K2, at 8,611 metres (28,251 ft) above sea level, is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest. It lies in the Karakoram range, partially in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and partially in a China-administered territory of the Kashmir region included in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang.
Mount Everest 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 (29,031.7 ft) was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
James W. Whittaker, also known as Jim Whittaker, is an American mountaineer and mountain guide. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, on May 1, 1963 he became the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest as a member of the American Mount Everest Expedition led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, alongside the Sherpa Nawang Gombu. They ran out of oxygen, but managed to reach the summit.
Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain in the world at 8,516 metres (27,940 ft), after Mount Everest, K2, and Kangchenjunga. The main summit is on the border between Tibet Autonomous Region of China and the Khumbu region of Nepal.
William Francis Unsoeld was an American mountaineer who was a member of the first American expedition to summit Mount Everest. The American Mount Everest Expedition was led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, and included Unsoeld, Jim Whittaker, Lute Jerstad, Barry Bishop and Tom Hornbein. Whittaker, with Sherpa Nawang Gombu, reached the summit on May 1, 1963. Unsoeld, Hornbein, Bishop and Jerstad reached the top on May 22, 1963. Unsoeld and Hornbein's climb was the first ascent from the peak's west ridge, and the first major traverse of a Himalayan peak. His subsequent activities included working as a U.S. Forest Service smokejumper, Peace Corps director in Nepal, speaker for Outward Bound, faculty member at Oregon State University and The Evergreen State College and mountaineering guide. He died on Mount Rainier in an avalanche.
Pumori is a mountain on the Nepal-China border in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. Pumori lies just eight kilometres west of Mount Everest. Pumori, meaning "the Mountain Daughter" in Sherpa language, was named by George Mallory. "Pumo" means young girl or daughter and "Ri" means mountain in Sherpa language. Climbers sometimes refer to Pumori as "Everest's Daughter". Mallory also called it Clare Peak, after his daughter.
Edmund Viesturs is a high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He is the only American to have climbed all 14 of the world's eight-thousander mountain peaks, and only the fifth person to do so without using supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted peaks of over 8,000 meters on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times; only four other climbers, Phurba Tashi Sherpa Mendewa, Juanito Oiarzabal, Namgyal Sherpa, and Ang Dorje Sherpa, have more high-altitude ascents.
Marty Hoey was a mountaineer who took part in a 1982 expedition to Mount Everest. During an attempted ascent that would have made her the first American woman to summit Everest, she plunged over the edge of the Great Couloir to her death, as the result of an unsecured climbing harness.
Apa, nicknamed "Super Sherpa", is a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer who, until 2017, jointly with Phurba Tashi held the record for reaching the summit of Mount Everest more times than any other person. As part of The Eco Everest Expedition 2011, Apa made his 21st Mount Everest summit in May 2011 then retired after a promise to his wife to stop climbing after 21 ascents. He first summited Everest in 1990 and his last time to the summit was in 2011.
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.
Barry Chapman Bishop was an American mountaineer, scientist, photographer and scholar. With teammates Jim Whittaker, Lute Jerstad, Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein, he was a member of the first American team to summit Mount Everest on May 22, 1963. He worked for the National Geographic Society for most of his life, beginning as a picture editor in 1959 and serving as a photographer, writer, and scientist with the society until his retirement in 1994. He was killed in an automobile accident near Pocatello, Idaho later that year.
Edward W. Furia was Project Director of the Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia during the first Earth Day in 1970.
Melissa Arnot Reid is an American mountaineer. She has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest six times.
The 1953 British Mount Everest expedition was the ninth mountaineering expedition to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest, and the first confirmed to have succeeded when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit on 29 May 1953. Led by Colonel John Hunt, it was organised and financed by the Joint Himalayan Committee. News of the expedition's success reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, on 2 June that year.
Norman Gunther Dyhrenfurth was a German-Swiss-American mountaineer and filmmaker. He was the leader of the successful American Mount Everest Expedition of 1963, which placed six climbers on the summit.
RMI Expeditions, also known as Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI), is a mountain guide company based in Ashford, Washington founded in 1969 by Jerry Lynch and Lou Whittaker. It leads mountaineering, ski mountaineering, and ice climbing trips on Mount Rainier and the Seven Summits.
Precipitated by unexpected permission from Tibet, the 1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition was planned at short notice as a preliminary to an attempt on the summit of Mount Everest in 1936. After exceptionally rancorous arguments involving the Mount Everest Committee in London, Eric Shipton was appointed leader following his successful trekking style of expedition to the Nanda Devi region in India in 1934.
Asian Trekking is a commercial adventure company based out of Kathmandu, Nepal started by Sherpa Ang Tshering. In 2001, it was recorded that Asian Trekking ran 25 large mountain expeditions per year. Asian Trekking made international news when in 2006 four of its clients and two of its Sherpas died in a single season. One of their clients, David Sharp, died near the summit and this event became the center of an international climbing ethics controversy. Founder of the company Ang said that climbers can die if they use all their energy getting to the summit of Mount Everest, only to be too fatigued for the descent.
