page_title: Jules Jacot-Guillarmod
section_title: Himalaya expeditions
hierarchical_section_title: Jules Jacot-Guillarmod / Biography / Himalaya expeditions
caption_attribution_description: English: First photo of K2 summit taken by Jules Jacot Guillarmod in 1902 at 6:15am.
context_page_description: Jules Jacot-Guillarmod was a Swiss physician, mountaineer and photographer. He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1868 and died in the Gulf of Aden in 1925. As a mountaineer he was known for his ascensions in the Swiss Alps but particularly for his participation in two Himalaya expeditions.
context_section_description: In 1902, Jules Jacot-Guillarmod participated as a doctor in the expedition organised by the Englishman Oscar Eckenstein to try the ascent of the K2 in the Karakoram. The other members are two Englishmen including Aleister Crowley and two Austrians. After landing in Bombay on 21 March 1902, the group crossed India to Askoley, following the maps drawn ten years earlier by William Martin Conway up to Concordia Square on the Baltoro glacier; they were accompanied by a column of 150 porters. From there, the group climbs up to the foot of the K2, an area never reached before, but remains stuck for almost two months on a base camp at an altitude of 5,700 metres due to bad weather. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod makes the first observations of mountain sickness there: migraines, loss of appetite, nausea, etc., however he did not make the link between altitude and these symptoms. On July 10, 1902, he explored the Northeast ridge of the K2 with one of the Austrians and reaches an altitude of 6,700 metres, the highest point of the expedition. The weather conditions deteriorated the following days and one of the climbers suffered from a pulmonary edema. The travellers return across eastern India, making the stay to last a total of seven months. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod brings home from this expedition nearly a thousand stereoscopic photographs revealing regions little or not at all known at the time · .
  Two years later, Jacot-Guillarmod himself organized an expedition, this time to the Napalese and 8585m high Kangchenjunga near Everest. Apart from two Swiss, he also manages to win Aleister Crowley, whom he has met during the K2 expedition in 1902. For the organisation of the expedition in Darjeeling they call upon an Italian hotelier with local language skills. From Darjeeling, the group advances on the border between Sikkim and Nepal.
  After climbing through the Yalung Chu valley, the summit is approached by a very steep glacier: three Nepalese carriers and a Swiss participant lose their lives falling into a crevasse at an altitude of 6,500 metres. The expedition is thus brutally stopped and the return journey through the Sikkim mountains is made without Crowley, who fled after the avalanche.
caption: K2 by Jules Jacot-Guillarmod
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