Summits

Summits

This is a photo of Ama Dablam. I think she is the most beautiful of all the mountains I have seen. Can you see her arms outstretched to her people and her nose?

I’ll be walking past Ama Dablam on my way to Everest Base Camp again this year. I’ll take another photo then and we can see if she’s changed at all.

Now lets have a look at Mt Everest’s –

Climbing History:

• 1920’s: Nepal was closed
• 1921 and 1922: exploratory climbs
• 1924: Mallory and Irvine disappeared
• Post WWII: “Everest Fever” began with exploratory expeditions
• late 1940’s: Tibet closed its borders to all foreigners
• 1950: China invaded Tibet and Nepal opened it borders; some believe that by allowing foreigners in they wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Tibet
• 1951: The British found a way through the Khumbu icefall
• 1952: The Swiss gained the only permits issued and the British held their breath. The Swiss got to within 248m of the summit. Tensing was on this team.
• 1953: The British, led by Colonel John Hunt, had another go….and the rest as they say is history. A beekeeper from New Zealand became the first person to stand on the roof of the world.

Ascents:

• First ascent: 11:30am 29^th May 1953 – (Sir) Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal). They spent 15mins on the summit.
• First Australian: 3^rd October 1984 – Tim Macartney-Snape
• The First South Australian: 23^rd May 2001 – Duncan Chessell. Can you find out who was the first person from your state?
• On 11 May 1990 Tim was the first to go from Sea Level to the Summit
• Most Summits: Apa Sherpa – 19 as at May 2009
• Youngest person: Ming Kipa Sherpa – 15yo Sherpa girl (May 2003)

Mt Everest is the tallest mountain in the world but there are 13 other mountains over 8,000m.
Australian Andrew Lock topped the true summit of Shishapangma at 5.05pm on 2 October 2009, making him the first Australian and only the 18th in the world to summit all 14 of the 8,000m peaks! Wow! Isn’t that amazing? On 6 of those peaks he was the first Australian!

The fourteen 8,000m peaks:

Mt Everest is the highest peak in Asia. Some people like the challenge of climbing the highest peak on each of the 7 continents. Can you name the 7 continents (without peaking below)?

The Seven summits are:

Can you find them all on a map?

I can think of 2 songs that have the names of two of these mountains in the title or the lyrics. Can you?  Answer