Return To the Scence of the Climb

James T. Lester (1927-2010) wasn't a mountaineer - he wasn't any sort of athlete, or even a hobbyist sportsman. But in 1963 he participated in the first successful American Mount Everest Expedition (AMEE), when Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route alongside Nawang Gombu Sherpa. Three weeks later, AMEE's Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge - a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded.