Inside the Climber’s Minds

With teams mostly enjoying the comforts and electricity of low villages or base camps, medical the blogs are full of rich details about their recent acclimatization climbs. As I have said so many times, I deeply appreciate it when a climber takes the time, and sometimes risk, to describe what is happening on the mountain. Not so much for the mountaineering details but for the insight into the human experience of climbing Everest. Thanks to you all.

But first some mountaineering status.

Adventure Peaks is reporting progress on fixing the ropes on the north side:

All the team + 6 sherpa finally came down to BC on the 8th May. We are now all resting and waiting for the weather window to come in, When that might be is the big question. Apparently the rope fixing team have moved up to ABC and are planning to attempt final summit fix on the 16th.

Don’t be surprised if we see north side summits any day now. There are many strong teams on that side climbing without publicity and motivated to tag the top with or without ropes in marginal weather.

Adventure Consultants is returning to base camp from their time in Periche. Looks like they may be going for a summit around the 20th based on this move. Elite climbers Simone Moro and his partner Denis is back at BC after tagging the Yellow Band and a night at the South Col. They are considering a no supplemental oxygen climb at the moment.

The weather continues be very windy on the summit with winds today 80 mph and a still air temp of 18 below zero Fahrenheit.

I really enjoyed the post from Pete Sunnucks, it is the Blog of the Day, as he describes his and his mate, Matt’s north side climb and recent trip to the North Col and on to 7500m or camp 2 on the north. This is an usually detailed description of the Tibet side climb:

On reaching the top of the North Col I was greeted with the sight of a total white out, all the tents were buried in up to 3 foot of snow. It took a good half hour to just to identify our camping area, let alone dig a suitable tent out! Finally once inside the tent and the blizzard shut out, I got the stove on and started to melt some of Everest’s finest fresh snow and waited for Matt… and waited… and waited.. until finally he arrived, exhausted and deathly but elated. It had clearly taken a lot out of him.

On the south, it continues to be a waiting game. An excellent short (41 second) video from Robert Hill shows Everest and the summit plume from camp 1 on Pumori. In what we will probably hear all week, Robert describes the dilemma:

It’s looking less and less likely that a summit window will come this week. The weather forecast has the jet stream right above Everest until at least May 13. Some expeditions are talking opportunities on May 16, but the forecast still doesn’t look good until at least the 18th and some teams are openly musing that a real summit window won’t open until May 20 to the 25th. We need to keep active, and get to higher elevations, so today we climbed to camp one on Pumori, at 6100 meters.

Alison Levine climbing with AAI has another great post describing the challenge of keeping the weight on during a long expedition, team dynamics and a failed team attempt on the Lhotse Face. Another must read from this talented speaker and writer. It is detailed and introspective with this short excerpt summing it up:

For nine hours I fought my way up that Lhotse Face and made it to Camp 3 along with Jan, Vanessa, and Jack. Alpine Ascents guides Vern and Michael came up, too–and of course our awesome sirdar Lakpa was with us every step of the way. Of course, I threw up in my test vestibule that night–but you don’t get any extra points for that as puking isn’t all that unusual at nearly 24,000’. I was miserable all night, but I am SO glad that I stayed with the group that went up to Camp 3. Climbing that Lhotse Face was a good confidence builder.

Finally, another nice post is from Lei Wang. She also describes some of her recent climbs but also posts a list of 10 reason why Everest is so hard. It makes for interesting reading.

OK, so one lesson from Everest is to expect the unexpected. Last week we had a quick summit push in a dangerously narrow window that paid off albeit with extreme drama towards the end. This week, we might again see more summits. Probably not from the south but more than likely on the North.

Climb On!

Alan

Update: RussianClimb.com is reporting on the death of the Russian climber on Lhotse:

10 May, 2010 Lhotse, Russian expedition. Serguey Duganov died at 7800 during the descent. This info came from Maxut Zhumayev. No detailes, no official report from the expedition yet. Our sincere condolences to Serguey’s family and friends…