Cleaning the Mountain (updated)
It looks like the Everest season has finally ended with a big cold slap in the face to many teams on both sides. The weather deteriorated for the few teams making a push this week so much so, some classified it as the worse ever. Another death was reported earlier this week of a Japanese climber on the north, still no details. But another death was also mentioned and again now. Details are vague at . Duncan Chessell told the Australian news: “They were the worst conditions I have ever encountered by a factor of at least 10 on the summit, ” Mr Chessell said today. “There was a fresh dump of snow and winds were howling. They were at least 30-40 knots on the summit and it was minus 26C, which is not great for humans at 8848m above sea level. “We almost called it off, but we all made it up and down safely.” On their way up the mountain Mr Chessell’s group was asked to help a Japanese climber who had summitted on Monday. But by the time they reached him, the man was already dead. “Also, another climber, I think from the US, or at least a US team, which was on the summit about the same time as us, died on descent and we were not able to help him on our descent,” Mr Chessell said. By now almost everyone is at Base Camp or back in Kathmandu. This week, the Sherpas were still finishing up work by bringing everything down from the high camps. This is literally back breaking work. In many cases they will bring double or triple loads from the North Col or C2 back to Base Camp. Think of all the supplies they brought up to support the climbs, all that has to be taken back down. IMG notes the huge clean-up effort: Our IMG sherpas put in a big day yesterday and all the gear is down, and everyone is safe and sound. We still have some packing chores and cleanup to do: burnable rubbish is heading for the incinerator in Namche, bottles and cans to Kathmandu for recycling, empty O2 cylinders back to the USA for refilling, human waste down to Gorak Shep for burial. The climbers have all left, and the first wave has already reached Kathmandu. Our team leaders will do the final briefing with the Ministry back in Kathmandu, and we will file for getting the garbage deposit back. However, Summit Climb reported a disturbing item that on the north, one or more teams actually abandoned their camps above the North Col leaving tents, still standing. The only rational that they were too tired to be bothered. This is what creates the problem. The Nepalese have a trash deposit that discourages such behavior as well as on-mountain liaison officers to monitor teams. Also, the Nepalese and the large commercial operators have done a nice job of instilling a sense of responsibility in the overall environment. Clearly, work remains to be done on the North. The Summit Climb post gives some details on the north: We made it down to camp 2, which was completely abandoned. All of our tents and equipment had been removed by our sherpas working busily down below. Camp 2 again looked like an enourmous car park after a car boot , completely trashed. In several instances we saw teams that had left their entire camp behind, including standing tents. I’ll have to say that some of our members were a bit astounded when they started calculating the value of some of this equipment that had been left up there because it was too difficult to carry down. I contacted Jamie McGuiness from Project Himalaya since many of you were asking. He and two members summited. If you know Jamie, you will smile that he is one of the only people who would wait out a storm at a high camp to get a great picture! Eric and Barry summited, no problems at all with two really competent sherpas, Kaji and Nima Guriman. Three is a crowd in tents at C2 and C3 so two pairs was tidy. Fernando had torn breathing muscles and a terrible cough – he didn’t summit. I wanted to summit on the fine day to take lots of pictures with my NEW 5D mark ii and so waited 3 nights at North Col and 2 nights at C2 watching Wx forecasts but could see the Wx wasn’t going to be right. Duncan’s team summited in real wind… others in total whiteout… It seems the helicopter situation at Everest it totally out of control. Well respected high-altitude Physician Dr. Peter Hackett sent me this email about my post on recent accidents. He was at Base Camp this season. Alan- I know you want to publish accurate information, so here’s a correction. The HRA doctors at base camp did NOT suggest a rescue from Camp 2 for Phil Crampton’s member. In fact, we were very much against it. We felt it unnecessary and it set a very bad precedent. Our take was that he could have made it down through the icefall without much difficulty, and in retrospect that was correct. In addition, helicopter requests from base camp were totally out of control, many were unnecessary. Peter Hackett and Steve Halvorson, HRA base camp doctors See http://www.everestER for more details of all these rescues. Note that the information he is referencing is from the Altitude Junkies’ dispatch. Thanks to EverestEr for the clarification and for all their work. I will do an update upon more information on the reported death. If true then that would be 1 on Lhotse, and 4 on the north for 2010. update: Finally, it would appear the search for the camera from Mallory & Irvine’s 1924 expediton remains unfound; or does it? We really we don’t know. Given the recent heavy snows, several teams who said they would look for it have reported it unlikely
