Month: April 2022

Right on schedule, several teams have arrived at Everest Base Camp. It will be their home until late May, for most, or a few days after they reach the summit. The majority of Everest summits occur between May 18th and 23rd. There is a lot of climbing left on the ‘other’ 8000ers.

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The permits issuance continue to pick up. As of April 13, 2022, Nepal had issued 250 permits for 31 teams on Everest. I’m still expecting the final number to be under 300.  As for countries on Everest, The US continues to have the most climbers with 58, followed by the UK at 33, India-21, Russia-16, Canada-14, Nepal (non-Sherpas) with 14, and Australia at 10. For all of Nepal mountains requiring permits, 689 foreigners have received one. See the table at the end of this post for details.

There is still a lot of climbing on the ‘other’ 800ers, with Annapurna, Makalu, Lhotse and Lhotse South Face, and Kangchenjunga. Look for summits on most of these over the next few weeks and the serious acclimatization rotations to begin on Everest around April 17. #everest2022

Tragic death after summiting occurred on the 8000er,  Dhaulagiri. Highly experienced Greek climber Antonis Sykaris is reported to have died after summiting around 7,400m on the 8,167 meters (26,795 ft) peak. Sykaris was 59-years-old. He was climbing with Dawa Sherpa using the logistics of Seven Summits Treks and summited at 12:40 pm local time. Just this past weekend 22 people summited as I previously reported. Sykaris was on a mission to submit all 14 of the 8000ers.

Teams continue to arrive in Kathmandu from afar. Many are proudly posting pictures of receiving their Everest climbing permits, but as of today, the pace is way off what we saw only a few years ago or even last year. In this post, I talk about the first time I thought about climbing Everest, back in 2002.

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By early April 2021 Nepal had issued 222 permits for 23 teams, but this year that number is 138 on 16 teams.  It looks like Everest will get somewhat of a respite this season with less than 300 foreign climbers. And that is good news for the mountain but bad news for Nepal tourism.  We are seeing a lot of pictures of the trek, most feature Ama Dablam – perhaps one of the most recognizable mountains on earth since almost every climber and trekker takes a few hundred each year – not kidding! I have hundreds myself!! But Ama is a special peak for me as it was on her summit that I first considered climbing Everest.  #everest2022