Norton-Couloir

The Norton Couloir, referred to in English-speaking countries as Great Couloir, a steep ravine high up on the north side of Mount Everest in Tibet, demarcates the east the summit pyramid and up to 150 m extends below the summit.

The west of the summit location counterpart is the Hornbein Couloir.

Naming

Its name from the steep gorge through the conducting participants of the English expedition of 1924, Edward F. Norton, who came into this Steiltal in an unsuccessful summit attempt on June 4, 1924 to a height of about 8570 meters by the wind disturbances ridge and shunned reached by traversing the North Face into the canyon, which has since borne his name.

Everest solo, Reinhold Messner

The Norton Couloir was the way one of the greatest mountaineering achievements, as in 1980, Reinhold Messner while avoiding the dangerous for a solo climber Grates - and especially to circumvent the Second Step - climb in this Steiltal to the summit, alone and without use of artificial oxygen. The most successful increase of Edward F. Norton in 1924 had inspired this experiment Messner: also Norton had used no oxygen.

Other ascents

In 1984, an Australian expedition succeeded in the ascent of a new route. From the main branch of the Rongbuk glacier from it rose straight into the north wall and erected at the entrance of the couloir at 7500 meters its third high camp. From another camp in 8150 m from Tim Macartney - Snape reached and Greg Mortimer without artificial oxygen as the first Australians on 2 October the summit.

In 2001, the Frenchman Marco Siffredi was the first person from the summit of Mount Everest via the Norton Couloir to the advanced base camp on a snowboard down. A year later, he was killed while trying to snowboard from the summit abzufahren on the Hornbein Couloir. His body remained missing.