PEKING -- A 33-year-old Seattle man scaled a final 65-foot sheer rock face to reach the summit of Mount Everest and become the first American to climb the world's highest peak by its most hazardous north route, Chinese officials said Friday.
Philip Ershler, a 33-year-old mountaineering guide, reached the summit of the 29,028-foot peak last Saturday after failing in a first assault Oct. 1, officials said.
A China Mountaineering Association spokeswoman said the 12-member Everest expedition led by Lou Whittaker, 58, of Seattle, sent word of the conquest in a telegram Friday.
Whittaker's twin brother, Jim, was the first American to climb Mount Everest in 1963.
Ershler, from Seattle, is the first American to conquer Mount Everest by its north face, the most difficult route on the pyramid-shaped peak.
The route includes a final 65 feet of sheer rock and wildly unpredictable weather conditions, with typhoon-force gales and sudden, blinding veils of mist.
'The last hazard is a 60- to 80-foot face of sheer rock that's nearly vertical,' said Gene Bauer, of Bellevue, Wash., who accompanied a 16-member U.S. expedition that failed to surpass the perilous rock wall last spring.
'At 29,000 feet, you're already up in the jet stream,' said Bauer, describing the last leg of the treacherous north route. 'Airplanes have only flown at that altitude for the past 30 years,' said Bauer, Peking representative for Boeing Commercial Airplane Co.
The Chinese spokeswoman said Ershler, using oxygen, made the summit at 3:45 p.m. local time after setting out from the 26,738-foot sixth camp at 6:15 a.m. Saturday.
She said Ershler, a professional mountaineering guide, was accompanied on the final assault by John F. Rosbelley, 36, of Seattle, who was forced back at 28,051-foot.
This month's expedition was the second attempt Whittaker led on the north face. The first, in 1981, failed after the only female member of the group, Marty Hoey, 28, plunged to her death May 15 when her harness popped open in a freak accident.
Few climbers have scaled the world's highest peak via the northern route, which begins in the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet. The first attempt failed in 1924 when British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared into a mist at 28,200 feet.
Earlier this month, two Australian climbers also reached the summit via the north face. But most of the more than 100 climbers who have conquered Everest have ascended the mountain's tamer Nepalese side.