Summit Wave 4 (update 3)
update #3: South summits. First from RMI: Seth Waterfall is on the summit of Mount Everest. He has the summit all to himself. It is a bit chilly but he has plenty of oxygen and is feeling good! The rest of the team is at the Hilary step continuing up. Then Dave Hahn and Leif Whittaker. Thus far another 12 summits. Their announcement: Dave, Leif, Seth, Casey, Michael, Scott, Tendi, Tshering Dorjee, Dawa Jamba, Da Gyldjen, Nima Tenji, Pasang Temba. On top of the world. All are doing well. Robert Hill and his team reached the South Summit and made this declaration: Rob Hill has finished his Seven Summits dream! “I’ve gone as high as I ever will,” said a elated sounding Rob from the South Summit. “John and I have been sitting here for the past 30 minutes talking about all that we’ve done, all that IDEAS has managed to accomplish and all that this 7Summit campaign has done for people fighting inflammatory bowel diseases and living with an ostomy. Even though my Everest summit sits several hundred meters below the true summit, I can hold my head high with pride. I will come home safe to my family and loved ones. I don’t have the energy to continue. The hours I spent in the South Col drained me of everything, I’ve given it my all, my and I am happy to be here with my good friends and climbing partners. Darrell is within spitting distance of the summit now along with our three Sherpas. John and I will sit here and bask in his glory as he, too, finishes his 7Summits dream today. No word on the north at this point. Summit Climb, Duncan Chessell and, I think, Jamie McGuinness’s teams are all enroute. Congratulations to all and a tip of the hat to Leif Whittaker. update #2: Summit Climb reported bids by 10 members with 6 Sherpas currently underway. RMI and Dave Hahn, Leif Whittaker are all together and above the Balcony. They report clear skies and calm winds. update #1: With fickle weather, teams debated if tonight was the night or not. But a few teams have left the South Col reporting acceptable winds. first out was Robert Hill’s group who left around 8 PM. A few hours later, the RMI team departed. I like Mark Tucker from RMI’s thoughts as they left the South Col: We have not been purposely holding out till the bitter end, I promise. You all deserve the final summit push. So lets bring it to you today and tonight. We sure hope that the old adage,” good things come to those who wait”, comes true. But Dave Hahn saw it differently: Hello, this is Dave and here we are at the South Col. The mountain showed this is not going to be easy for us. We were hoping we’d just waltz up in a perfectly forecasted weather window. Instead, the Himalaya showed a mind of its own. Sent a little unexpected snowstorm in on us. We’re sitting that out; it’s not the worst. Still, we certainly wanted better for our climb. Life’s not so bad for us here at the South Col, it’s just the tension of not knowing whether we’re gonna get to make good on our 2-month climb and ring the bell at the top. But if we get half a chance, we are gonna do that. So we’re keeping ourselves ready right now and keeping our spirits up. That’s the Everest game, that’s how we play it. But then they made their final call and they are off as well: Hi, it’s Michael Brown at the South Col of Mt. Everest. I’m here with First Ascent Guide Seth Waterfall. Next tent over has Leif Whittaker and Expedition Leader, Dave Hahn. And the next tent is guide Casey Grom and climber Scott Jones. It’s a little after 9:30, and about 11 o’clock we’re going to have our crampons on and we’re going to start walking uphill. We got a forecast yesterday that indicated there’d be a lot of wind; but, according to a forecast we’ve been trusting all along, the wind shouldn’t be too bad today. We’re going to go for it in about an hour and a half. We’ll try to stay in touch. Everybody here is pretty damn excited. So here we go. No word from the few north teams. Look for more updates as they get near the summit around dawn Nepal time. start of original post With hundreds of climbers summitting over the past few days, only a few teams are left on both sides of Everest. Sunday night was the most difficult of the season with high winds at times but steady snow through the night and day. Whiteout conditions were reported as well with a foot of new snow at the North Col. At the South Col, RMI, Dave Hahn and Leif Whittaker and Robert Hill’s No Guts Know Glory teams lead by Canada West Mountain School’s John Furneaux are all looking to go up tonight. Robert Hil reported some theft of oxygen bottles at the South Col but was able to replace them from teams who had already summitted. This is certainly bad but an occasional occurrence and happens more on the north than the south. Robert said about tonight’s push: During the day, the weather has cleared up enough to make a summit attempt a realistic option. Winds at the South Col remain light and the snowfall has stopped accumulating on the ground. The team plans to leave C4 at around 7:30 PM Everest time. Two other well-established climbing expeditions will also leave the South Col at the same time. Rob, Darrell, John, Mingma, Dawa and Teng Dorje Sherpas will need all the help they can to compress the newly snowed trail. “It’s going to be hard climbing tonight,” said John Furneaux, who reached the summit of Everest in 2008. “With fresh snow on the ground and few climbers
