HIGHEST SUMMIT YET

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 175, 23 June 1930, Page 7

HIGHEST SUMMIT YET

MOUNTAINEERING FEAT. ASCENT OF JONSONG PEAK. FOUR NATIONS REPRESENTED. (United Press Association—By Electric ' Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, June 21. Messages from the Jonsong Peak base stato that Herrn Hoerlin and Schneider climbed Mount Jonsong on June 3, and Frau Dylirfurth, the wife of the leader of the expedition, M. Kura, Herr U. Wieland and Mr F. S. Smythe on June 6. Thus six mountaineers from four nations have ascended the highest summit yet scaled throughout the world, a practical expression of international feeling which every member of the expedition hopes will cement international friendship and goodwill. Tho first party, consisting of Herrn Hoerlin and Schneider, and Messrs Wood-ojlmston and Smythe, climbed from theencampinent on the northwest ridge, after a wild night when the “wind was blowing in 50 degrees of frost and endeavoured to hurl us from the ridge.” Herrn Schneider and Hoerlin went on ahead. Mr Wood-Johnson was overcome by a sudden illness and was unable to proceed. He begged Mr Smythe to go on, and the latter, thinking his comrade was merely suffering from mountain sickness, consented, but was unable to catch tho leaders, so he sat in the snow 23,000 feet up and watched for two minutes the dots slowly crawling up the snow slope to the summit. When Mr Smythe returned, Mr Wood-Johnson, who had been unconscious for an hour, was assisted to the camp. A terrific storm raged on June 1, and while most of the members of the exhibition spent the day in sleeping bags awaiting a chance to assault Jonsong, Frau Dyhrenfurth accomplished one of the finest feats of courage and endurance by crossing Jonsongla, accompanied by a coolie and a Nepalese subahadar.

A message published last week stated that the following advice had been received from Jonsong Peak base camp on May 31: “Kinchinjunga has beaten us, but we are prepared to attack tho Jonsong peak, or 24,340 feet, the northerly outpost of Kinchinjunga, in an effort to gain tho highest Himalayan summit yet reached. Its precipices rival thoso of Kinchinjunga in height and grandeur. These precipices are defended by ice-walls of enormous thickness, from which a avalanches continually break off, thundering down thousands of feet. “Schneider and Wieland discovered a practicable route up Jonsong, and Schneider alone climbed 23,470 feet up an unnamed peak. “Tho Himalayas, however, take defeat hardly. That nigfit they threw down boulders toward the camp and nearly annihilated Smythe, who was sleeping peacefully and awoko to hear a series of crashes. He realised that tho boulders were descending on tho tent, and that there was nothing to do but .huddle up in his sleep-ing-bag. Later he found a huge rock embedded in a snowdrift three yards behind the tent. Two days later another fall nearly killed Frau Dyhrenfurth.’