Peru: Cerro Yerupajá (21,769 ft.). From an expedition of six members, ages 24 to 31, James Maxwell and David Harrah left high camp at 20,500 feet about 10 A.M. 31 July 1950 in a try for the summit. Late in the afternoon they reached the final 300 feet of the summit ridge and found it very narrow and heavily corniced. Both sides fell off at 60 degrees or more. The summit was reached after 5 P.M. Sunset was at 7:30 P M. On the descent, 100 feet down, Maxwell thrust his axe into the corniced snow of the 7-foot wide ridge to take a picture, when suddenly the snow gave way under Harrah along a crack which opened between his feet. He fell the full lenth of the rope, over 120 feet. Maxwell grabbed his axe, took a few steps back, drove the axe into the snow and braced himself as the first tug came. The shock dragged him a foot or more toward the edge and partially pulled his axe loose. The rope, cutting through the snow, barely enabled Maxwell to hold. The rope jolted three times as Harrah hung freely suspended against a 70 degree ice slope below. Maxwell says a fourth pull would probably have pulled them both completely off the ridge. If the rope had not been nylon, and hence more elastic, the accident would certainly have been fatal. Harrah’s ribs were hurting painfully. Maxwell could pull in the rope, but could not help otherwise. Harrah had a short ice-axe hanging from each wrist, and with these it took him about 45 minutes to dig his own way back up to the crest of the ridge.

After the accident, while continuing the descent, another cornice gave way beneath Maxwell; but he managed to jump in time. The lower and wider part of the ridge was reached after dark. Two halts of half an hour each were made before they finally decided to bivouac in a long crack in the snow. Removing boots, they became aware of the serious extent of frostbite, which for some hours they had been feeling in their toes. The next morning Harrah and Maxwell descended to high camp, and within four days both had painfully climbed down to base camp. Other expedition members aided and prepared transportation to Lima. About four weeks later, Harrah had all of his toes amputated, and Maxwell parts of several.

Source of information: members of the party (who for the most part themselves supplied the analysis given below.)

Analysis. On an expedition of this nature, climbers generally feel that they are striving for something big, and therefore are perhaps more willing to take risks than during an ordinary climb. As the start was made late in order to have more warmth, there was only a relatively short period before dark to conquer the most difficult climbing on the peak and get down again. Harrah writes:

“The three hundred feet of the final summit ridge, varying from three to twelve feet in width and corniced the whole of its length on the west side, is the most dangerous place I have seen; many climbers would consider traversing it an unjustifiable risk. I recognized the danger at the time, but decided to go on, probably because of the psychological momentum I had acquired from just having ascended the rock face, which was itself...dangerous.” It is well known that high altitude and the completion or near-completion of a mission tend to cause a let-down and resulting possible nervousness. Going to the top under these circumstances might more safely have been done by first scouting and then placing fixed ropes, etc.

Harrah also reports that his feet had “turned numb soon after starting from high camp; they were wet most of the day, since there were between 2 to 12 inches of partly consolidated and sometimes wet snow on the ridge.”Even in the absence of the cornice accident and its attendant delay, injury and weakening, frostbite would to some extent have been effective. The climbers believe that gaiters, to keep wet snow from melting into one’s boots, would have been

most helpful. Larger boots, allowing over two pairs of heavy wool socks, or lighter socks of carefully considered sizes would doubtless also have helped. They were using U.S. Army and Molitor type Bramani boots; Harrah's Molitor boots did not have felt innersoles. Spare dry socks would have been useful for the bivouac. Both men agree they could have been better prepared for the possibility of a necessary bivouac.

Despite the extreme hazard of the upper ridge and despite their injuries, the two climbers did get down by themselves. It is difficult to do other than admire their reactions after the break. Admittedly they were extremely lucky. But the results of their climb do show that if a really serious accident occurs on a high and difficult peak, persons who are fairly well trained have a much better chance of survival than inexperienced climbers.

Supplementary Note: Regarding the cornice fall, it is of interest to consider the tragic 1948 cornice accident on Nevado Alpamayo in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Three Swiss climbers, along with the huge cornice on which they were climbing, fell some thousand feet down the mountainside. On Alpamayo, the collapse of many thousands of tons of ice was occasioned apparently by the leader’s chopping a few small steps in the ice of a steep section of the ridge. Here the leader, second man and third man, who alone was belaying, were widely separated; and all were on the section that collapsed. On Yerupaja, it was the belayer who fell. One may thus infer the necessity for extreme caution in striking or prodding such cornices with the axe and the desirability of the second man, the belayer, keeping as far from the lip of the cornice as humanly possible. This conclusion alone, however, places too little emphasis on the actual danger of walking on narrow snow cornices even though the immediate and direct cause of the accident on Yerupajá may well have been thrusting an ice-axe into the back of the cornice.