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Expedition climbing
Style of mountaineering
Style of mountaineering
Expedition climbing (or expedition-style or pejoratively siege climbing)
'Expedition style' climbing is in direct contrast to 'alpine style' climbing, which involves a single small fast-moving summit climbing team that carries all their supplies and equipment (e.g. no mountain porters or sherpas) and makes little use of support (e.g. no supplementary oxygen or fixed ropes). As a result of having less equipment and supplies, alpine-style teams need to complete their climbing route in days and it is thus considered a riskier form of mountaineering (e.g. if they get trapped in a storm, they have no supplies to wait for the storm to pass).
Expedition-style was the type of mountaineering Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay used in summitting of Mount Everest, Expedition climbing techniques are still widely used by commercial adventure companies to guide less experienced clients on Seven Summits or 'accessible eight-thousander' tours, which has brought new risks (e.g. 1996 Everest disaster).
Notable expeditions
While the use of full expedition-style climbing has almost completely diminished amongst leading mountaineers and climbers and is now only used by commercial guiding companies, many notable first ascents in mountaineering, and particularly those of the eight-thousanders, were achieved by employing large-scale expedition-style climbing techniques, including:
- 1950 French Annapurna expedition, the first ascent of an eight-thousander
- 1952 British Cho Oyu expedition
- 1953 German–Austrian Nanga Parbat expedition, despite being an expedition, Herman Buhl's final solo summit push was arguably the birth of high-altitude alpine-style climbing
- 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, the first ascent of Mount Everest
- 1954 Italian expedition to K2
- 1955 French Makalu expedition
- 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition
- 1960 Chinese Mount Everest expedition
- 1970 British Annapurna South Face expedition, the first expedition to try high-altitude 'big wall' climbing
- 1975 British Mount Everest Southwest Face expedition, often considered "the apotheosis of the big, military-style expeditions", and marked a peak expedition-style climbing by leading climbers in the Himalayas.
- American Women's Himalayan Expedition of 1978
- 1996 Mount Everest disaster, the tragedy highlighted the dangers of using expedition-climbing techniques to guide weaker climbers to the summits of eight-thousanders.
References
References
- (June 2003). "Climbing: Expedition Planning". [[Mountaineers Books]].
- [[The Mountaineers (club). (2018). "[[Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills]]". Quiller Publishing.
- "Alpine-style".
- Synott, Mark. (9 April 2015). "Elite Climbers to Blaze New Route up Everest: Climbing without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support, team tackles unclimbed line on Northeast Face".
- Holsten, Jens. (16 August 2016). "State of the Heart: The Evolution of Alpinism".
- Parnell, Ian. (1 July 2006). "Victors of the Unwinnable".
- Synott, Mark. (21 April 2015). "The Everest Moral Dilemma".
- (June 2003). "Climbing: Expedition Planning". [[Mountaineers Books]].
- (2010). "Unjustifiable risk?: the story of British climbing". Cicerone.
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