First Ascents of Mt. Everest

Abstract

The first ascent of Mt. Everest with supplementary oxygen by Edmund P. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, and the first “oxygenless” ascent by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler in 1978 were landmarks in the history of high-altitude physiology. As we saw in Chapter 6, E. F. Norton climbed to within 300 m (1000 ft) of the summit in 1924 without oxygen. However, the final 3% of the altitude of Mt. Everest took 29 years even with the use of oxygen, and this was in spite of six major expeditions and three minor ones. Even more remarkable was the fact that the last 300 m to the summit took 54 years without the advantage of supplementary oxygen. In fact there were no fewer than 30 expeditions to Everest between Norton’s attempt in 1924 and Messner and Habeler’s first oxygenless ascent in 1978 by which time 38 people had died on the mountain (Unsworth, 1989, p. 614). All these statistics underline the fact that the summit of Mt. Everest is very near the limit of human tolerance to hypoxia. This is what makes the mountain so fascinating from a physiological viewpoint.