YOU WANT TIBET THEY'LL MAKE IT? TEN AREA MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS TAKING ON DANGEROUUS PUMORI.(Sports)

Byline: Joe Layden Staff writer

It was entertainment time at the Hard As A Rock Training Center.

The lights had been dimmed and the projector warmed up, and now the members of the 1992 Capital District Pumori Expedition were gathered in a loose semi-circle, eagerly awaiting a slide show. They had been coming here each Wednesday evening for the past few months, to work out, to swap stories with other climbers, but mostly to discuss the specifics of their own adventure: a trip to Nepal in September, during which they will attempt to become the first expedition comprised entirely of Capital District residents to scale one of the great Himalayan peaks.

Their choice is Pumori, a 23,800- foot mountain that sits on the Tibetan border, roughly five miles west of Mount Everest, in the Khumbu Region of Nepal. The 10 men who have signed on for this expedition have varying degrees of experience. Some have climbed above 20,000 feet. Only one, though, has ever climbed in the Himalayas; the rest have never even visited the region. They know all about it. They know about the culture and the history and the danger. They can recite the names of previous expeditions and mountaineers both famous and obscure. They can tell you without pausing to think that Pumori, means "Bride's Peak" in Sherpani, and that it was so christened by George Mallory, who, while climbing Everest, decided to name the mountain after one of his cousins back in England, who happened to be getting married.

But they've never been there, never seen it up close. Now, they were about to be treated to a glimpse. They had obtained slides from an Everest expedition, during which one of the climbers had taken some photos of nearby Pumori. The images were bright and beautiful and brilliant, and as they flashed on a wall, the Hard As A Rock Training Center filled with the sound of "Oooohhs" and "Aaahhss."

Then there was silence. A slide depicting a significant portion of the group's climbing route was before them. The sky was crystal blue, the mountain gray and stark and imposing. And there, right in the middle of their route, right where they would be crossing, right there around 20,000 feet, was an avalanche in full, glorious roar.

"Wow!" …