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 SKi8000 expedition 2004: History | |||||||
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| Cho Oyu (8201 m), which means “The Turquoise Goddess” is the sixth highest mountain in the world, located a short distance to the west from the world's highest mountain, the Everest and the fourth highest, the Lhotse in the Khumbu region of Eastern Nepal along the Tibetan border. Its one of the towering peaks that stands with Everest well above the surrounding mountains. Cho Oyu became a familiar landmark to climbers ascending Everest's north face. Just west of Cho Oyu is the Nangpa La, a 19,000-foot glacier pass, the main trade route between the Khumbu Sherpas and Tibet. Cho Oyu's proximity to the Nangpa La has earned it the distinction among some climbers as being one of the safest 8,000 meter peaks. The mountain was first noticed in 1921 during the Howard-Bury's Everest reconaissance. Several photographs were taken years after, but the mountain remained unexplored until 1951 due to the Chinese authorities. In 1951 and 1952 British expeditin teams tried to climb the mountain to prepare for Everest expeditions, but failed. They came no further than 6800 m. Herbert Tichy was born in 1912 and studied Geology at university. During the winter of 1953/1954 Tichy went to western Nepal with Sherpas Pasang Dawa Lama, Adbija and Gyalsen. They climbed several 6000 m peaks and wanted more. In 1954 Tichy, Sepp Jochler and Helmut Heuberger organized an expedition to the Cho Oyu with seven Sherpa's, Pasang Dawa Lama being sirdar. They carried with them two oxygen cylinders for emergency use and limited medical equipment. In the book of his expedition, Tichy notes the advice given to him by a surgeon before the trip on the use of a scalpel for the amputation of severely frost-bitten fingers or toes: "press hard and then make as clean a cut as possible." Tichy and the Sherpas set up their last camp at 6930 m. Because of frostbite and very cold weather, the team was obliged to descend to a lower camp where they discovered the presence of a Swiss team, also trying to make the first ascent of the mountain. Tichy at this moment has frozen hands but started the climb a few days earlier than the Swiss. Tichy, Pasang Dawa Lama and Jochler reached the summit on 19 October. Cho Oyu is the fifth eight thousand meter peak that was climbed, after consequently Annapurna (1950 by Maurice Herzog) Everest (1953 by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary), Nanga Parbat (1953 by Herman Buhl) and K2 (1954 by A. Compagnoni). It is the first post monsoon climb of an eight thousand meter peak. The first ski descent from Cho Oyu was made on the first of May, 1988 by the Italians Flavio Spazzadeschi and Lino Zani. A second ski expedition attempted the mountain in the autumn of 1988, where 4 French reached the summit and descended on ski's. The next registered ski descent took place on the 24th September of 2000, where Laura Bakos became the first woman to ski from the summit of an 8000 meter peak. She also became the first north American to ski from the summit of an eight thousander. The number of ski descents remain very little at the present.
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