May 17, 2004 Everest was hospitable to climbers this weekend (May 15 and 16), as a window of good weather allowed more than 113 people to reach the top of the world's tallest mountain. Climbers began arriving at Everest's summit around 12:30 A.M. on Saturday, with The Himalayan Guides 2004 Expedition and a member of the Discovery Expedition at the head of the pack, according to EverestNews.com.
On Sunday, at 7:55 A.M., Nawang Sherpa became the first leg amputee to summit Everest. For the climb, Nawang used a prosthesis designed by Tom Halvorson of Northern Prosthetics and Orthotics in Duluth, Minnesota.
Early on Monday, mountaineer Ed Viesturs notched his sixth Everest summit, putting his total number of bagged 8,000-meter peaks at 19. All the other members of Viesturs' team, including filmmaker David Breashears and Wyoming-based photographer Jimmy Chin, also summited. It was Breashears' fifth time at the top of Everest, and Chin's first. In addition to climbing, the team shot footage for an upcoming Hollywood movie based on the tragic 1996 incident in which eight Everest climbers died in a single day.
Veteran climber Apa Sherpa also reached the top of the mountain Monday morning, breaking his own world record of 13 summits, set last May (see Outside's May 2003 article, "Lucky 13"). Apa, 43, first climbed the mountain in 1989 and has used the money he earns on Everest each season to put his four children through school.
But not all of this year's attempted summits have ended so well. Canadian Tom Masterson, 59, a member of the Mexican-Canadian expedition, suffered the effects of an oxygen-deprived environment and began hallucinating in the thin atmosphere, according to the Canadian Press. He was persuaded to head back down the mountain by the rest of his teammates.
"When they finally convinced him to turn back, he was not in very good shape," the team's webmaster, Georges Vaillancourt, told the Canadian Press. "One problem when you get mountain sickness is that it may affect your brain, so if you really want very much to climb, you're so sick you're not in a position to have good judgment."
Members of the Discovery Channel team who were filming the expedition for a television program helped Masterson return to a lower altitude and, according to Canadian Press report, he is recovering well.
Over 1,300 people have summited the word's tallest mountain and approximately 200 people have died attempting to do so since the mountain was first conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 51 years ago.
