The Three Pinnacles are a formation of steep rocks along the northeast ridge on Mount Everest

Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

. They represent one of the longest unsolved challenges in high-level mountaineering

Mountaineering

Mountaineering or mountain climbing is the sport, hobby or profession of hiking, skiing, and climbing mountains. While mountaineering began as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed mountains it has branched into specialisations that address different aspects of the mountain and consists...

, which has now been resolved.

The rocks are located at around 7,800, 8,100 and 8,200 metres above sea level

Above mean sea level

The term above mean sea level refers to the elevation or altitude of any object, relative to the average sea level datum. AMSL is used extensively in radio by engineers to determine the coverage area a station will be able to reach...

 (height of base of pinnacle) and are therefore already in the death zone, in which people cannot recover, even at rest.

The normal routes on Everest avoid this area; the normal northern route leaves it literally to the left.

In various attempts to conquer the pinnacles to open a new route across the entire northeast ridge, there have repeatedly been serious problems and fatalities: In 1982 Peter Boardman

Peter Boardman

Peter Boardman was a British climber, Everest summiteer, and author of several mountaineering books.-Early life:...

 and Joe Tasker

Joe Tasker

Joe Tasker was one of the most talented British climbers during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Born into a traditional Roman Catholic family, he was one of ten children and spent his early childhood in Port Clarence, Middlesbrough then attended Ushaw Seminary, County Durham between the ages of 13...

 died in the first serious attempt to climb in groups at grade 5 within the death zone. Joe Tasker disappeared; ten years after his death Kazakh mountaineers found Peter Boardman's body in 1992 at the foot of the second pinnacle sitting as if he were asleep.

In 1988 Russell Brice

Russell Brice

Russell Reginald Brice is a New Zealand mountaineer. He is also the owner/manager of Himalayan Experience Ltd., a climbing expedition company...

 and his partner, Harry Taylor, finally mastered the Three Pinnacles, but they were so exhausted after climbing the third pinnacle that they abandoned their original plan to continue along the normal route to the summit. Instead, they crossed the normal route along the north ridge and descended to the North Col

North Col

The North Col refers to a sharp-edged pass or col carved by glaciers connecting Mount Everest and Changtse in Tibet. It forms the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier....

.

Not until 1995 did a team from a Japanese university, supported by a group of about 35 Sherpa porters, conquer the entire northeast ridge route, including the Three Pinnacles in both directions. The Sherpas had virtually the entire route covered with fixed rope

Fixed rope

Fixed rope is the practice of fixing in place bolted ropes to assist climbers and walkers in exposed mountain locations. They are used widely on American and European climbing routes but disdained by purist mountaineers. Many guided expeditions to any of the eight-thousanders normally set up fixed...

s. Only when that was in place did a group of Japanese go to the top.

Even today this part of the vast mountain is almost always avoided, too great are its difficulties, that range from the Pinnacles themselves to the weather, the extreme cold, the winds and the altitude as well as the arduous terrain.

Almost all the mountaineering challenges on Mount Everest have now been overcome, but there remain two routes with extraordinary difficulties: a direttissima climb up the avalanche-prone East Face – the only yet unclimbed direct route on Everest, and ascent of the north pillar on the East Face over the (according to George Mallory

George Mallory

George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....

) so-called "Phantasy Ridge". This ridge ends at the centre of the northeast ridge – below the Three Pinnacles. A climber wishing to climb up the "Phantasy Ridge" on his way to the summit would have to negotiate the east ridge and then conquer the Three Pinnacles on the northeast ridge.

Sources

• Stephen Venables: Everest, Kangshung Face. Pan, 1991, ISBN 0330315595
• Roberto Mantovani und Kurt Diemberger: Mount Everest - Kampf in eisigen Höhen. Moewig, 1997, ISBN 3-8118-1715-9
• Stephen Venables: Everest - Die Geschichte seiner Erkundung. Geo, Frederking und Thaler, 2003, ISBN 3-89405-465-4