12:52 pm CDT May 21, 2009
(MountEverest.net) He lost 10x8,000er summiteer Oh Hee-Joon and Lee Hyun-Jo there in 2007. The climbers fell to their deaths while attempting the summit on Everest’s SW face with Korean top climber Park Young-Seok.
It was a rough deal on Mr Park; the climbers were his closest friends - they had many difficult routes and traversed both Poles together. Park went down memory lane on a train of booze; but re-emerged 6 months later, ready to tackle the dreaded face again - in his team mates' memory.
"I will conquer the peak at any cost," he told Dong-a Ilbo earlier this year. "I`ll climb up even if my calf is ruptured. I`ve been waiting since 2007. I`ve built a good and bad relationship with the southwestern wall. It`s about time I concluded it."
In that spirit, Mr Park reportedly summited Everest today, designing a new route on the immense and difficult technical SW Face.
"This is one of the most significant events this season, since the other two routes on the SW Face were opened long ago. The right hand route (British Route) in the 70´s; and the left hand route (Soviet Route) in the 80´s. 27 years after, now we have a third route, in the middle, a Korean Route," commented ExWeb's contributor and statistician Rodrigo Granzotto Peron:
"Park became obsessed with the SW Face at first sight. He tried it in 1991, 1993 and 2007. All three attempts were unsuccessful; he lost a friend in the second attempt and two more in the third. Determined to make it this time, he came back with a strong team, and today the dream came true."
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