PEAK SEASON

As more and more people climb the Everest, experienced mountaineers talk about the peaks, routes and conditions that present newer challenges

- SHAIL DESAI

“If we can pull it off, it would be the biggest possible thing still to be accomplished in Himalayan mountaineering.” —Norman Dyhrenfurth, on the west ridge of Mount Everest.

When the Americans prepared to ascend Mount Everest in 1963, they trained their eyes on the unclimbed west ridge route as an additional challenge for their expedition. Before them, only two other parties had succeeded in making the summit: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, and a Swiss expedition three years later. Both had taken what was by then a well-tested route, via the South Col and southeast ridge. But summiting the world’s highest peak via the west ridge was still not accomplished. For, summiting a peak was one achievement, but even back then, there were bragging rights associated with treading an unknown route to the top.

By the end of that season, the American expedition would go down in history for the heroics of Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, who pulled offa daring climb via the west ridge, a difficult route full of unknowns, with points of no return that that required the duo to fend for themselves en route the summit.

These days, while hundreds of commercial climbers get to the top of the Everest each spring— according to the Himalayan Database, in the 2019 season 692 climbers made it to the top—the lure of the less trodden path remains a constant attraction for seasoned professional mountaineers and explorers, as does the seduction of raising the stakes.