Word: peak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...when Hall spoke his last, and he was not the only one the mountain claimed that day. Just 36 hours earlier, 33 people had set out for Everest's peak. When the storm at last subsided, eight had perished. The story of that disaster, one of the worst in climbing history, became the subject of magazine articles, television specials and a growing collection of books, notably the best seller Into Thin Air, by journalist Jon Krakauer, who was a survivor of the murderous climb...
Even under the best of conditions, scaling a mountain like Everest is an act of near madness. Standing on top of the peak is roughly equivalent to stopping a passenger jet in mid-flight and climbing out onto the wing. The altitude is the same, the 40[degrees]F- below-zero temperature is the same, and, most disturbingly, the lung-shredding, brain-addling atmosphere--barely one-third the pressure of sea-level air--is the same. In the 44 years since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa climber, Tenzing Norgay, first scaled the peak, more than 700 people have...
Despite this fearsome history, Everest is big business these days. Tibet and China, recognizing a moneymaking natural resource when they see one, have thrown the peak open to tourism. Expeditions charge climbers, often unskilled, up to $65,000 to be walked to the top. In the spring of 1996, 14 groups from 11 countries swarmed Everest's lower campsite, digging in 17,600 ft. above sea level in preparation for an attempt on the summit. Among the expeditions was a 26-member New Zealand team, headed by Hall, that included Krakauer, Dallas pathologist Beck Weathers and Doug Hansen...
When the sun rose the next day, word came down that the climbers had made surprisingly good progress during the night. While some had turned back early, at least 20 were pressing on toward the summit. Breashears grabbed a telescope from his equipment tent, trained it on the peak and saw that the report was true. In his eyepiece was a flyspeck line of climbers inching up the last 1,000 ft. of Everest's five-mile rock pile...
Turning from the telescope, Breashears flashed a smile to Viesturs. But his relief was short-lived. At noon, he checked the peak once more, and was stunned to see that the group hadn't moved. He checked again at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Each time the climbers looked stuck. "This was way too late to be up that high," Breashears says. "They'd be fatigued, out of oxygen and descending in the dark. Things did not look good...