Two Teams, on Live TV, Meet Atop Everest : Nepal, China, Japan Climbers Reach Peak From Two Directions

In a pair of mountaineering firsts, multinational climbing teams scaled Mt. Everest simultaneously from two directions today and made a live television broadcast from atop the world’s highest mountain.

Signals relayed via satellite from a small video camera attached to the helmet of Japanese climber Susumu Nakamura showed a panoramic view of the deep blue sky and rough, snow-covered terrain at the top of the world.

Gasping from the thin air and with frost on their eyebrows, 10 climbers from Nepal, China and Japan in bright red, blue and yellow mountaineering gear congratulated each other. They erected on the summit a string of brightly colored banners during the live broadcast, monitored in Tokyo.

The climbers filled small bottles with samples of snow and spilled whiskey on the ground to honor climbers who have died in previous attempts.

Nakamura’s special camera is so full of sensitive equipment that, if abandoned on the Chinese side of the mountain, it could be viewed as a violation of Western laws governing the transfer of high technology to communist nations, said Hiroshi Yamazaki of Japan’s Nihon Television Corp., or NTV, which paid most of the expedition’s $12.5-million bill.

On NBC News Sunrise

NBC News Sunrise, monitored in New York, began its 6 a.m. show with footage of the climbers celebrating at the summit. Chinese television also broadcast part of the climb.

The expedition, involving more than 200 people from Japan, Nepal and China, is the largest assault ever on Everest. One member of the Japanese team, Hidetaka Mizukoshi, died of heart failure during the climb.

Climbing began in April to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the first Everest conquest by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay. More than 192 people have since scaled the 29,028-foot mountain, with 13 climbing more than once.

In this climb, however, members of two teams met at the summit after climbing simultaneously from the mountain’s north face in China and the south face in Nepal, the first such rendezvous in history.

Soon after, the 10 at the summit were shown beginning their descent to try another first--three climbers who reached the summit from the north will descend southward and three who came from the south will descend to the north.