The Himalaya by the Numbers: A Statistical Analysis - Himalayan ...

lose the tips of five frostbitten toes. Webster, a professional photographer, had taken great
pains to get his shots just right, and he will probably lose the ends of five fingers. Anderson
suffered milder frostbite. But all of them did manage to get down alive.
There could be no debate over anyone being left anywhere on their mountain by the Chinese-
Japanese-Nepalese Everest team, for there were too many camps, climbers, walkie-talkie
radios, oxygen bottles and support staff at the two base camps, one on the north side and
the other on the south, for that. In addition with three nations’ governments and climbing
establishments were involved in their climb, detailed planning had been done months
in advance – the Japanese climber who would make the first north-south traverse had
already been chosen well before departure from Japan – and the expedition’s tri-national
commanders, sitting in Peking, could radio instructions to their climbing leaders on the
scene. In fact, with an elaborate command structure, a small village of support personnel
(cooks, doctors, interpreters, radio operators) plus television and newspaper journalists and
technicians at each base camp and 176 people climbing above their bases, it is a wonder
that the whole enterprise did not collapse of its own weight before the mountain could be
climbed.
But collapse it did not, and no doubt a large amount of credit goes to the two Japanese
climbing leaders, Tsuneo Shigehiro on the north side in Tibet in charge of progress via the
North Col and the northeast ridge, the classical route of the first British efforts in the 1920s
and 1930s, and Gota Isono managing the climb from Nepal in the south via the South Col
and the southeast ridge, the route pioneered 35 years ago by Hillary and Tenzing. Fourteen
men succeeded in gaining the summit, nine from the north and five from the south, on May
5 and 10. Six of them descended the opposite sides from which they had come up.
First on the top on May 5 were the north-south traverse team of one man from each of the
three nations, Noboru Yamada from Japan in his third Everest ascent, Lhakpa Nuru Sherpa
(also known as Ang Lhakpa) of Nepal, and a Tibetan, Cering Doji, representing China. They
waited an hour on the summit, but when neither the south-north traverse party nor the
television crew for live telecasting from the top of the world had appeared, they began their
descent of the southern route, the first people ever to cross Mount Everest from one side of
the Sino-Nepalese border to the other by way of the summit.
As they were about to make their way down the southeast ridge, which Yamada had climbed
twice before, the first member of their so-called support team, meant to be bringing them
fresh supplies of oxygen, arrived at the summit; these three men later descended the route
they had climbed. The Chinese in this support party, Li Zhixin, the only non-Tibetan amongst
the four Chinese citizens to make it to the top, had not actually carried out his support role,
for he had brought oxygen only for himself. Apparently it was politically necessary for at
least one Han Chinese (an ethnic Chinese, not of a minority race like the Tibetans) to stand
on the summit, and to ensure this, Li had not burdened himself with an extra bottle for
anyone else.
Last to arrive at the top from the north side were the three-man Japanese television crew
whose live telecast from the highest point on earth, the first ever achieved in Everest climbing
history, was the reason Nippon Television Networks Corporation had put up millions of
dollars worth of financing for this expedition. The arrangements for the television coverage
were most elaborate with tons of costly sophisticated equipment including a satellite dish at
the northern base camp and a specially devised climber’s helmet with a very light camera
attached. Unfortunately the summiting cameraman forgot to bring along the helmet: the
camera actually used on the summit was a conventional hand-held unit.
The day’s last arrivals at the summit were the south-north traverse team of two Tibetan
Chinese and a Nepalese Sherpa, and when they reached the top the cameraman was able
to show to the watching world their last slow, tired steps as they made their way with
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