History

History

The days of large national expeditions are gone, and with them the official ways to keep track of adventure statistics.

Adventurers today often climb or travel in small, loosely connected groups, without national official sanctions. The challenges are different, but often just as great as in the days of the large teams of Amundsen or Mallory.

To keep up with the modern adventure statistics, a handful of private individuals in the world have put in an enormous effort over many years, with no financial rewards or even the cover of phone and administration bills.

AdventureStats is the first site dedicated to the modern history of adventure. It is financed by ExplorersWeb Inc. and built on information compiled mainly by Xavier and Eberhard during the last 20 years in addition to adventure individuals in the Arctic areas.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for additions or corrections.

The team at AdventureStats.com.

Brief History of Adventurestats

When the German explorer Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth came back from his expedition to Jongsang Peak as long ago as 1930, he began with compiling tables of High Asian mountains. The Swiss team member Marcel Kurz collected from then on all expedition-reports from High Asia and compiled the most accurate "Chronique Himalayenne" (Part I 1953, Part II 1963). G.O.Dyhrenfurth continued with full overviews for every year with ongoing additions and corrections especially in the Swiss journal "Die Alpen" and later together with the Swedish explorer and chronicler Anders Bolinder in the "Berge der Welt"("Mountain World")-year-books from the Swiss Foundation of Alpine Research.

Other statistical pioneerwork was done by Harish Kapadia (Himalayan Journal), Joydeep Sircar (The Himalayan Handbook), Trevor Braham (successor of G.O. Dyhrenfurth in "Die Alpen"), from Russia Pavel S. Rototayev, the South America - specialists Evelio Echevarria and Witold H. Paryski, Italian Mario Fantin with his "Andes" - and "Himalaya and Karakorum" - books and the editor of Himavanta from India Kamal Kumar Guha.

Very important were Liz Hawley and Mike Cheney (directly from Kathmandu, Nepal they sent their informations among others to the American Alpine Journal, to Anders Bolinder and later to the well-known Basque chronicler Xavier Eguskitza). Liz Hawley is still the very best source for all mountain - activities in Nepal.

Many other local chroniclers did important additions and corrections, from Poland Józef Nyka and Zbigniew Kowalewski, from Slovenia Franci Savenc, not to forget Tsunemichi Ikeda of the magazine IWA TO YUKI in Japan, H. Adams Carter of the American Alpine Club and later Mike Westmacott with the Alpine Club's "Himalayan Index". Moreover Louis Baume wrote his wonderful "Sivalaya" in 1978, Jill Neate collected facts for her fantastic "High Asia"-book and in the UK - magazine "High" the "Mountain Info" was included with many contributions from around the globe.

In 1981 Eberhard Jurgalski, an enthusiastic German, began to collect facts of High Asian mountains and mountaineering. From 1982 to 1987 Anders Bolinder was the best teacher for the so important "Addenda and Corrigenda"-work and it grew a fruitful cooperation between Bolinder and Jurgalski.

After Bolinder's death Jurgalski continued alone, compiling computerised tables with all facts collected by all the record-keepers mentioned above. Meanwhile Xavier Eguskitza, who began to collect facts back in 1974 was the most accurate statistics-creator, and was later the only person who had mostly confirmed stats about all the 8000ers. Liz Hawley was the best source for Nepal, but for full statistics of those giants only Eguskitza had an answer to nearly every question concerning them.

Ten years Jurgalski worked on alone, always updating on his PC, but found it important to contact Liz Hawley, because he realized it grew more and more complicated to stay complete. Liz Hawley recommended him to contact Eguskitza.

Finally since 1997 Eguskitza and Jurgalski were cooperating and completing each other. Jurgalski found helpful people in Japan ( from the Japanese Alpine Club Yuichi Matsuda, Kinichi Yamamori and Mahiro Tada), Korea (Nam Sun-Woo) and Russia (Vladimir Shataev and Arkadi Klepinin) to fill some gaps and now his archives are on the way to be the most accurate fact collection about the 8000ers in the world on PC. The complete statistics of the Seven Summits also were created by Eguskitza and continued by Jurgalski, not to forget statistics and facts of many other mountains below 8000 meter.

In recent times a few individuals collected statistics also from the Poles. The Pole-tables are based on draft-lists of Christian de Marliave from France and Ian Brown from Australia with additional information of Colin Monteath from New Zealand, Damien Gildea from Australia and from several other sources.

This site wishes to become the home of adventure - statistics. This is only possible, when all adventurers help to add and correct to be most complete and accurate. Not only dates and routes, but also correct name spellings and whatever the readers like to add, this site want to be fair and detailed. So take care of the statistics, they are helpful and enjoyable in many ways, but should stay in the hands of people, who worked carefully on them through many years and will be careful with them in the years to come...