History
Cerro Fitz Roy 1952: The French-Italian First Ascent
Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone climbed Cerro Fitz Roy in February 1952 in conditions that the Patagonian guides of the period considered unclimbable.
Section
History
The 1953 Everest expedition revisited, Walter Bonatti at K2, the first ascent of Mt. Logan, the Eigerwand recoveries of 1936 and 1957.
History
Minya Konka 1932: An American Expedition in Western Sichuan
A small American party climbed a 7,556-metre peak in Sichuan during a Chinese civil war and walked the trade route out to French Indochina. The climb is barely remembered.
History
The Mallory Archive: What the Letters Actually Say About 1924
A reading of the Mallory family correspondence at Magdalene College, Cambridge, which holds the unresolved last chapter of the 1924 Everest expedition.
History
Annapurna 1950: The Climb That Began the Eight-Thousand-Metre Era
Maurice Herzog's French expedition put two men on the first 8,000-metre summit on 3 June 1950. The descent took the next month and cost most of their fingers.
History
The Eigerwand Recoveries of 1936 and 1957
Two failed attempts on the north face of the Eiger left bodies on the wall. The recoveries — twenty-one years apart — became part of what the route now means.
History
The First Ascent of Mount Logan, 1925
A forty-four-day approach, a tent at 5,400 metres, and the climb that effectively founded Canadian mountaineering as a national project.
History
Walter Bonatti and the Long Argument of K2, 1954
An Italian expedition placed two men on the summit of K2 in July 1954. The dispute about how they got there took the next fifty-three years to resolve.
History
The 1953 British Everest Expedition, Revisited from Base Camp
Seventy-three years after Hillary and Tenzing stepped onto the summit, a quiet reading of the expedition's logistics, oxygen sets, and the men whose names sit on the second page.