Legendary trail runner and mountaineer Kilian Jornet was attempting to summit Mount Everest from the seldom-climbed West Ridge on May 24 when he was caught up in a small avalanche.
He survived without injury after the slide carried him 50 meters down the mountain, but that was enough for him to curtail his solo summit attempt after a journey of 30 hours climbing above Camp 2 (elevation 21,300 feet). Jornet said he triggered the avalanche himself as he walked over a wind slab section of snow in the Hornbein Couloir.
The 35-year-old Catalan athlete, who lives in Norway, was trying to approach the 29,032-foot summit from the West Ridge along the Hornbein Corredor—a route named for Tom Hornbein, who opened the route in 1963 along with fellow American mountaineer Willie Unsoeld.
The West Ridge route to Everest is the least common route for mountaineers to take because of its technical difficulty and long exposure to altitude. It’s a very vertical route, too, with considerable amounts of exposed rock and ice terrain. Jornet, as in his previous Everest climbing odysseys over the past seven years, was not carrying…
