Nuptse or Nubtse is a mountain in the Khumbu region of the Mahalangur Himal, in the Nepalese Himalayas. It lies two kilometres WSW of Mount Everest. Nubtse is Tibetan for "west peak", as it is the western segment of the Lhotse-Nubtse massif. The summit of Nuptse is extremely dangerous due to loose snow with many hollows, and there are also weakly attached cornices of snow. This provides a barrier to climbing, yet is not sturdy enough for safe climbing. The long east-west trending main ridge of Nubtse is crowned by seven peaks:
The main peak, Nubtse I, was first climbed on May 16, 1961 by Dennis Davis and SherpaTashi and the following day by Chris Bonington, Les Brown, James Swallow and Pemba Sherpa, members of a British expedition led by Joe Walmsley. This route they took is called the Scott route for the Nuptse mountain. After this it was climbed just twice between 1961 and 1996. A joint British/Nepalese Army team attempted the Scott Route in 1975 but sadly the summit team fell from the final couloir, probably having been knocked off by a stone fall or snow slide. After a long hiatus, Nubtse again became the objective of high-standard mountaineers in the 1990s and 2000s, with important routes being put up on its west, south, and north faces. While Nubtse is a dramatic peak when viewed from the south or west, and it towers above the base camp for the standard south col route on Everest, it is not a particularly independent peak: its topographic prominence is only. Hence it is not ranked on the list of highest mountains. In 2013 Briton Kenton Cool summited Nuptse as part of the"Triple Crown" or "Everest Trilogy" climb, which he achieved that year. He summited Nuptse, Everest, and Lhotse in one season, supported by various climbers and using various climbing techniques. During this climb Mr. Cool tried to save the life a climber that had come down with HACE after summiting Lhotse, but was not reachable for helicopter rescue. On April 30, 2017, famed Swiss mountaineer and speed-climber Ueli Steck died in an accident near Camp 1 off the Western Cwm, whilst on an acclimatisation climb on the north face of the Nuptse Wall.
