The last frontier: The Himalayas

Oscar Eckenstein, a pioneer of modern climbing techniques and mountaineering equipment.

The last and greatest mountain range was the Himalayas in Central Asia. They had initially been surveyed by the British Empire for military and strategic reasons. In 1892 Sir William Martin Conway explored the Karakoram Himalayas, and climbed a peak of 23,000 ft (7,000 m) In 1895 Albert F. Mummery died while attempting Nanga Parbat, while in 1899 D. W. Freshfield took an expedition to the snowy regions of Sikkim. In 1899, 1903, 1906 and 1908 Mrs Fannie Bullock Workman made ascents in the Himalayas, including one of the Nun Kun peaks (23,300 ft). A number of Gurkha sepoys were trained as expert mountaineers by Charles Granville Bruce, and a good deal of exploration was accomplished by them.
Oscar Eckenstein, a pioneer of modern climbing techniques and mountaineering equipment.

In 1902, the Eckenstein-Crowley Expedition, led by English mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein and author and occultist Aleister Crowley, was the first to attempt to scale Chogo Ri (now known as K2 in the west). They reached 22,000 feet (6,700 m) before turning back due to weather and other mishaps. Undaunted, in 1905 Crowley led the first expedition to Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. Four members of the party were killed in an avalanche and they failed to reach the summit.

Eckenstein was also a pioneer in developing new equipment and climbing methods. He started using shorter ice axes which could be used single handed,[12] designed the modern crampons and improved on the nail patterns used for the climbing boots.

By the 1950s, all the eight-thousanders but two had been climbed starting with Annapurna in 1950 by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal. The last great peak was the highest of them all, Mount Everest. The British had made several attempts in the 1920s; the 1922 expedition reached 8,320 metres (27,300 ft) before being aborted on the third summit attempt after an avalanche killed seven porters. The 1924 expedition saw another height record achieved but still failed to reach the summit with confirmation when George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on the final attempt. The summit was finally reached on May 29, 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay from the south side in Nepal.

Just a few months later, Hermann Buhl made the first ascent of Nanga Parbat (8,125 m), a siege-style expedition culminating in a last 1,300 meters walking alone, being under the influence of drugs: pervitin (based on the stimulant methamphetamine used by soldiers during World War II), padutin and tea from coca leaves. K2 (8,611 m), the second-highest peak in the world, was first scaled in 1954 by Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. In 1964, the final eight-thousander to be climbed was Shishapangma (8,013 m), the lowest of all the 8,000 metre peaks.