Annapurna is a mountain situated in the Annapurna mountain range of Gandaki Province, north-central Nepal. It is the 10th highest mountain in the world at 8,091 metres (26,545 ft) above sea level and is well known for the difficulty and danger involved in its ascent.
Peter Boardman was an English mountaineer and author. He is best known for a series of bold and lightweight expeditions to the Himalayas, often in partnership with Joe Tasker, and for his contribution to mountain literature. Boardman and Tasker died on the North East Ridge of Mount Everest in 1982. The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established in their memory.
Duncan "Dougal" Curdy MacSporran Haston was a Scottish mountaineer noted for his exploits in the British Isles, Alps, and the Himalayas. From 1967 he was the director of the International School of Mountaineering at Leysin, Switzerland, a role he held until his death in an avalanche while skiing above Leysin.
Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, which he did on 30 May 2005.
Douglas Keith Scott was an English mountaineer and climbing author, noted for being on the team that made the first ascent of the south-west face of Mount Everest on 24 September 1975. In receiving one of mountaineering's highest honours, the Piolet d'Or Lifetime Achievement Award, his personal style and his climbs were described as "visionary".
Ian Clough (1937–1970) was a British mountaineer who was killed on the 1970 British Annapurna expedition led by Sir Chris Bonington to climb the south face of the Himalayan massif. He was later described by Bonington as "the most modest man I ever had the good luck to climb with" and "the kindest and most selfless partner I ever had."
Donald Desbrow Whillans was an English rock climber and mountaineer. He climbed with Joe Brown and Chris Bonington on many new routes, and was considered the technical equal of both.
Hamish MacInnes was a Scottish mountaineer, explorer, mountain search and rescuer, and author. He has been described as the "father of modern mountain rescue in Scotland". He is credited with inventing the first all-metal ice-axe and an eponymous lightweight foldable alloy stretcher called MacInnes stretcher, widely used in mountain and helicopter rescue. He was a mountain safety advisor to a number of major films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail,The Eiger Sanction and The Mission. His 1972 International Mountain Rescue Handbook is considered a manual in the mountain search and rescue discipline.
Kelvin Kent is a British adventurer, hiker, mountaineer, businessman and lecturer. He served in the British army for many years, seeing combat in Borneo and working with the Gurkhas of Nepal, before moving to the United States in 1976. Previously he had been a member of two mountaineering expeditions organized by Chris Bonington, to the south face of Annapurna in 1970 and the south-west face of Mount Everest in 1972. The Annapurna expedition, on which Kent served as base camp commander, successfully put Dougal Haston and Don Whillans on the summit, but Kent's friend Ian Clough was killed by a falling ice-pillar on the descent. In 1999 Kent established a commemorative plaque in Clough's memory at the site.
John Elvis Harlin II was an American alpinist and US Air Force pilot who was killed while making an ascent of the north face of the Eiger at age 30.
Stephen Venables is a British mountaineer and writer, and is a past president of the South Georgia Association and of the Alpine Club. He is the first Briton to ascend the summit of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen.
Zygmunt Andrzej Heinrich was a Polish mountaineer who made several ascents of eight-thousanders. He died in an avalanche on the northwest slopes of Mount Everest in 1989.
Expedition climbing, is a type of mountaineering that uses a series of well-stocked camps on the mountain leading to the summit, that are supplied by teams of mountain porters. In addition, expedition climbing can also employ multiple 'climbing teams' to work on the climbing route—not all of whom are expected to make the summit—and allows the use of supports such as fixed ropes, aluminum ladders, supplementary oxygen, and sherpa climbers. By its nature, expedition climbing often requires weeks to complete a given climbing route, and months of pre-planning given the greater scale of people and equipment that need to be coordinated for the climb.
Michael "Mick" Burke was an English mountaineer and climbing cameraman.
Pertemba, also known as Pertemba Sherpa, is a professional Nepalese mountaineer, trek leader and businessman. He reached the summit of Mount Everest by the Southwest Face during the first successful expedition on that route in 1975.
The 1975 British Mount Everest Southwest Face expedition was the first to successfully climb Mount Everest by ascending one of its faces. In the post-monsoon season Chris Bonington led the expedition that used rock climbing techniques to put fixed ropes up the face from the Western Cwm to just below the South Summit. A key aspect of the success of the climb was the scaling of the cliffs of the Rock Band at about 8,200 metres (27,000 ft) by Nick Estcourt and Tut Braithwaite.
Paul ("Tut") Braithwaite is a British rock climber, mountaineer, and company director. With Nick Estcourt he climbed Mount Everest's almost vertical Rock Band, a key to the success of the 1975 British Mount Everest Southwest Face expedition. He was president of the Alpine Club from 2007 to 2010.
The 1970 British Annapurna South Face expedition was a Himalayan climb that was the first to take a deliberately difficult route up the face of an 8,000-metre mountain. At the time that the expedition set out, in March 1970, the only 8000ers which had been ascended more than once were Everest, Cho Oyu and Nanga Parbat; only Everest and Nanga Parbat had been climbed by a route different from that used on the first ascent.
Karl Maria Herrligkoffer was a German medical doctor, who from 1953 and 1986, organized and directed numerous German and Austrian mountaineering expeditions including 13 expeditions to five of the world's highest peaks in the Himalayas and the Karakoram. There were some notable successes on these expeditions including the first ascent of Nanga Parbat (8126m), and also the second and third ascent of that mountain, the successful ascent of Everest (8849m) by 15 people from one expedition, the first ascent of the South Ridge of K2 (8611m), the first attempt on Broad Peak (8051m), and the first ascent of about 35 peaks during two expeditions to east Greenland.
