British Climber Killed in Fall
Nepal's tourism ministry identified the deceased mountaineer as 38-year-old Peter Legate, a business manager from Lymington, Hampshire. While apparently attempting to descend from Camp III to Camp II, Legate lost his footing and fell some 650 feet from the Lhotse Face.
The National Geographic team will spend about three days at Base Camp before heading back up the mountain. Some members could only shake their heads when the first day at Base Camp dawned with the perfect weather they had longed for higher on the mountain. However, it did afford Peter Athans the opportunity for a luxury rare on Everest—a high-altitude (cold-water) shower.
Himalayan veteran Peter Athans—who holds a record six Everest summits for a Westerner—is leading the National Geographic 50th Anniversary Everest expedition. Its members include a new generation of accomplished mountaineers carrying on the Everest traditions of their famous fathers, while honoring their historic achievements. Peter Hillary is currently following the South Col route by which his father, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Tenzing Norgay became the first to climb to the top of the world's highest mountain.
Brent Bishop is also on the mountain, following in his father's footsteps. Ten years after Hillary and Norgay's first ascent, Barry Bishop was part of the first group to carry the American flag to the summit, which did so by the previously unclimbed West Ridge.
Norgay's son, Jamling, has accompanied the group only as far as the Base Camp for this expedition.
The National Geographic 50th Anniversary Everest Expedition will be filmed for a special documentary provisionally entitled National Geographic Channel Presents Surviving Everest, premiering globally on the National Geographic Channel (in the United States and internationally) in spring 2003. While exclusively following the struggles of the climbers, the documentary will also shed new light on the historic expeditions and their members, as well as map the human impact of 50 years of climbing Everest.
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