Everest

One day in the late spring of 1924 an observer on the East Rongbuk Glacier at the foot of Everest, staring up at the summit of the mountain through a telescope, saw the morning mists part around the summit, and saw there two black figures climbing steadily upwards. One of them was an Oxford undergraduate, the other was Mallory. They were, at that moment, at a height of 28,400 feet, higher than any man has ever climbed before and only six hundred feet below the top.

The early expeditions, though they failed, did make the picture much clearer. The problems of Everest emerged- problems of supply and support, unbelievably treacherous weather, and worst of all, the problem of altitude itself- the terrifying lack of oxygen. Several of the early climbers attacking the summit from the north got within a thousand feet of it. Mallory and Irvin for instance, who attempted it in 1924. Neither of them came back. Why should a man climb Everest? It was Mallory himself who gave the classic reply: 'Because it is there'. Everest remained a challenge: aloof, inviolate, murderous.

Everest saw a clutch of records on Thursday including the most summits for a woman and the first all-Black team -- and a Ukrainian climber reached the top of the world for her war-torn country. Nepali climber Lhakpa Sherpa, 48, reached the snow-capped summit for the 10th time, breaking her own record set in 2018. "Lhakpa stood atop Everest at 6:15 am today. This has become her 10th ascent," Mingma Gelu Sherpa of Seven Summit Adventure, the agency that handled her expedition, told AFP from the Everest base camp.

It was unclear whether Pasang Dawa Sherpa planned a third ascent of Everest this season, which started in April and ends the first week of June. Such a feat has never been attempted in the history of Everest climbs, mountaineering experts say.

The deadliest year on Everest remains 2015, when a devastating earthquake in Nepal triggered a series of avalanches on the mountain, killing 20 people.

Training for an Everest expedition in 1994, Mallory wrote, he had Everested by cycling eight times up Mount Donna Buang, outside Melbourne.