Yasuko Namba

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Yasuko Namba ( Japanese 難 波 康 子 , Namba Yasuko ; * February 2, 1949 , † May 10, 1996 on Mount Everest ) was a Japanese mountaineer . She gained international fame as one of the victims of the Mount Everest disaster in May 1996 .

Seven Summits

Namba on New Year 1982 reached the first peak of the Seven Summits to Kilimanjaro in Africa. This was followed by the ascent of Aconcagua and Mount McKinley in 1985 and Elbrus in 1992. After climbing Mount Vinson in 1993 and the Carstensz pyramid in 1994, Namba was only missing the ascent of Mount Everest to be the second woman in Japan to have all the peaks to conquer the Seven Summits.

Death on Mount Everest

For the ascent of Mount Everest, Yasuko Namba joined a commercially led expedition of the New Zealand company Adventure Consultants in the spring of 1996 under the direction of mountain guide Rob Hall . At that time there were other expeditions on Mount Everest, including a team from the US company Mountain Madness, led by the experienced high-altitude climber and mountain guide Scott Fischer .

On the afternoon of May 10, 1996, Namba reached the summit of Mount Everest and at that time, at 47 years of age, was the oldest woman to ever stand on the highest peak on earth. During the descent, she and 32 other mountaineers from various expeditions were surprised by a sudden change in the weather. Namba and ten other mountaineers, mountain guides and Sherpas got lost in the snowstorm with visibility less than five meters on the south saddle of Mount Everest at an altitude of 7,900 m, only about 200 meters from the rescue high camp 4. In order to protect themselves from the cold ( including the wind chill , they reached around -75 degrees Celsius) and not to crash over the edge of the south saddle in the poor visibility, the climbers finally crouched close to each other. After the storm cleared up a bit at midnight, five of the lost climbers were able to reach high altitude camp 4 and mobilize help. In an unprecedented rescue operation, the Russian mountain guide Anatoli Bukrejew from Scott Fischer's team was able to bring three of the five remaining climbers back to high altitude camp 4. Only Yasuko Namba and Beck Weathers , an American customer from Rob Hall's expedition, were left behind as they were apparently dying. While Weathers was able to drag himself back to altitude camp 4 on his own, but with severe frostbite, Yasuko Namba died on the night of May 11, 1996 on the south saddle of Mount Everest of exhaustion and hypothermia.

Overall, the storm on Mount Everest on May 10 and 11, 1996 claimed eight lives.

Others

Namba was married and worked as a human resources manager at Federal Express Japan.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Namba, Yasuko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 難 波康 子 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese climber
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1949
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1996
Place of death Mount Everest , South Col