| Geneva, Switzerland - 20 March 2002 - RSD is pleased to announce that it is sponsoring an expedition to Everest, commemorating the 1952 attempt to reach the summit by a group from Geneva. They were the first ever to attain an altitude of 8,600 meters, missing their ultimate goal by only 200 meters.
Leading the way: the 1952 expedition
The original group included Jean-Jacques Asper, René Dittert, Ernest Hofstetter, Gabriel Chevalley, André Roch, René Aubert, Léon Flory, Raymond Lambert, Augustin Lombard, Albert Zimmermann and Edouard Wyss-Dunand, all from Geneva. Supported by a group of sherpas lead by Tenzing Norgay, the team set off for Everest in early 1952, via Nepal.
By then, the ascent of Everest had already been attempted several times, mostly from the Tibetan side.
On the Nepalese side, no one had managed to breach the infamous Ice Fall, at 6,000 meters altitude, because of a massive crevasse blocking the way to the Western Comb. After many risky trials, the youngest on the expedition, Jean-Jacques Asper, succeeded in crossing the crevasse due to his amazing acrobatic skills. This allowed the Geneva team to be the first to access the upper plateau and proceed on to the massive block of rock and ice.
After several weeks, they found a route to the peak and Lambert and Tenzing set off. Unfortunately, exhausted by the time spent at high altitude, without oxygen masks and hindered by harsh weather conditions, the two mountaineers had to turn back just 200 meters from the summit, at an incredible altitude of 8,600 meters.
This achievement was extraordinary. The Geneva team went beyond the frontiers of a known world. Half a century ago, nobody knew how human beings would react at high altitude, nor the risks for life in what was referred to then as the death zone.
The 1952 expedition also opened up a route. When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did conquer the summit a year later in the Spring of 1953, they recognized the contribution of their predecessors to their achievement, and paid homage to them by saying that half of the glory should go to the Swiss group.
50 years later: the 2002 expedition
When Stéphane Schaffter, an alpine guide from Geneva and specialist of the Himalayas suggested to Jean-Jacques Asper that he should return to Nepal for the fiftieth anniversary of the earlier expedition, Asper, still very fit at 76, was immediately taken with the idea. To provide complementary links with the 1952 adventure, Lambert's son, Yves and his friend, Tashi Tenzing, Tenzing Norgay's grandson, will also take part in the adventure.
In addition, the expedition will be joined by two major figures of the Himalayas: Apa Sherpa, an all time record holder who has reached the summit eleven times, and Jean Troillet, a renown climber from Switzerland, who snowboarded down the North Face of Everest from an 8,700 meters altitude in 1997.
Completing this expedition force are the high altitude medical doctor Philippe Arvis and Guillaume Vallot, a journalist and photographer.
A film will be made of the expedition. It will relate Yves Lambert's journey, walking in his father's footsteps after 50 years, trying to make a reality of his great dream, the one his father had dreamt before him.
The expedition left Geneva on March 15th and is due to reach the world's highest summit around the end of May of 2002. The journal of the expedition, regularly fed by the team via satellite phone, will be posted on RSD's Web site and can be accessed directly through the link www.rsd.com/everest
RSD is proud to be associated with this event and to pay tribute not only to the magnificent achievement of the 1952 team, but also to the exceptional endurance, courage and technical qualities required to realize the ascent of Everest.
About RSD
RSD, a name associated with innovation and technical excellence, is a leading provider of document management solutions. RSD's comprehensive archival management system is designed to deliver rapid deployment of all corporate documents and guarantees seamless access to all business critical data within the organization. Today, over a thousand companies around the world, including a majority of the "Fortune 500" across all industries, depend on the "savoir-faire" of RSD for their document distribution, archival and restoration needs.
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