Free Republic

Hilaree Nelson, 49, was skiing down from the 26,775 feet summit with her partner Jim Morrison when she fell off the mountain... Bad weather hampered rescue efforts Monday. But visibility was good in improved weather conditions Tuesday while a helicopter was hovering over the mountain to see any signs of the missing climber... Nelson, from Telluride, Colorado, and Morrison, from Tahoe, California, are extreme skiers who summited Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak, in 2018. Nepal’s government has issued permits to 504 climbers to attempt to scale high mountain peaks during the autumn season. Most of them are on Mount...

Photo detective work could solve an enigma nearly nine decades old. But will it vindicate Hillary's historic climb or rewrite the record books? On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine left their camp less than a kilometer from the summit of Mount Everest on a mission to be the first mountaineers to ascend the world's highest peak (8,850 meters). They were never to be heard from again. Whether either man reached the summit—almost three decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic 1953 climb—has been an open question for nearly 86 years. Although more than half a...