In 1952, the Swiss doctor and Alpinist Edouard Wyss-Dunant established the concept of the “death zone”, the altitude above which human beings are unable to acclimatise because of the lack of oxygen. The mark is generally set at 8,000 metres, a height exceeded by only 14 mountains, all of them in the Himalayan or Karakoram ranges in Asia. Of these, at that time, only Annapurna had been scaled, conquered in 1950. But by the end of the decade just two of the eight-thousanders were still up for grabs: Shishapangma in Tibet and Nepal’s Dhaulagiri, at 8,167 metres the world’s highest unclimbed peak.
Known as the “White Mountain”, and notorious for avalanches and fierce winds, Dhaulagiri had defeated seven previous expeditions before a Swiss-led attempt in 1960. The party included 13 climbers, with an average age of 30, and a handful of Nepalese sherpa guides. As was customary, the government also insisted they take along a liaison officer, in this case a 28-year-old former soldier called Min Bahadur Sherchan.
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