Word: everest
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Last fall the mountain known in Tibet as Chomolungma, or Goddess Mother of the World, and in the West as Everest permitted itself to be climbed by 33 people, withheld permission (in the form of benign weather) from a much larger number and killed nine climbers. Are those good odds or bad? A flatlander's question, an observer decides, after asking it of Stacy Allison and Peggy Luce; to mountaineers, the answer is a shrug. The odds are the odds. Allison, a contractor and house framer from Portland, Ore., and Luce, a bicycle messenger from Seattle, members...
...drive to put a U.S. woman on Everest had been something between grail and financing gimmick for at least a decade. Everything -- gender, nationalism, internationalism, ever more dangerous routes, climbing solo and without oxygen, and climbing quickly with little equipment, "Alpine style" -- is a gimmick to Himalayan climbers, whose hobby is absurdly expensive. The most strenuous effort is not on the wind-racked ridges above Camp 4; it is in corporate conference rooms, where idlers with powerful legs try to persuade achievers in powerful suits to pay for their vacations...
...rate, Allison, who was weathered out on Everest in 1987 after reaching 26,000 ft., then retreating and spending five days in a snow cave, was by several days the first of three climbers from her expedition to reach the top last fall. (A male climber, Geoff Tabin, made it to the top just ahead of Luce.) Thus she settled what she somewhat dismissively refers to as "the American-woman-on-Eve rest thing." (Tired of hype and of fund raising, she had put $9,000 of her own money into the expedition pot.) No doubt she also quelled some...
...happened, had never seen Letterman's show, but friends had explained its tribal rituals. No 19th century explorer snacking on pickled sheep's eyes could have honored bizarre local customs more graciously. She took a rock out of her pocket, explained that it came from the top of Everest, and asked politely whether she could heave it through the studio window. "Of course," said Letterman. She chucked it with a good sidearm motion, and there was the familiar sound effect of breaking glass that Letterman fans have grown to love. Fade to commercial...
...Luce is a big, powerful, easygoing soul who for several years ran her own restaurant in Seattle. When the restaurant began to consume her life, she quit cold and took a job as a bicycle messenger. With nothing much in the way of climbing credentials, she volunteered for the Everest trip. "I've always wanted to do adventures," she says with a big grin...