Cho Oyu First Climbed 62 Years Ago Today, Oct. 19

Cho Oyu was first climbed on Oct. 19, 1954 and is the sixth highest mountain in the world at 8,188 metres. Cho Oyu means Turquoise Goddess in Tibetan and it stands about 20 kilometres west of Mount Everest on the China/Nepal border. As opposed to the big siege style ascents of the time, the first ascent of Cho Oyu was by Herbert Tichy, Josepha (Sepp) Jöchler and Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama.

At first, a small Austrian team and and seven Sherpas attempted, but they had to retreat. Pasang Dawa Lama descended to Namche to get more supplies. In just three days, Pasang Dawa went from Namche to the summit of Cho Oyu. “Pasang embraced me,” said Tichy after the ascent. “The tears that ran down his cheeks were blown away into eternity as crystals of ice. Sepp and I had tears in our eyes too, and felt no shame. We hugged and kissed each other. How glad I was all three of us were there. All three walked arm in arm to the highest point.”

It was the fifth 8,000-metre peak to be climbed after Annapurna in June 1950, Mount Everest in May 1953, Nanga Parbat in July 1953 and K2 in July 1954. In 1958, Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama reached the summit for his second time and on the second ascent. There was no confirmed third ascent until 1978, when Edi Koblmüller and Alois Furtner of Austria climbed the dangerous Southeast Face. In 1964, a German party claimed to have reached the summit, but had no proof. In 1985, the first new route of an 8,000-metre peak in winter was climbed by Polish climbers Maciej Berbeka and Maciej Pawlikowski and repeated shortly after by Andrzej Heinrich and Jerzy Kukuczka. The first solo of the mountain was in 1994 by Yasushi Yamanoi.