8 Most Terrible Tragedies on Cho Oyu

0:00 - Ronald Naar: He Turned Back Just Below the Summit and Died on an Ordinary Descent 15:18 - Phujung Bhote Sherpa: He Fixed the Ropes for Others; the Snow Bridge Gave Way 29:34 - Adam Cinnamond: He Turned Back in Time and Vanished Without a Trace 41:44 - Claude Kogan: The First Women's Expedition and an Avalanche Forty Meters From the Dream 55:21 - Miha Valic: One Ordinary Step on the Descent Broke the "Iron Man" 1:08:23 - Noora Toivonen and Pavel Bonadysenko: One Wrong Turn on the Flat Plateau 1:22:22 - Javier Ormazabal: Solo to the Summit, a Storm on the Descent, a Stranger's Tent at 7,800 m 1:36:32 - Guy Levey: He Climbed for Other People's Orphans Cho Oyu, 8,188 meters, the "Turquoise Goddess" just twenty kilometers from Everest, is called the safest of the planet's fourteen eight-thousanders and is sold as a "trekking peak" — almost a walk, a rehearsal before Everest. But that gentle label is its main weapon: what kills here is not a vertical wall or a technical nightmare, but the ordinary — a routine slip on the descent, a thin snow bridge over a crevasse, one wrong turn on the flat white plateau. This compilation holds eight stories from its slopes: a world-class veteran whose cold death-zone rule finally closed on him; a high-altitude worker who fixed the ropes so that others would live; a man who turned back in time and vanished anyway; the world's first all-women expedition, stopped by an avalanche forty meters from the dream; an "iron man" broken by a single ordinary step; a rope team that dissolved into the whiteness of the plateau; a soloist with the "Snow Leopard" title whom no one reached in time; and a police officer who climbed so that orphans he had never met could go to college. Eight different fates — and one mountain that does not care why you came.