Personal information | |
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Nationality | American |
Born | 16 June 1974 |
Website | briandickinson.net |
Brian Dickinson (born June 16, 1974) is a climber who soloed the summit of Mount Everest on May 15, 2011, [1] after his Sherpa mountain guide became ill and went back down to high camp (South Col, 26,000'). After taking some pictures and making a radio call, Brian began his descent, but within a few feet, he became snow blind. His vision did not fully return for over a month. His descent to high camp from the summit took over seven hours instead of the expected two to three hours. Brian ran out of oxygen on his descent but made it down to the South Col, where his guide met him to help him back to his tent. Brian holds the record for the highest solo blind descent. [2] [3]
He has climbed the Seven Summits by climbing the highest peaks of all seven continents.
Dickinson spent six years in the United States Navy as a Special Operations Aviation Rescue Swimmer (AIRR). Navy AIRRs are members of the Naval Special Operations (NSO) community, consisting of personnel who take on the most impossible missions and the most elusive objectives, dedicated to being the top emergency response unit in the world. He did two tours in the Persian Gulf as a part of Operation Southern Watch with HS-2 on the USS Constellation (CV-64). His military duties were Combat Search and Rescue, Anti-Submarine Warfare Operator, Crew Chief, Aerial Gunner, Search and Surveillance, Vertical Replenishment and Special Warfare support. [4]
Brian's Blind Descent experience has been reenacted in television segments including the Christian Broadcast Network's 700 Club, the Weather Channel's Freaks of Nature, KING-TV [5] and Brian was featured on CNN's Anderson Cooper, [6] ABC's Good Morning America, [7] CNN's New Day with Chris Cuomo, [8] Huffington Post, [9] Fox Business Varney & Co., [10] Success Magazine, [11] Redemption Movie Series, Weather Channel, [12] American Survival Guide Magazine, Simple Grace Magazine, Charisma Magazine, Guideposts [13] and more. Brian's Mount Everest experience also landed him as the top trending moment on Twitter and he is a sought-after guest for top podcasts and a motivational speaker for businesses.
Dickinson, Brian, Blind Descent, Tyndale House Publisher, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4143-9170-0 [14]
Dickinson, Brian, Calm in the Chaos, Lyons Press, 2024, ISBN 978-1493078530
Mount Everest, known locally as Sagarmatha or Qomolangma, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a storm. Krakauer's expedition was led by guide Rob Hall. Other groups were trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants.
Erik Weihenmayer is an American athlete, adventurer, author, activist and motivational speaker. He was the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on May 25, 2001. Due to this accomplishment he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. He completed the Seven Summits in September 2002, one of only 150 mountaineers at the time to do so, but the only climber to achieve this while blind. In 2008, he also added the Carstensz Pyramid thus completing the Eight Summits. Weihenmayer has also made noteworthy climbs up the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite in 1996, and ascended Losar, a 2,700-foot (820 m) vertical ice face in the Himalayas in 2008.
Robert Edwin Hall was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air and the expedition was dramatised in the 2015 film Everest. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth ascent to the summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer.
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at 8,849 metres (29,031.7 ft) above sea level. It is situated in the Himalayan range of Solukhumbu district, Nepal.
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Francys Arsentiev became the first woman from the United States to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen, on May 22, 1998. She then died during the descent.
Jimmy Chin is an American professional mountain athlete, photographer, skier, film director, and author.
Green Boots is the body of an unidentified climber that became a landmark on the main Northeast ridge route of Mount Everest. There exist several theories regarding the body's identity; the most popular one claims the body belongs to Tsewang Paljor, an Indian member of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition (ITBP) who died as part of the 1996 climbing disaster on the mountain wearing green Koflach mountaineering boots. All expeditions from the north side encountered the body curled in the limestone alcove cave at 8,500 m (27,900 ft) until it was moved in 2014—likely by the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which manages the north side of Everest.
The 1996 Mount Everest disaster occurred on 10–11 May 1996 when eight climbers caught in a blizzard died on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit. Over the entire season, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest season on Mount Everest at the time and the third deadliest after the 23 fatalities resulting from avalanches caused by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 16 fatalities of the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The 1996 disaster received widespread publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Matt Moniz is an American mountaineer and speaker noted for his ascents of 8,000 meter peaks and several of the Seven Summits.
In the afternoon of 25 April 2015, a MW 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal and surrounding countries. Tremors from the quake triggered an avalanche from Pumori into Base Camp on Mount Everest. At least twenty-two people were killed, surpassing the toll of an avalanche that occurred in 2014 as the deadliest disaster on the mountain.
The Mount Everest climbing season of 2017 began in spring with the first climbers reaching the top on May 11, from the north side. The first team on the south side reached the top on May 15. By early June, reports from Nepal indicated that 445 people had made it to the summit from the Nepali side. Reports indicate 160–200 summits on the north side, with 600–660 summiters overall for early 2017. This year had a roughly 50% success rate on that side for visiting climbers, which was down from other years. By 2018, the figure for the number of summiters of Everest was refined to 648. This includes 449 which summited via Nepal and 120 from Chinese Tibet.
The Mount Everest climbing season of 2013 included 658 summits and 8 deaths. Due to avalanches in 2014 and 2015, this was the last big summiting year until 2016.
Mount Everest in 2016 covers events about Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth located in Nepal and Chinese Tibet in Asia. It is a popular climbing destination for extreme high altitude climbers, with several hundred climbing each year despite various dangers.
Mount Everest in 2018 is about events in the year about the highest Earth mountain, Mount Everest, a popular mountaineering tourism and science destination in the 2010s. In 2018, 807 climbers summited Mount Everest, which is a popular mountaineering goal. This year is noted for an especially long weather window of 11 days straight of calm, which reduced crowding at the high base camps. With over 800 reaching the top, it was the highest amount ever to reach the top in recorded history, besting the previous year by over 150 summitings.
Élisabeth Revol is a French mountaineer. In January 2018, Revol became the first woman to climb Nanga Parbat in winter; on the descent, she was rescued, while her teammate Tomasz Mackiewicz died, an event which was widely covered by the mainstream press. Having narrowly avoided amputation of her left foot, she traversed Mount Everest and Lhotse consecutively in May 2019.