원정 개요

Sept/Oct 82

The American expedition, led by Lou Whittaker, failed to reach the summit via the Great Couloir on the North Face, without porters (yaks got them to 5600m but still 15 kms from the face), they worked up to the cirque of he upper central Rongbuck Glacier, C2, C4 and C5 were established straight up the face on April 8, 18 and May 8th at 6860m, 7220m and 7620m respectively. The weather deteriorated in May slowing progress.

On May 15th Larry Nielson and Dave Mahre were searching for the site of C6 while Marty Hoey and Jim Wickwire were sitting just below on a small rock out crop of the middle of the couloir at 8015m, anchored to an ice screw just above the rock. Wickwire who had climbed K2 in 1978, started to move upward and Hoey moved on one side to let him by. The waist belt of her harness popped open, she lost her balance and plunged 1800m down the slope.

A summit attempt was made three days later by Nielson, Eric Simonson and George Dunn in which Nielson got up the yellow band just right of the Great Couloir at 8400m, but he suffered frostbite. Wickwire went high on May 22. Yet the expedition was really over after Marty Hoey's death. No artificial oxygen was used by anyone on the expedition, Marty Hoey's previous visit to the Himalaya, to Nanda Devi in 1976, was halted when she nearly died of dysentery and had to evacuated by helicopter.