Dhaulagiri. After the Swiss failed to climb Dhaulagiri (26,811 feet) in 1953, Andre Roch declared, “Success on this peak seems a nearly hopeless undertaking. Dhaulagiri appears climbable, yes, but the risks are much too great.” The Argentines, however, under Francisco Ibáñez, came within the narrowest margin of climbing the mountain. They followed the Swiss route up the Mayangdi Khola Gorge where they placed their base camp at 12,000 feet. Their next camps were established in about the same places as the Swiss: Camp 1 at 14,750 feet, Camp 2 at 16,400 feet, Camp 3 at 18,375 feet, Camp 4 at 19,700 feet, and Camp 5 at 20,700 feet. The Swiss could find no adequate campsite on the difficult section they called the “Pear,” and here it was that the Argentines put to good use a part of the 15 tons of equipment they had brought. At 23,000 feet Sergeant Godoy of the Argentine Army blasted with explosives a tent site for Camp 6. From there the climbers and five sherpas completed the ascent of the “Pear” and established Camp 7 at 24,600 feet, just under the crest of the west ridge. Alfredo Magnani and Austrian-born Gerhard Watzl with Pasang Dawa Lama (who climbed with Fritz Wiessner in 1939 to the highest point reached on K2) and his brother Ang Nyma set out on June 1, 1954, up the final ridge which they found most difficult rock climbing. A particularly hard section had to be turned on small ledges on the face itself. Finally at 5 P.M., they stood again on the summit snow ridge at 26,250 feet. Without food or tent, they dug a snow cave for a bivouac. During the night it snowed. Only 550 feet below the peak, with no apparent climbing difficulties left, possibly two or three hours below the summit, they were tempted to press onward. Reason prevailed, however, and the exhausted men wisely began their retreat. Well it was, too, since they did not arrive back at Camp 7 until nine o’clock that night. There they found the expedition leader, Francisco Ibáñez, who had badly frozen feet and had lost his crampons. In his condition, he felt he could not descend safely without crampons, so next day they descended without him. The doctor, Antonio Ruiz Berramendi, and the Chilean, Roberto Busquets, climbed up from Camp 6 and brought the injured leader down. Despite the monsoon, the expedition carried him in record time to Kathmandu, but tragically he died there in the hospital on June 30th from infected frozen feet and pneumonia. A German - Swiss expedition hopes to attack the mountain again in 1955.