Hornbein-Couloir

The Hornbein Couloir is a steep ravine high up on the north side of Mount Everest in Tibet, the west separates the summit pyramid and up to 150 m extends below the summit.

The east of the summit location counterpart is the Norton Couloir.

Naming

Its name from the steep gorge by a member of the American Everest Expedition 1963, Thomas Hornbein.

The excess of the Mount Everest

Hornbein and his partner Willi Unsoeld were participants of an expedition that sought by the Nepalese south side of Everest in two ways to get to the summit. The majority of the members of the expedition took the same path that were even ten years ago went the first climbers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary to climb through the valley of silence and the flank of Lhotse to the South Col and on over the southeast ridge to the summit.

Hornbein and Unsoeld but had stubbornly decided to still keeping the difficult attempt to reach the other side of silence out first by the unerstiegene southwest wall on the west ridge, and then to use the date as unerstiegenen, steep and extremely demanding western ridge for a summit attempt. When they no longer came on May 22, 1963 high up on the ridge, which marks the border between Nepal and Tibet, they traversed on Tibetan territory in the north wall and took advantage of this last Couloir for the Endanstieg to the summit. Also on this route, they found great difficulty made ​​it hopeless to use the same path back to the descent: they had to plan to leave the summit on a different route, so to pass it the first time.

They came only in the evening around 18.15 clock on the summit, where hours earlier and two of their comrades expedition had arrived from the south side, Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad. In entering gets dark they began the descent. They followed their comrades on the Hillary Step down to the south-east and met them exhausted below the South Summit at an altitude of about 8600 meters, where the four einrichteten for a grim cold bivouac night, which until then highest overnight of people. All four survived the night in which her ​​happiness was hardly any wind. However Unsoeld lost as a result of frostbite later all toes.