Lhotse 8516m is the fourth highest mountain on Earth and is connected to Mount Everest via the South Col. In addition to the main summit at 8,516 meters above sea level, Lhotse Middle (East) is 8,414 meters and Lhotse Shar is 8,383 meters. It is located at the border between Tibet (China) and Nepal. The main summit of Lhotse was first climbed on May 18, 1956 by the Swiss team of Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger from the Swiss Mount Everest/Lhotse Expedition. On May 12, 1979, Zepp Maierl and Rolf Walter of Austria made the first ascent of Lhotse Shar. Lhotse Middle remained, for a long time, the highest unclimbed named point on Earth; on May 23, 2001, its first ascent was made by Eugeny Vinogradsky, Sergei Timofeev, Alexei Bolotov and Petr Kuznetsov of a Russian expedition. On 31 December 1988, Krzysztof Wielicki, a Polish climber, completed the first winter ascent of Lhotse.
