One Day Among Many

The wind rocked them to sleep like a lullaby. In the early morning darkness of May 22, 1963, Tom Hornbein, thirty-two, and Willi Unsoeld, thirty-six, lay nestled in their tent along a narrow, wind-sculpted snow alcove surrounded by walls of rock and fields of ice, at twenty-seven thousand feet on the flanks of Mount Everest. They turned on their flashlights, ate breakfast, and tied their reindeer-skinned boots. They strapped on their crampons inside due to the cold—any damage to their tent, sleeping bags, or air mattresses wouldn’t matter, since they were leaving everything behind.

Overhead rose two thousand feet of entangled rock, snow, and ice that had never been touched by humans. Midway up was a daunting band of what appeared to be shattered, vertical rock, which, if they could climb it, would be extremely difficult to reverse with their limited gear. Once committed, Tom and Willi knew their escape was to climb to the highest point on earth and descend the opposite side of