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
Climbing in Place
With yesterday’s fresh snow, teams were content to take a day or so to let it settle. Unlike expeditions on Denali where you are stuck for a week at the 14 camp or High Camp in your tent or snow cave, on Everest, climbers have the luxury of large tents, folding chairs and tables. And at Base camp, heaters! … One more item to note, Tim Ripple tells us that Nepal Telecom has turned on coverage for Everest. When first announced they said it would reach the summit but let’s wait for confirmation before making that claim.
Climbers Climbing plus Avalanche Update
News travels quickly on Everest. Teams on both sides are sadden by the avalanche incident and have a heightened awareness of the dangers of high-altitude mountaineering. However, they push on knowing that danger comes with the sport. For teams on the north is has been a difficult few days with the avalanche on the North Col. The missing climber is László Várkonyi is a well known Hungarian climber. I contacted Ang Tshering Sherpa who is the Founder and Chairman of Asian Trekking who provided them with logistical support. He sent me this immediate reply for which we deeply thank him:
Teams Settling into Base Camp
More teams arrived at base camp today. One of the early chores is to set up the electronics. This means solar panels, deep cell batteries and generators. All this drives the never ending thirst for power. As is normal these days, many climbers have their own blogs. In 2009, I counted 25. I have 23 listed already for 2010! EverestER reports some interesting s and just how tall is Mt. Everest?
Everest 2010 Weekend Update April 4
This past week saw Everest 2010 come alive; and real for the climbers and families back home. Teams came and left Kathmandu as weather lifted enough for more flights to Lukla. Multiple dispatches spoke of uneventful landings at the dangerous airstrip and then the more peaceful start to the trek to base camp. But there was news that captured attention as well.
Interview with TA Loeffler
We hear a lot about the famous people on Everest so I like to focus on the not so famous; however you might define that. In her hometown of St. John’s Newfoundland, TA Loeffler is quite famous; even a legend. If you have ever read her Blogs, book or had been fortunate to hear her speak, you know why. TA is one of those individuals who brings you into her world by inspiring you to be the in yours. She will be climbing Everest this spring with Canadian Tim Ripple’s Peak Freaks. When not climbing, TA teaches outdoor education at Memorial University of Newfoundland in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation. She tells me that the university has been very supportive of her climbing passion and sees them as professional “performances” in the same way that her colleagues in music might train for and perform a concert. TA feels It’s important to give back to the community that supports her and she regularly speaks in schools trying to inspire kids to have big dreams and to become more physically active. Over 20,000 kids have heard TA talk – amazing. One of her first big climbs was an attempt on Mount Robson in the Canadian Rockies. She continued to build skills and interest on the Mexican volcanoes in addition to a cornucopia of outdoor activities such as sea kayaking, canoeing, winter camping, skiing and of course being from Canada, ice hockey. In the midst of all this she became an instructor for NOLs. She learned a valuable lesson in 2004 while on Denali. With a NOLs teams, they started at the Muldrow Glacier and climbed the 18,000 feet to the summit, humping huge loads along the way. They lived on the glacier for almost 30 days and managed to get all 14 climbers to the summit and back. She says it was a turning point for her. Now infected with this addiction we call mountaineering, she began looking for something more and soon found herself biking to Everest Basecamp on the Tibet side. It was then the pull of Everest was planted. Similar to many of us, she wasn’t scared about the climbing but rather was terrified by the fundraising. In her own words; she “had no idea how a phone-phobic, terrifically shy human was going to raise the $60,000 I needed to make the climb possible.” Her dream started to come together after selling T-shirts and toques, begging friends, and soliciting sponsors. With the Seven Summits in her plans, she has been plugging away… summitting Aconcagua in 2006, Kilimanjaro in 2008, Elbrus in 2009 and Kosciusko in Oct of 2009. And of course an ill-fated attempt on Everest in 2007. Her experience was discouraging but that word is not in her vocabulary. She made an attempt on Pumori in October 2008 as part of her Everest come-back tour. It was on Pumori, while looking at Everest, that her dream was cemented. With all that background, here is our interview with the remarkable TA: Q: I interviewed you on March 12, 2007 before your previous Everest attempt. A variety of illnesses kept you below C2. How did that experience affect you? I actually got close to the base of the Lhotse Face. I spent two nights at Camp Two and have some regrets that Mingma and I didn’t go all the way to the Lhotse Face and climb up a bit-he wanted to get back down to base camp to see Conrad Anker. I arrived at basecamp with a bad case of bronchitis and that made the start of the 2007 expedition tough. I fought my way back to health by dropping back down to Pheriche but I missed the first round of acclimatization with the rest of the team. Once I got back to BC, Mingma and I went up on our own to Camp One and then onto Camp Two. After I returned from Camp Two, I developed Giardia but unfortunately it took a long time to figure out what was going on so by the time, I was finally ed for it, I’d lost significant weight and strength. Of course, it was not the ending that anyone wanted for my climb but I realized I didn’t have the resiliency or reserve to be safe up high. I knew I could have dragged myself back up to Camp Two but I didn’t want to put anyone on my team or Mingma in danger because of my weakness. I was hugely disappointed as I had trained so hard, mortgaged my house, and had my entire province cheering me on, but no mountain summit is worth dying for and I wanted to live to climb another day, so I turned my back on the climb and made friends with disappointment. That’s one of the major lessons I stress when doing presentations is that Everest taught me to “risk disappointment.” So many times it’s tempting to stay where we know we can do something but I think sometimes we need to risk disappointment to go after our big dreams and big goals. Q: Everest is part of your 7 Summits goal. What drives this objective? I started the Seven Summits as a way of gaining more climbing experience in preparation for Everest but then I realized that they were becoming great teachers for me. In Buddhism, there are the Six Paramitas and one day as I reflected on both my climbs and my Buddhist path (I began my Buddhist training at the same time as I was training for Denali), I realized that while climbing the Seven Summits, I was receiving direct and embodied teachings/learnings of the paramitas (generosity, patience, discipline, persistence, wisdom, meditation). So not only have the Seven Summits been a great mountaineering and cultural experience, it’s also been a wonderful spiritual path. Q: You have become quite the accomplished climber, adventurer and speaker. Is there a single lesson you share with your audiences? I actually share many