Word: siegert
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When Germany's Peter Siegert, 26, boldly announced that he would lead a party up the "elevator route," the Italian Scoiattoli (literally, "squirrels") predicted that they would "scrape his remnants off the wall with a spoon." Not if Siegert could help it. For his team, he recruited two Munich friends with whom he had escaped from East Germany seven years ago: a lightning-rod fitter named Rainer Kauschke, 24, and a tough, muscular carpenter named Gerd Uner, 22. Taking unpaid leaves from their jobs, the three each chipped in $1,000 for food and medical supplies, down-lined clothes...
...Quiet, Icy Death." The temperature at the base of the peak was 5°F. as the climbers began their ascent. Siegert and his companions hammered in a piton every 3 ft., averaged only 100 ft. a day. Fearful of the "quiet, icy death that sneaks up on you when you sleep at 20° below," Siegert allowed his men to sleep only in the late afternoons, and only in turns; at night, the Germans anchored their sleeping bags to the wall at 30-ft. intervals, shouted and sang to keep awake...
...first five days, the weather held. "We are fine," Siegert scribbled on a piece of paper and lowered it to helpers waiting 600 ft. below. "What's lacking is champagne. We're thirsty." On the sixth day, a howling blizzard raked the north wall. The temperature plunged to 40° below. In the base camp, thermos jugs were hastily filled with hot soup and coffee. The climbers hauled them up, reported that the soup and coffee were "solidly frozen in the thermos" by the time they arrived. The blizzard lasted for 40 hours. When the skies finally cleared...
...slate almost impervious to drills and pitons. "They look like ants crawling up a building," reported one pilot. "But they wave and seem all right." Cautiously, the climbers eased their way through the "great cathedral"-a double-faced outcropping of rock. At last, after 16 days of suspended existence, Siegert reported: "We feel solid ground beneath our soles." He was on a ledge, 300 ft. below the summit, that measured just 1 ft. wide...
Jayvee: C. A. Shaw, stroke; G. S. Might, 7; H. N. Steuart, 6; T. R. Morse, Jr., 5; R. J. Maier, 4; L. H. Clark, 3; H. C. Siegert, 2; C. R. Polhemus, bow; D. R. Foster...