VOICE ONE:
This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English programEXPLORATIONS. Today, we tell about efforts to climb the highestmountain in the world, Mount Everest. And we tell about the firstblind person to do so.
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VOICE ONE:
More than eight-hundred people have successfully climbed theworld’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. It is at the border ofNepal and Tibet. One in about every five of those who have stood onthe mountain top did not survive the trip down. Many others diedbefore reaching the eight-thousand-eight-hundred-fifty meter summit.
They all battled freezing temperatures. Winds up toone-hundred-sixty-kilometers per hour. Dangerous mountain paths. Andthey all risked developing a serious illness caused by lack ofoxygen. All for the chance to reach the top of the world.
VOICE TWO:
The first and most famous of the climbers to disappear on MountEverest was George Mallory. The British school teacher was a memberof the first three trips by foreigners to the mountain. InNineteen-Twenty-One, Mallory was part of the team sent by theBritish Royal Geographical Society and the British Alpine Club. Theteam was to create the first map of the area and find a possiblepath to the top of the great mountain. They found a possible pathfrom the northeast side of the mountain.
Mallory also was a member of the first Everest climbing attemptin Nineteen-Twenty-Two. But the attempt was canceled after a stormcaused a giant mass of snow to slide down the mountain, killingseven native ethnic Sherpa guides.
VOICE ONE:
Mallory was invited back to Everest as lead climber of anotherexpedition in Nineteen-Twenty-Four. On June fourth, Mallory and teammember Andrew Irvine left their base camp for the team’s finalattempt to reach the mountain top. The climbing team had great hopesof success for the two men. A few days earlier, expedition leaderEdward Norton had reached a record height ofeight-thousand-five-hundred-seventy-three meters before he turnedback. He knew it was too late in the day for him to climb to thesummit and return to base camp before dark.
VOICE TWO:
Mallory and Irvine were using bottled oxygen. Mallory believedthat was the only way they would have the energy and speed to climbthe last three-hundred meters to the top and return safely.
Team member Noel Odell saw Mallory and Irvine climbing high onthe mountain the following day. He said they had just climbed one ofthe most difficult rocks on the northeast path. He said they weremoving toward the top when clouds hid them. He never saw them again.The disappearance of Mallory and Irvine on Mount Everest remainsamong the greatest exploration mysteries of the century.
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VOICE ONE:
During the next twenty-nine years, teams from Britain made sevenmore attempts to climb Everest. Until the early Nineteen-Fifties,teams from Britain were the only foreign climbers given permissionto climb Mount Everest.
On May twenty-ninth, Nineteen-Fifty-Three, Edmund Hillary andTenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to reach the summitof Everest. The two were part of a British team lead by Jon Hunt.They had made a difficult climb from the southeast, throughrecently-opened Nepalese territory.
Edmund Hillary was a bee-keeper from New Zealand. It was hissecond trip to Everest. He had been on the first exploratory trip tothe mountain that had mapped the way up from the southern side.Tenzing Norgay was a native Nepalese Sherpa. He was the first Sherpato become interested in mountain climbing. His climb with Hillarywas his seventh attempt to reach the top.
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Hillary said that his first reaction on reaching the top of MountEverest was a happy feeling that he had “no more steps to cut.” Thetwo men planted a stick holding the flags of Britain, Nepal, Indiaand the United Nations. Hillary took a picture of Norgay.
They looked out over the north side into Tibet for any signs thatMallory or Irvine had been there before them. Then they began thelong and difficult trip back down. The success of Edmund Hillary andTenzing Norgay led to many new attempts on the mountain. Today,Everest has been climbed from all of its sides and from most of itspossible paths.
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VOICE ONE:
Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria madeanother historic Everest climb in Nineteen-Seventy-Eight. The twomen were the first to reach the summit without using bottled oxygen.
Messner said when he reached the top he felt like a single giantlung. At the time, scientists believed that a person at the top ofthe mountain would only have enough oxygen to sleep.
Scientists believed that Messner and Habeler would die withoutoxygen. Scientists now know that two conditions make climbing atheights over eight-thousand meters extremely difficult. The first isthe lack of oxygen in the extremely thin air. The second is the lowbarometric air pressure.
VOICE TWO:
Today, scientists say a person lowered onto the top of themountain would live no more than ten minutes. Climbers survive inthis so-called “death zone” above eight-thousand meters because theyspend several months climbing to higher points on the mountain toget used to the conditions.
Several things have made climbing Everest today easier than forthe first climbers. These include modern equipment and clothing.They also include information gained from earlier climbs andscientific studies.
VOICE ONE:
In Nineteen-Ninety-Three, a record one-hundred-twenty-nine peopleclimbed Mount Everest. Many were inexperienced climbers. In recentyears, some expert climbers have begun leading guided trips up themountain. Some people have paid as much as sixty-five-thousanddollars for the chance to climb Everest.
In Nineteen-Ninety-Six, Everest had its greatest tragedy. Arecord ten people died on the mountain in one day. Two of theworld’s best climbers were among those killed. Three guided groupswere trying to reach the summit of the mountain that day. Severalbooks by climbers have described the incident and the dangerousmountain conditions. The best known is “Into Thin Air” by JonKrakauer. The book became an international best seller and increasedthe interest in climbing Mount Everest.
VOICE TWO:
In Nineteen-Ninety-Nine, an American group of climbers went toEverest. They tried to find out if George Mallory and Andrew Irvineshould be included among those who have succeeded in climbing MountEverest. The Mallory and Irvine Research team had information theythought would lead them to Irvine’s body. Instead, they found thebody of Mallory. The climbers said the evidence they discovered didnot solve the mystery of whether Mallory and Irvine reached thesummit. The climbers said the evidence shows only that Mallory diedin a fall while climbing down the mountain.
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VOICE ONE:
Climbing to the top of Mount Everest is a major victory for anyperson, but imagine if the climber could not see. Last month, thefirst blind man successfully reached the top of Everest. ErikWeihenmayer (WINE-may-er) is a thirty-two-year-old American. Heclimbed to the summit with the help of his team. Each member of theteam wore bells on his clothes for Weihenmayer to hear. They alsocalled out warnings to help him cross dangerous areas. It took thegroup more than two months to reach the summit. The NationalFederation of the Blind helped pay for the climb.
VOICE TWO:
Weihenmayer already had climbed several of the world’s tallestmountains. He says he often told himself that he could not fail toreach the top of Everest. Failing would confirm that mountainclimbing is a sport only for people who can see.
Historians may consider this the most successful climb of MountEverest in history, and not just because of Weihenmayer. A recordnineteen climbers from his team reached the summit. So did theoldest man ever to climb Mount Everest. He is sixty-four-year-oldSherman Bull.
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VOICE ONE:
This program was written by Linda Burchill and Jill Moss. It wasproduced by Cynthia Kirk. This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week forEXPLORATIONS, a program in Special English from the Voice ofAmerica.