PAROFES - Feb 28, 2012 12:54 pm - Voted 10/10
NormallyI don't like very much of Everest photos, but this one...man that is an amazing capture...
Well done!
lsheen - Feb 28, 2012 3:13 pm - Voted 10/10
Excellent!Rarely seen aspect of Everest, beautifully captured, Vladimir.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful photo!
Visible features: North Col camp (usually camp 2), sits on the North Col above the climber's head on the lower left. The normal route from the north, along the North Ridge, continues up the ridge line from Camp 2 until it meets the Northeast Ridge above the Pinnacles.
The Pinnacles are the pointy rock towers on the skyline at the upper left, at the point where the 2 ridges meet. Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker died trying to surmount the pinnacles during Sir Chris Bonnington's 1982 Everest expedition. Boardman's body was discovered in 1992 by members of a Kazakh expedition, Tasker's body has never been found.
Camp 3 is usually located near or at the top of the narrow snow tongue which starts at Camp 2. Camp 4 is often placed on the rockier section to the right of the Pinnacles, close to or on the skyline ridge.
The massive North Face dominates this photo, with Norton's (Great) Couloir the obvious gulley in the center of the North Face - leading directly to the summit. Near the top of Norton's Couloir one can see the famous Yellow Band - a band of sandstone that was once at the bottom of a sea!
Across the rocky lump to the right of the upper part of Norton's Couloir lies the Hornbein Couloir. During the 1963 expedition, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld climbed most of the West Ridge (the right skyline in this photo) before cutting across the upper part of the North Face to Hornbein's Couloir to complete their epic ascent. Realizing that they could not descend by this same dangerous route, they continued over the summit and began descending the Southeast ridge (not visible) - the top of the normal route from the south. Shortly below the summit and near dark, they joined up with fellow expedition members Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad who has summited that same day from the South, and all four men wound up bivouacking at about 28,000 (8530m)! With this feat, Unsoeld and Hornbein became the first climbers to traverse Everest, or any 8,000er.
Russell Brice, leader of many commercial expeditions to Everest, along with partner Harry Taylor were the first climbers to successfully traverse the Pinnacles. However, after that accomplishment, and despite the relatively easy terrain the rest of the way to the summit, both climbers were so 'knackered' (worn out) that they immediately descended via the regular route to the North Col.
The infamous "Second Step", just above which George Leigh-Malory and Andrew Irvine were last reported seen by Noel Odell in 1924, is the bump on the skyline to the left of the top of Norton's Couloir, roughly half-way between the summit and the pinnacles. Odell, who was at 26,000 feet on the North Face near the ridge, thought he saw Mallory and Irvine through a break in the clouds. The clouds closed in, and Mallory and Irvine were never seen alive again.
In 1999, Conrad Anker, a member of Eric Simonson's expedition aiming to find out what had happened to those two famous climbers, located Mallory's body, amazingly well-preserved, at around 26,760' on a snowy slope to the left of Norton's Couloir.
Irvine's body has never been found, despite a great deal of interest in doing so, as it is theorized that Irvine may have had an old Kodak VPK camera in his possession. Amazingly, Kodak specialists have stated that there is some chance that any film in the camera could possible be successfully developed, even after 88 years, since it has been in a cold, dry place for that entire time. Summit photos from Irvine's camera would displace Hillary and Tenzing's claim of being the first climbers to ascend Everest.
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