[3] Following his medical degree, Hornbein completed an internship in Seattle before returning to St. Louis for his residency and a postdoctoral fellowship in anesthesiology.
[5] From 1961 to 1963, Hornbein served in the United States Navy, where he became a lieutenant commander and was stationed at the San Diego Naval Hospital.
They found themselves hours behind the generally accepted schedule and after spending 20 minutes at the top they began the descent.
Bishop and Jerstad had reached the summit earlier in the day using the South Col route and by this time were exhausted and nearly out of oxygen.
The four climbers joined together on the descent and continued to make very slow progress until they felt it was too dangerous and stopped sometime after midnight.
We hung in a timeless gap, pained by an intensive cold air – and had the idea not to be able to do anything but to shiver and to wait for the sun rising.
In his book Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer writes that "Hornbein's and Unsoeld's ascent was--and continues to be--deservedly hailed as one of the great feats in the annals of mountaineering.
In 2006, he moved from the Seattle area to Estes Park, Colorado, where he lived with his wife, Kathy Mikesell Hornbein, a retired pediatrician and young adult novelist.