HILLARY’S CAMP ON EVEREST

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 28001, 22 June 1956, Page 8

HILLARY’S CAMP ON EVEREST

Swiss Party Finds Remnants PRIMUS STOVE STILL IN GOOD ORDER (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) HUKSE (Nepal), June 20. A team of Swiss mountaineers returned to Hukse last night from the summit of Mount Everest with an aluminium tent pole left by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing. The pole was all that was left of the tent in which the two men spent the night before their final climb to the top of the world’s highest mountain The 11-man Swiss expedition climbed 29.023 ft Mount Everest twice. They also conquered the adjacent Mount Lhotse (27,790 ft The expedition’s leader, Mr Albert Eggler, said that they had found British supplies and equipment on the 26.000 ft South Col of Everest. “One incredible remnant was a primus stove, which we got going without much effort.” he .said. Two of the Swiss climbers, Hans von Gunten and Adolf Reist (the second Swiss group to reach Everest’s peak), spent two hours on the summit and took more than 50 photographs while they were there. Reist and von Gunten were aided largely by a simple and economic oxygen apparatus made by the French, said Mr Eggler. He described the conqeust of Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world and the then highest unclimbed peak. Mr Eggler said the team spent the night at Camp 7 on the gale-swept South Col, which connects Lhotse with Everest. Then two climbers, Fritz Luchsinger anc Ernst Reiss, climbed to the top ir just under five hours, cutting step as they went. This was two months after Luch singer, aged 35, had been stricker with appendicitis at a Himalayar monastery. Luchsinger said: "Thlast few hundred feet of Lhotse wen steeper than Everest, though not hav ing done both, I cannot make a cate gorical statement.” A cable lift was set ud at Camp 7 and, after the two climbers returned from the summit, supplies were brought up from the Western Cwm by this lift, worked by two Sherpas. It carried a 601 b load which it raised 2000 ft in about an hour. “In my opinion, my men were even more highly trained than Sir John Hunt’s successful British team or 1953,” said Mr Eggler. Asked why no Sherpas took part in the assaults on the summits. Mr Eggler said that the Sherpa leader. Pafang Dawa Lama, was the only one they thought capable of trying either peak, but he was ill.