Everest is Buzzing with Activity for Next Window
Excitement is building once again for more summits as team after team left Base Camp for camp 2 on the south and ABC on the north. Their enthusiasm, however, was tempered by talk of monsoons in India; more on that in a moment. There were talks of additional summits for Tuesday, May 18th, but nothing has been reported. As the weekend summiters return to base camp on the south, more details are coming in of summits. First up is on the north, Julio Bird’s wife Maribel sent me this email: I just talked to Julio. He reached the top on May 17th at 7:00 am. He is now resting at Camp 2 and will move to BC soon. It took them 14 hours from Camp 2 to the summit. Apparently he was the first Westerner to summit from the North. I don’t have the details but he said “I was the first”. Our connection was not the . He climbed with Sherpas, Lhakpa Gelu and Lhopsang and the large rope fixing team. His climbing partners, Bill Fischer and 70 year-old Japanese Hoshino Kohei both had left the expedition earlier with minor health issues. To add an international flavor to my coverage,I want to highlight climbers from countries who do not usually receive a lot of western media coverage: The Indian team of Mountaineering Association of Krishnagar (MAK) reported in with some interesting news about the weather on the descent. Apparently they made their summit from C3, not the South Col: … 17th May at 7.45 am, their summitteers being Shri Basanta Singha Roy (aged 47 years) and Shri Debasish Biswas They had been guided by Pemba Sherpa and Pasan Sherpa who had summitted Mount Everest several times before. They had made the ascent from the Nepal side and had started from camp no. 3 towards the summit at 9 pm on the night of 16th May and finally reached summit at 7.45 am on 17th May, 2010. While on their descent to camp no.3 yesterday, the duo had run into a terrible blizzard. Nepalese cyclist Pushkar Shah summitted Mount Everest on Monday(18th May, 2010) morning. On his expedition, Shah had taken along flags of 150 countries he had visited. He had cycled through all the countries. Two Colombians, Nelson Cardona and Rafael Avila, toped out on Monday morning. Of note, Cardona had wanted to climb in 2007, but lost his right leg while training for the climb thus used a prosthesis on his successful summit this year. Talk about determination!! Basanta Singha Roy and Debabrata Biswas, two members of the first civilian expedition from West Bengal by ‘Mountaineers Association of Krishnanagar’, also summitted. Looking forward now, Adventure Consultants’ Mike Roberts has a very informative update describing their climb to C2 on the south. he noted about 150 people heading higher and the recent warm temps are melting out the lower Icefall and heating up the Western Cwm. They left base camp at 2:00 AM to minimize danger: Today’s early morning wakeup ritual was fairly typical: sleep deprivation; grunting rather than talking; bad humor; suppressed appetite; Ang Tsering praying with his Tibetan rosary beads; hugging the heater for all it’s worth; icefall and summit nerves kicking in; chuck in the odd throw-up for good measure (Tony, you got to hate that); and by 2.00am everyone was rolling clockwise around our puja altar and throwing rice three times for success, safety and luck. Caroline, thanks for getting up at that ghastly hour to see us off and for your wicked summit success art work! As climbers leave for their summit bid, the Sherpas light juniper boughs that produce a thick smoke. On mornings like today with so many teams leaving, base camp has a cloud of smoke. You walk up to the alter with the smoke, and wave the smoke over yourself three times. Standing still for a moment, you go deep in thought about the upcoming effort – it is a very private personal moment. And then you swiftly leave your base camp home knowing the next week will be the toughest physical, and perhaps mental, challenge of your life. North teams are also in full motion with Adventure Dynamics and the first wave of 7 Summits Club already to the North Col. Young Jordan Romero has been there a couple of days now. The world’s media has caught on to this year’s search for the Mallory & Irvine camera from 1924. Multiple reports are quoting Duncan Chessell. “I was at North Col (7050m) last week and the wind was 150kp/h and it was stripping snow off the mountain which has been there for many years,” he said in his latest message from Everest base camp on Tuesday. There is now bare rock exposed which has been deeply covered for decades in the most likely areas where Andrew Irvine’s body may be. It is my intention to search those areas en route to the summit and take this rare opportunity to find him and, perhaps, the missing cameras. I have studied this matter very closely and am now very familiar with Mt Everest. I believe we have a good chance of finding something.” As regular Everest followers know, this has become an annual event and this year there is a mystery team making a serious effort to look for the camera and Ivine’s body building on previous years, if not decades, of work. Most keep their effort low key and avoid publicity. For friends and family monitoring this upcoming summit bid, an interesting story. The wife of a climber on last weekend’s summit push told me she had not heard from her husband for over 30 hours, the last time he called he said he was 10 hours for the summit. Now she was worried. He was an independent climber so there was no home office to contact. Eventually she heard from him and he was fine, in fact had summited safely. It seems, his phone batteries had died. So
