Pete Schoening

Peter (Pete) Kittilsby Schoening (July 30, 1927 – September 22, 2004) was an American mountaineer. Schoening was one of two Americans to first successfully climb the Pakistani peak Gasherbrum I in 1958, and was one of the first to summit Mount Vinson in Antarctica in 1966. He was born July 30, 1927, in Seattle, Washington to John and Gudrun Schoening, and grew up in Olympia. He dropped out of school to serve in the US Navy in the last year of the Second World War. Later, he earned a degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington, where he became involved in mountain climbing. He died of cancer at his home in Kenmore, Washington.

Schoening is perhaps best remembered for his heroics during "The Belay" while part of the American K2 expedition in 1953. He single-handedly averted the loss of the entire expedition when he used an ice axe to set and hold a line saving five of the team who had slid off the mountain and dangled thousands of feet in the air.

In 1996 at age 68, he went to Everest together with his nephew, Klev Schoening. He stopped his ascent well short of the summit, at Camp Three, after being diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. The disastrous events of that week are recounted in several books, including: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev.

In August 1953, the same year that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest, an American team of seven set out to climb K2 led by Charles Houston. On the seventh day, climbing without oxygen, they became trapped at over 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) on the Abruzzi Ridge of K2. One of the expedition members, Art Gilkey, collapsed with deep venous thrombosis, followed by pulmonary embolism. Realizing Gilkey would surely die if not taken off the mountain immediately, they began to lower Gilkey, wrapped in a sleeping bag, over treacherous rock and ice in the middle of a storm.

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