Word: unsoeld
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...more big expeditions in mind, says William Unsoeld, 36, a Peace Corps official and one of the five U.S. climbers who scaled Mount Everest last month. Unsoeld and National Geo graphic Photographer Barry Bishop, 30, had to be carried pickaback from a base camp to Namche Bazar, where a helicopter hustled them to the United Mission Hospital at Katmandu. Now recovered from respiratory infections, both men are still under treatment for severe cases of frostbite-with doctors hoping that only the tips of their toes may have to be amputated. And was their victory Pyrrhic? "An experience like Everest," says...
...base camp. Expedition Leader Norman Dyhrenfurth waited for a walkie-talkie message from the climbers. Just below 28,000 ft., the West Ridge team faced its toughest obstacle: the "Yellow Band"-a 100-ft.-high cliff that resembles a shingled roof. Only pitons and rappel ropes kept Hornbein and Unsoeld inching upward. At last they radioed back that they had crossed the Yellow Band safely. But now they were past the "point of no return." Their supply of pitons was gone. They had to reach the summit and head down the easier South...
What of Bishop and Jerstad? Where were they? Nobody knew. Jerstad's walkie-talkie battery had run out of juice. At 6:33 the base camp got another message -a whoop of triumph. The West Ridge team had done it! Hornbein and Unsoeld were on the summit and starting down...
...Shelter. Then fate played a capricious hand. The South Col team had also reached the summit-at 3:30 p.m.-looked around for the West Ridgers, given up, and headed back to wait at the South Summit, 328 ft. below. Unaware of all this, Hornbein and Unsoeld wasted valuable time at the summit searching for Bishop and Jerstad. Not until 9 p.m. did the rendezvous take place. By now it was so dark that the four climbers could not find Camp 6 on the South Col route. Huddled against each other they spent the night at 28,000 ft.-without...
...open, but under their own power, and with an unprecedented record of mountaineering firsts. Dyhrenfurth & Co. had achieved every goal. All told, five Americans had reached Mount Everest's lofty summit. For the first time, Everest's "impassable" West Ridge had been conquered. When Hornbein and Unsoeld finished their return trip down the South Col, they completed the first transverse crossing in the history of Himalayan climbing. Only Sally Dyhrenfurth took it all calmly. "What," she asked her husband, "are you going to do for an encore...