![\"Sherpas](\"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/everest_2008_1167-225x169.jpg\")
A few bold climbers actually summited in harsh conditions early Monday morning, ambulance<\/a> but most teams are ly waiting. I will update this page throughout today as I get more information.<\/p>\n A few bold climbers actually summited in harsh conditions early Monday morning, ambulance<\/a> but most teams are ly waiting. I will update this page throughout today as I get more information.<\/p>\n
I hesitate to mention this but at the moment teams are becoming optimistic as a nice long summit window appears to be emerging for May 17th <\/sup>– 24th<\/sup> with almost calm summit winds near the end.<\/p>\n If this week long window emerges, malady<\/a> it will allow all the teams to attempt the summit in an orderly manner, thus reducing the risk of crowds and long waits at the regular bottlenecks on both sides. But, as always, we are talking about the weather.<\/p>\n Update:<\/strong> Word has it that Tim Mosedale and a member have summited, but no confirmation from Tim directly. Tim had said he would keep his summit plans secret and it looks like he was successful!<\/p>\n A few independent climbers using logistics from Henry Todd and also The Himalayan Ascents<\/a> team put one Westerner and two Sherpas on the summit early Monday morning. The rest of the team turned back amazingly close being near or above the Hillary Step. They also put climbers on Lhotse finishing the ropes to the summit. They report:<\/p>\n Our teams had a successful morning. Young Chirring picked up where the fixing team left off on Lhotse and fixed the last 300m of the summit blocks, and summited at 10.30am this morning. Chris summited at 11.30am with Lakpa and Pasang. We’re proud of Chirring for the first summit of the 4th highest mountain this season! Previously a monk and now a young guide, Chirring has the luck of his uncle Lakpa’s climbing genes.<\/p>\n Great news on Everest too. The group set off at 9pm last night under calm and cold conditions. Peter summited at 6.30am with Nima and Mingma. Satisfied with their climbing success, Margaret and Warren gave the full summit a miss and turned around after the Hillary Step (8790m, ~5.50am) and after the South Summit (8770m, ~6.30am). A near summit indeed. Due to cloud cover, the sun was late arriving to warm up bodies. After climbing ~9hr in cold conditions, our Sydney friends were missing warm Sydney beaches. Peter on the other hand is Irish (enough said). Margaret and Warren still climbed higher than any other mountain (K2 is 8611m)! Awesome effort.<\/p>\n Both teams are heading back to Camp 4 to rest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I have a question into them as to the conditions of their climbers given the high winds and cold temps that kept every other team away. I have seen many climbers summit on days like this but suffer extreme frostbite. I admire their determination and send them sincere congratulations for their grit.<\/p>\n On the North side, Altitude Junkies is moving from ABC to the North Col according to Edita Nichols’<\/a> home team however a tweet from one of their members indicated they returned to ABC due to winds.<\/p>\n The Jagged Globe<\/a> team got in a bit of extra work as they went to C2 ready to summit on Saturday but reed to EBC when conditions declined:<\/p>\n Five of the team had climbed to Camp 2 on Saturday, but descended back to base camp this morning… Five of us, myself, Guy, John, Andrew and James all set of a day ahead of the rest of the team to C2. Our aim was to set of a day early so that we could have a rest day in 2 before going to 3 and hopefully to the summit a few days after. Unfortunately the following day the forecast changed and winds increased too much on our target summit day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Scott Woolums, Mountain Trip, sees the conditions through the experience of his nine climbs. He told me via an email today, he is happy looking at May 21st for their summit:<\/p>\n We are hoping some groups take advantage of a small dip in the intensity of the tropical jet stream winds on the 18th and 19th, as that will mean somewhat less climbers heading to the top during our summit window.<\/p>\n It also good news this arm of the jet stream will slowly be moving away over the next couple days. We still see very high winds until the 21st. While this is interesting, there is no surprise, as this is a normal pattern of very short, sharp, cold, windy pre-May 20th weather windows. In the nine seasons I have been coming to Everest, this has been the normal pattern.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Reinhold Messner visited Everest Base Camp (South) to film a documentary on the 60th<\/sup> anniversary of the first summit. He visited several teams. Adventure Consultants <\/a>has this comment:<\/p>\n Initially he came to our camp as he had heard that Austrian members where part of our team. He interviewed Josef and Lukas Hochmeister (father and son), as well as AC owner Guy Cotter (about commeration), Lydia Bradey as the first woman to climb Everest without oxygen, and Heather Geluk on the Lhotse team.<\/span><\/p>\n These interviews will be part of a television documentary celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest (on the 29th of May), and will be shown on German and Austrian television very soon.\u00a0 Specifically for those of you in Europe, the documentary will be shown on ServusTV in Austria on the 23rd May, and on ZDF German TV on the 29th May 2013.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I wonder if he took urine samples? He had said<\/a> a few weeks ago he wanted to test his hypothesis that 90% of the Everest climber use drugs. We can always count on David Mauro <\/a>with IMG to keep things in perspective:<\/p>\n The word around EBC is that two Hollywood movies are being filmed here. One is a reenactment of the 1996 Everest Tragedy, the other tells the tale of George Mallory\u2019s fatal Everest attempt. I cannot substantiate either of these rumors. There is a third, and possibly related, rumor that actor Tom Cruise will be arriving here on May 20 to either 1. film a series of scenes for one of these features. 2. open a Church of Scientology outpost. Or 3. both of the above.<\/p>\n No one talks much about the Reinhold Messner feature, which we know<\/i> to be in production since he long ago insulted most of us by claiming that climbing Everest with the aid of anything more than aspirin is \u201ccheating\u201d. Our cat-like indifference toward him is an expression of our contempt, which we maintain until such time he actually walks into a camp and the occupants set about boot-licking shamelessly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Climb On! A few bold climbers actually summited in harsh conditions early Monday morning, ambulance but most teams are ly waiting. I will update […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[147,214],"tags":[448,455],"class_list":["post-15566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everest","category-everest-2013-coverage","tag-everest","tag-everest-2013-coverage"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Summits<\/h3>\n
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Watching and Waiting<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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The Famous at BC<\/h3>\n
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Alan
Memories are Everything<\/p>\n
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