The Western Cwm (pronounced "koom," a Welsh word for valley) was named by George Mallory in 1921. Deceptively flat in appearance, it stretches two miles long and about a half mile wide with a gain of 2,000 vertical feet between Camp I and Camp II. Andre Roch, a member of the 1952 Swiss expedition that was the first to successfully enter the Cwm, dubbed it the Suicide Passage for the avalanches that crash down the steep ramparts of Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse on its borders and the huge crevasses that break up its glacier.