1952 Swiss Mount Everest expedition

The other Swiss members were Rene Aubert, Leon Flory, André Roch and Raymond Lambert, who joined despite having suffered amputations of frostbitten toes.

[3] Building on Shipton's experience, the Genevans reached the head of the Western Cwm and climbed the huge face above to the desolate, wind-swept plateau of the South Col. Three Swiss climbers and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay continued towards the summit, pitching a tent at 8,400 meters.

Despite the best plans, Tenzing and Lambert now had to spend a night at 27,500 feet (8,400 m) with no sleeping bags and no stove; producing a trickle of drinking water by melting snow over a candle.

Edmund Hillary recalled in 1953 "an incredibly lonely sight, the battered framework of the tent that Tenzing and Raymond Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition pitched over a year before and where they had spent an extremely uncomfortable night without food, without drink, and without sleeping bags.

They struggled heroically, at times crawling on all fours, hindered by the dead weight of malfunctioning oxygen sets, finally grinding to a halt near 8595 m, about 250 m short of the summit.

[7] Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay were able to reach a height of about 8,595 metres (28,199 ft) on the south-eastern ridge, setting a new climbing altitude record (assuming that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine did not ascend any higher during their expedition in 1924).

A party including Lambert, Tenzing and others made it to the South Col, but was forced back by extremely cold weather after reaching an altitude of 8,100 metres (26,575 ft).

They held out in terrible conditions of discomfort and mental strain, but never succeeded in getting within striking distance of the summit (Hunt had decided that if the 1953 British expedition failed, they would also make another post-monsoon attempt).