Interview with Walter Laserer: Upside down in the Khumbu Icefall
You are upside down, wedged in a deep crevasse at 19, 000 feet in the Khumbu icefall. Your team mate is on top of you and you think another is nearby. Everyone knew the serac would give way, they just didn’t know when. Walter Laserer found out, up close and personal. He not only lived to tell the story but went on to summit Everest on an extremely harsh day in the spring of 2009. The 49 year-old, runs one of the largest guide services in central Europe, Laserer-alpin, from his office near Salzburg, Austria. Walter has been a UIAGM guide for over 20 years. His climbing achievements are quite impressive: the north face of the Eiger during winter, a ski descent of Eiger’s west face, El Cap nose, the west face of Husacaran, Cerro Torre, a winter ascent of Denali plus multiple summer climbs, Vinson, Carstensz Pyramid, Aconcagua, Elbrus. Oh, and he loves to ski when not climbing! He is quite experienced on Everest with four expeditions and another planned this spring. He knows both the victory and disappointment of Everest with three successful summits and one aborted attempt in 2005 when they were forced back at the Balcony by high winds on their summit bid. I wanted to discuss his amazing crevasse incident of last year and introduce him to readers since often the U.S. guides seem to get so much press. I also wanted his views on guiding in general and any differences with the US style. He was kind enough to take some time off his beloved ski slopes to share his thoughts. Q: Many readers may not be familiar with Laserer-alpin. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company. A: I founded Laserer-alpin 20 years ago in Graz, Austria. Laserer-alpin has around 1000 members each year and operates dozens of trips every year. During the main season there are about 20 guides working in our company, all of them fully IVBV certified. Our main business is guided mountaineering holidays in the alps. The expedition – product line is the “Seven Summits”. I personally am working as professional and fully certified IVBV Mountain guide since 1984, so for 25 years now. For the first time in 1995, I climbed Carstensz Pyramid with members and started to guide all the seven summits. Q: You see many different climbers while guiding the 7 Summits. How has climbing changed since you started? A: The Internet has changed our whole world, also climbing. In the beginning we got members through classic advertising and everything was much slower. Now people sign in for a trip via internet and you have to be very careful that they are mountaineers. I mean about 15 years ago, they were mountaineers, cyclist, climbers, canoeist, or marathon runners. Each of them did just his own single sport. Now it is usual, that everybody outdoors does everything. I mean no more such specializing. Many members run marathons and train for it, many of them go also outside and bike a lot, and one part of their game is climbing/mountaineering. And therefore they are, of course, not as experienced as members who go just in the mountains. This is a big danger for us as guides (to take too unexperienced members to serious goals), but also a very big chance, because those members need and usually book a lot of professional preparations and special trainings. Q: Some readers may know you from the crevasse rescue in the Khumbu icefall in 2009 that was shown on the TV show Everest: Beyond the Limit. I was amazed to see you not only survive but to go on and summit. Tell us a little about that experience. First of all I want to thank once more all the persons, sherpas, guides, doctors who worked so great together to help us. For me it was a sign of the “Spirit of the south side on Everest”. All the professionals work well together on the mountain, although the teams in economic competition. This is how working professionals on a mountain is different from all other businesses, we have to work together, we have to help each other once we are out in the wilderness. And when you help others it may come back to your own team. The 2009 season on Everest was a very warm winter with very little snow (the previous year ‘08 it has snowed nearly nothing in the Solu Khumbu) and in ’09 it was very hot during the “rotations” to the high camps. The daily avalanche patterns from Pumo Ri, Lo La pass, west shoulder and Nuptse were more frequent and larger avalanches than in other years. Especially the hanging glacier high up on the west shoulder had created big avalanches prior to our accident. There was a big serac, which looked like it would fall down immediately, but nobody could know when that would happen. Everybody – especially all the guides – were very concerned when the next big one would come. I had successfully finished the 2nd rotation with my team and we were on our final way down from camp 2 to base camp. We made the usual start at 6 in the morning reaching the icefall around 7 when the sun reached us. We could feel that it was very hot that day. I told my team to hurry and go as fast as they could. The avalanche hit us at one of the last ladders on the way down, I could hear the noise, looked back and realized immediately, that this was the big one that everybody had been afraid of. We had about 5 seconds for reaction. We unclipped from the fixed line and hurried about 5 meters over and into the shadow of a serac, the only one reachable in the short time. Unfortunately there was a very small crevasse at the base. We stepped with our feet at one side, and leaned our backs with the rucksacks on,