NIGHT ON ICE PEAK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 886, 1 February 1930, Page 32

NIGHT ON ICE PEAK

CLIMBERS’ HARDSHIPS IN HIMALAYAS NEW RECORD CREATED Dr.Peigel, a member of the German Himalayan expedition, was taken to hospital at Calcutta with frost-bite and the rest of the party has been recuperating at Darjeeling, on their return from an effort to scale Kinchinjunga, in which they were defeated 3,000 feet from the top, reports the Calcutta correspondent of the London “Morning Post.” Nevertheless, they established an altitude record for the Sikkim Himalayas of 24,450 feet, despite tremendous hardship and malicious weather. A night spent in the open on an ice peak three and a-half miles high, with neither blankets nor sleeping bags, is only one of the harrowing experiences related by the party on its return to civilisation. Isolated from their companions by an avalanche, which buried the entire camp outfit, the small party of climbers were forced to spend the night in the open and suffered agonies. When morning dawned one went snow-blind and the remainder badly frost-bitten. For several nights the climbers bivouacked on narrow ice ledges, and eight arduous days were spent in cutting a staircase up the solid walls of ice, which had to be recut during the descent.