Kangchenjunga, Body of Female Discovered. Simone Moro led an unsussessful Italian/Polish expedition that attempted the Normal Route on the southwest face. They abandoned their attempt at 8000 meters on April 30. While on the mountain they reported finding a woman's body. It seemed quite possible that it was that of the noted Polish mountaineer Wanda Rutkiewicz, who disappeared as she was trying for the summit three years ago. The body was discovered at 7700 meters not far from the standard Southwest Face route. That it was on this side of the mountain did not prove that, if it was Rutkiewicz, she had reached the summit and fallen from it, for climbers on the north face have to make a high traverse onto the west ridge, and she could have slipped while making this traverse. But it could also be the body of a Bulgarian woman, Iordanka Dimitrova, who last October disappeared from 8300 meters on the southwest face. The Italians put the body into a crevasse.

Elizabeth Hawley