A couple of months ago, i had mentioned about
Ed Viesturs, America's greatest climber today, and his planned attempt at scaling the world's 10th highest (but nearly the most difficult) peak, Annapurna this year. After two previous failed attempts in 2000 and 2002, Ed Viesturs has finally achieved it - achieving it on May 12, along with Veikka Gustafsson of Finland. With that, Viesturs has successfully scaled all the world's peaks over 8000m tall, including 6 visits to the summit of Mount Everest. He has seen the world from heights few can even dream of reaching. After his achievement, he was named as the
ABC News Person of the week.
Last week, after overcoming every challenge that a mountain can throw up at him,
Ed announced his retirement from high altitude climbing. "
I am done with 8,000-meter peaks, ... so now I will get know what spring looks like at my home in Seattle", he says. This picture will give some appreciation of his achievement and the heights he has reached:
1992: Ed Viesturs and Scott Fischer in the Bottleneck Couloir at 27,000ft on K2
[Photo: Charley Mace, taken from
MountainZone.com]
5 comments:
stunning image. it makes me want to walk along this impossible slant just to feel the sensation of vertical movement above the clouds.
Photo is pretty cool. Would love to do something like that, but, it seems almost impossible now.
Ed Viesturs is a cool guy. This is an end of a very long and successful mountaineering career. I remember seeing him first in the Everest IMAX movie. Read a few books and websites about him after reading 'Into thin air' by John Krakuer (sp!?).
parag: its 'Krakauer'. the everest IMAX movie is spectacular, no words to describe it. and ofcourse, the Everest tragedy described by Krakauer's book happened at during that very expedition.
Guess, no one knows more about "overcoming mountains" than Viesturs. :) BTW amazing picture to accompany the post.
Thats a pretty awesome pic. Also, I would like to know if 'climb every mountain' from sound of music was his favorite song :).
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