A Good Start to a Busy Week
There were at least 40 summits on Monday morning, May 16th from the south side. It is still not clear if there were any from the north. The winds did pick up late Monday bringing a stop to this brief window. There were no reports of serious problems with any of the climbers at this time. After a false start on Saturday night when the winds did not cooperate, teams huddled at the South Col, some spending an extra night which is usually avoided. But Sunday night, the winds still between 40 and 50 mph at the Col, let up enough and they were off. Multiple reports came in of crowds and slow progress especially above the Balcony but no mention of high winds. However, they did comment on extreme cold this year. Most teams are reporting their climbers down to at least the South Col. With the next window estimated to start soon, teams are already leaving base camps on both sides to be in position for summits on May 22nd through the 24th. Being in Base Camp is quite exciting during a summit night and morning. Many of the Sherpas and climbers monitor radios of the other teams. Then you hear one word over the crackling radio, usually from a Sherpa, who draws out the word for at least 10 seconds “Summittttttt!” The kitchen staff begins banging pots together and word spreads throughout the 1,000 person community and ends a while later with smiles, hugs, handshakes and back slaps. Everyone is happy regardless of who made the summit. I have updated the location chart based on the available information so please click on the team to see who they listed as summiting. Of note on climbers many people were following, these summited: Carina Räihä, Kenton Cool and Bonita Norris plus Jamie Clark. Again congratulation to all of them and to the Sherpas who made it all possible. Once again, Patrick Hollingworth, brings us in with his audio quite a long time. I appreciate Patrick’s effort to share all this with us. Listening to his excitement gave me goose bumps. Well done Patrick! On the north, in case you missed it, the Chinese/Tibetans have fixed the route to the summit. Also, Jordan Romero is at ABC and looking at a summit bid this weekend as well. Looking into this week, some teams are climbing to camp 2 today where they will spend a few nights before moving to C3 for a night, then the South Col and their summit bid. However, as well know, predicting the weather is difficult at and Jamie McGuinness put it well: Anyway, after coffee our first job is checking all the weather sites and making an analysis of when might there be a summit window. We know with high certainty when it will be very windy and so have planned an attempt after that as it is far more comfortable to climb above North Col in low winds. Note that it takes us around a week from leaving Base Camp to when we actually summit, and weather forecasts are perhaps 50% accurate five days out. So conditions/forecasts could – or will – change. This is really where my skills will be tested. This past window, while narrow and a bit windy and cold, was solid and it was excellent so many people made it. This will help a bit with the crowding for the next wave. Again congratulations to all the climbers, Sherpas and leaders who made the summit yesterday. Climb On! Alan
Helicopter Rescues in Everest’s Western Cwm?
With several teams targeting Sunday, May 16th as a summit window, the question of rescues often comes to mind; especially if the weather looks marginal as this one does. Followers of Everest know that rescues are difficult and sometimes impossible above base camp or 17,500′. In his book, Into Thin Air, Jon Krakurer details the daring rescue of climbers at the top of the Icefall at 19,800′. Now a new service from Fishtail Air is underway that designers are confident can rescue climbers deep in the Western Cwm, well above 19,500′. While an experiment this season, it has already proven to save lives on other high peaks.
Avalanche Update and Icefall Incident (updated)
UPDATE: In a statement by climber David Klein on expeditions.hu, he and his partner Laszlo Várkonyi were involved in the avalanche and Laszlo is still missing. Original story: I received an email overnight from Duncan Chessell of Chessell Adventures. He is leading an expedition along with Adventure Dynamics on the north. Jamie McGuinness of Project Himalaya, passed through Duncan a first hand account of yesterday’s accident on the North Col. Over on the south, the Icefall continues to be tricky with a small incident that did not hurt any climbers but created a period of anxiety.
