularly heaped on him by colleagues, he said, "I'm just the world's most dogmatic climber...
...Gongga Shan in China in 1980. He and three companions rode the avalanche down 1,500 ft.; one of the others broke his neck and died. "Nowadays, people are interested only in reaching the top so they can tell others they did it," says Chouinard. "So they climb Everest with a Sherpa tied to them by a 3-ft. rope, one behind and one in front. Their beds are made when they reach camp. Someone has put a chocolate mint on the sheets. They don't tough out their problems, and they say they climbed Everest. They start out assholes...
President Clinton, it seems, will go to almost any length to keep Hillary's name in the public eye--even halfway around the world to New Zealand to meet with SIR EDMUND HILLARY. The White House has penciled in a meeting with the Mount Everest conqueror, 80, a living legend in his homeland and probably the most famous New Zealander ever (his face even graces the local $5 bill), during Clinton's state visit next week following the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Auckland. Sir Edmund won't, however, meet the Rodham Clinton Hillary, who is staying home...
...sure they felt no Zeitgeist in them when they labored up the last snow slope to the summit. They were both very straightforward men. Tenzing was a professional mountaineer from the Sherpa community of the Everest foothills. After several expeditions to the mountain, he certainly wanted to get to the top for vocational reasons, but he also planned to deposit in the highest of all snows some offerings to the divinities that had long made Chomolungma sacred to his people. Hillary was by profession a beekeeper, and he would have been less than human if he had not occasionally thought...
They were not, though, heroes of the old epic kind, dedicated to colossal purposes, tight of jaw and stiff of upper lip. That was George Mallory, who said most famously in 1924 that he was climbing Mount Everest "because it is there." But if he ever reached the summit, he never lived to tell the tale. Hillary and Tenzing were two cheerful and courageous fellows doing what they liked doing, and did, best, and they made an oddly assorted pair. Hillary was tall, lanky, big-boned and long-faced, and he moved with an incongruous grace, rather like a giraffe...