Annapurna I I I An Italian expedition to Annapurna III was led by Francesco Santon with Renato Cepparo as deputy leader. There were 27 members, some of whom were trekkers, but they claimed that 19 would have been capable of reaching the summit. They climbed the west ridge, abandoning the idea of the originally proposed southwest pillar at Base Camp because they decided that this route would take too long. From Camp V Giuseppina Cheney, Luigino Henry and Pasang Temba Sherpa reached the summit on October 23. On October 25 Giorgio Brianzi and Piero Radin also reached the summit. Whilst descending from the summit, between Camps V and IV, late in the evening, the first summit pair met with an accident. Apparently Henry had belayed two members and two Sherpas and as he was coiling the
rope, he slipped and fell 1000 feet into a crevasse and was killed. The second summit pair did not know of the accident. On their descent, they met with a similar accident at about the same place. They were roped and nobody died, but Radin suffered a broken leg and other injuries. Before leaving Kathmandu for Base Camp, the leader and deputy said that one of the objectives of the expedition was to prove that ordinary competent climbers could reach the summits of major Himalayan peaks and that one did not need to be super-endowed. Of course this has been known for some time. Yet “ordinary” climbers must not lack “mountain sense” and must remember they are climbing a major Himalayan peak. M i c h a e l C h e n e y , Himalayan Club