Pete Schoening

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Pete Schoening (July 30, 1927 - September 22, 2004) was an American mountaineer. Schoening was one of two Americans to first successfully climb Gasherbrum I in 1958, and was one of the first to summit Mount Vinson in Antarctica in 1966.

Schoening is perhaps best remembered for his heroics during "The Belay" while part of the American K2 expedition in 1953. The American team climbing Alpine style without oxygen, became trapped at over 25,000 feet on the Abruzzi Ridge. One of the expedition Art Gilkey developed deep venous thrombosis, followed by pulmonary embolism. The team, realizing Gilkey would surely die if not taken off the mountain immediately, began to lower Gilkey wrapped in a sleeping bag over treacherous rock and ice in the middle of a storm. While attempting to traverse an ice sheet, climber George Bell lost his footing, pulling Tony Streather loose. Streather fell into the rope joining Charles Houston and Bob Bates. Bates and Houston fell into the rope connecting Dee Molenaar to Gilkey. Schoening through pure strength and quickness was able to jam his ice axe against a boulder and arrest the fall of all five climbers and the sleeping bag containing Gilkey. During the recovery process from the fall, the team realised that the sleeping bag containing Gilkey was gone. Gilkey was lost shortly afterwards in an avalanche, however there is some conjecture that following Bell's fall, Gilkey cut himself loose to save the lives of his five endangered colleagues who were being kept alive by Schoening's belay. Schoening's actions clearly saved the lives of five of his climbing partners however and were arguably one of the most heroic actions in the history of mountaineering.^[1] The story of the 1953 American expedition is told in the mountaineering classic "K2-the savage Mountain" by Dr. Charles Houston.

Schoening was awarded the David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his heroics by the American Alpine Club in 1981 as a "mountaineer who has distinguished himself, with unselfish devotion at personal risk or sacrifice of a major objective, in going to the assistance of fellow climbers imperiled in the mountains."