Que the Weather!

Well, s right on schedule a somewhat unexpected snowstorm, complete with lightening and thunder, rolled into the Everest camps. Climbers stopped in their tracks, literally, to wait it out. Needless to say, this put a bit of a chill on talks of an early summit. But we will see.

As I had mentioned before, it uncanny how the weather is excellent in April then turns ugly on May 1st almost every year – happy May Day!

Everest and 7 Summits veteran Scott Woolums posted about the conditions along with some nice pictures:

Wahoo! Last night was a bit rowdy with high winds and a lot of snow. No sunshine this morning. Fortunately it was perfect timing as today is a rest day for both us and the sherpas. Can here huge winds up towards the summit right now. We have a very comfortable camp so life is OK, even with 30 knot winds and snow. Yesterday we came up from Base Camp directly to Camp 2. A tough hike, over 1000 meters vertical. Everyone was tired from that. Was incredibly hot yesterday on the way up, quite a contrast to now. Hope all is well at home with friends and family! Cheers, Scott Woolums reporting from Camp 2, 21,500 ft., Mt. Everest

Robert Hill, No Guts Know Glory team, posted a nice video of the winds on the Lhotse face. It seems that the south base camp and camp 2 received about 5″, 15 cm of snow.

You may ask, why climbers, especially Everest climbers, cannot climb in that? A few reasons. First, they don’t have too. There is plenty of time and no need to rush at this point. But more importantly, new snow, even somewhat small amounts, needs to settle on the steep sections to avoid avalanches. The Sherpas have delayed further rope fixing above the South Col until this consolidation takes place. But probably not for long. So the short answer for not climbing is safety.

We have climbers all over the mountain, as is normal for early May. AAI reports “several hundreds of people at camp 2”.  They are on their way to camp 3 but stalled at the moment waiting out the weather. The entire Adventure Consultants teams just made it back from camp 3 when the storm hit:

last night was quite a spectacular storm and being perched on an ice ledge on the Lhotse Face was more than a little menacing. So much for trusting weather forecasts! Talk about out to lunch. Fortunately, the snow that fell blew away or was otherwise redistributed before an avalanche hazard within our path developed.

Over on the north, I like this post from Summit Climb as they discuss their approach to the space problems for tents high on the Southeast Ridge:

We have staggered the group slightly because camp 2 can only have 6 tents at the current moment. We had 4 members come up to the North Col on the 29th, 6 on the 30th, and the remaining 5 came up on the 1st.

So when will the first summit take place? Besides the weather, the gating factor is the fixed ropes so the first summit will be the Sherpa team and perhaps a Western climber who tags along like David Tait did in a surprise last year. Wilie Benegas has also been a regular in the first team over the recent years. And of course this year we have Simone Moro eager to get an Everest summit complete so he can look into a new route on nearby Lhotse.

That said, a new development for 2010 is reported by Phil Crampton of Altitude Junkies:

The talk this season is for a ruling to only allow Sherpas to be high on the mountain when the ropes are being fixed and for western climbers not to follow the working Sherpas the same day they fix ropes and cause potential dangerous problems with late summits. This was the same rule that was imposed when the ropes were fixed to camp three on the Lhotse Face a week or so a go. We have agreed to wait until the Sherpas have completed their dangerous job of fixing the rope before we go higher on the mountain.

Without a complete surprise, the first summit will more than likely come on the south and not the north given the progress of fixing the lines on that side. But you never, know … Everest always has a surprise in store!

Some teams always try to go for an early summit or to thread the needle of a narrow summit window. The window is when the winds are low enough for a safe summit, and descent without an unreasonable risk of frostbite or worse. Each year we see a team push that window.

The standard formula is to look for several consecutive days of good conditions. This is needed for the climb from BC to C2, a rest day, then on to C3 (sleep) and the South Col. They make the round trip summit bid taking around 12 to 18 hours and back to the South Col or even C2. All in all, teams need an absolute minimum of four days from Base Camp and back. Most take five to six, sometimes seven.

So depending on weather forecast, teams will plot their strategy. But we will see a few climbers gamble that the window will open, be longer or on some other chance. These gambles rarely pay off in high altitude mountaineering. One of the members of the Sky Climber team put it bluntly:

To aim for the 6th of May summit feels totally insane for us. To follow the Sherpa team fixing the ropes would extend the summit day at least to 20+ hours. Even at the of circumstances the summit would be reached way too late for it to be safe. Also, the strong winds forecasted to hit the summit on 7th May might return earlier than expected, perhaps already in the afternoon of the 6th of May. The safety margins for the 6th of May summit are way too narrow for our liking. We have decided to be and wait in the safety of the Base Camp for a longer weather window. Impatience rarely brings anything good but in mountaineering it can get you killed.

Look for the large commercial teams to sit tight and wait for a relatively low risk opening before they go for the top. This may still be weeks away so many teams will be heading back to the oxygen rich villages of the Upper Khumbu on the south or Chinese base Camp on the north.

Not a lot of news from the north teams today. Many are still up at the North Col, including Jordan Romero who is being followed by the world. Most teams have tagged their high point for acclimatization around 7700m or 25,600′. This is a bit higher than camp 3 on the south side. One of the advantages or disadvantages depending on your viewpoint is that the camps on the north side are higher thus provide better acclimatization however sometimes at the expense of using up a lot of energy.

The climbing continues.

Climb On!

Alan