BARRY BISHOP RETURNED from a historic Mount Everest expedition with his reindeer-hide boots, Vibram-soled hiking boots (below), knee-high over-boots with crampons—and no toes.
A polar researcher turned National Geographic photographer, Bishop was on the first U.S. expedition to summit Everest. At 3:30 p.m. on May 22, 1963, he and his climbing partner reached the top, dropped to the ground, and wept. On the descent they couldn’t find their camp. Bishop stamped his feet to warm them but soon felt sharp pain, then numbness. “Knowing it is hopeless, I abandon the effort,” he later wrote.
After Bishop spent a night without shelter, his toes turned “dead white, hard, and icy to the touch.” Crippled by frostbite, he was carried partway down the mountain by Nepalese Sherpas and evacuated by helicopter to…