North Side Update from an Expert: Jamie McGuinness
It is about a month before teams from all around the world pack their duffel bags for the flights to Kathmandu. Thus far the south looks like business as usual with about 16 teams already announced. To put this in perspective, in 2007, case when we saw a record number of Everest summits, there were about 17 teams on each side. One question for 2010 is how the north will shape up. It has been a few years since climbing was open from the north. The Chinese closed Everest with their desire to celebrate the 2008 Olympics in Beijing by taking the torch to the summit. This created difficulties in getting permits and access to routes in 2007 when they did a practice climb and again in 2008 when they took a torch to the summit. In 2009, violence in Lhasa resulted in China closing Tibet to foreigners for most of the climbing season. The north side is generally considered the “tougher” side to climb with colder temps and a slightly more technical upper route but 46% of climbers said in my poll that they want to climb Everest from Tibet. Since the permit costs are lower, it is also considered the “bargain” side of Everest. No matter how it is perceived, it is the deadly side of Everest with 32 deaths vs. 16 on the south since 2000, as I reported earlier. There were at least four planned traverses which, obviously, involved climbs on the north side but to the of my knowledge all have been delayed due to permitting issues on the Tibet side. For 2010, it looks like the north side of Everest may be somewhat returning the traffic volume of a number of years ago. The north tends to attract more independent and national expeditions than commercial teams. At this point, these commercial expeditions have announced intentions: Adventure Extreme Expeditions Adventure Dynamics Adventure Peaks Asian Trekking Project Himalaya Summit Climb 7 Summits With all this as a brief introduction, I reached out to Kathmandu resident and owner of guide service Project Himalaya, Jamie McGuinness. He was not in Nepal but in Mendoza leaving for a climb of Aconcagua. I wanted to get his views on the north for 2010. I am not sure if Jamie is a professional mountaineer, trekker or photographer! I went to Shishapangma with Jamie in 2006. He runs a tight operation with top notch Sherpas and base camp operations. If you have ever met Jamie, you know he is quite willing to share his thoughts on most any matter and has an annoying habit of being well informed! He is one of those people you wouldn’t mind being trapped in a tent with for a week. You might learn something! In any event, here are Jamie’s thoughts on Everest this year: Q: Tell us a bit about Project Himalaya? Any new cameras for 2010? Project Himalaya is a lifestyle for myself, Kim Bannister and Joel Schone. We run the treks that we want to do and hope that people share our enthusiasm for our mostly exploratory treks. Everest and other big peaks feed the business side, but are still good value and our teams tend to be small, much smaller than comparable companies. Perhaps our marketing is a little low key. Ha, we are both photo geeks… See the last adventure http://project-himalaya.com/photo-galleries/2010-chadar/ – a truly crazy trek on river ice, and nearly as risky as climbing Everest. I am Canon 5D mark ii guy dreaming but am getting a 50mm lens and am ready for the challenge of a fast primer over the ease of using zooms. Q: How is the permit process going thus far for climbing Everest (and Cho Oyu and Shishapangma) from Tibet in 2010? For us everything is on track. It is worth understanding that it is still the period between Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival though, most civil servants are on holiday. Q: Will there be any traverses this year? Nobody on our team is attempting the traverse but my guess – and it is a guess – is that they will be allowed, at least climbers on the standard traverse. I am not so sure on the double traverses, and other firsts though. Q: You have climbed from both sides, Jamie, what do you think are the major differences? As far as the chance of summit success goes, I think both sides are equal, the differences are many though. The (south side) ice fall seemed less dangerous than I was expecting, but was surprised at the seriousness of the rock fall between South Col and the Balcony and am surprised nobody has been seriously injured or killed there. We heard a few stones whizzing past us, and one real rock that was uncomfortably close, but all invisible at night. If that area was covered in snow, there is probably no rock fall danger though. It seems to me the chance of random incidences are significantly higher on the south side. The north side has a major advantage in that you can trek, that is walk, up to 6400m and climb up to 7000m very easily, conditions are almost a non-issue. On the south side there are queues that matter through the icefall but other than that it is straightforward to get to ABC/camp to at 6400m. However acclimatizing higher requires the ropes be in place (fixed by teams themselves rather than the icefall doctors) and good snow conditions, it feels a far more significant altitude, involves more challenges to sleep at ~7200m/Camp 3. As far as technical climbing difficulties go, the north side with its tricky second step and ladder is often portrayed as a more technical climbing, but that is focusing on one point only. The First and Second steps definitely require hauling hard on and trusting fixed ropes, and are real bottlenecks, but on the south side you are totally reliant on the fixed ropes for a long section across the