Discovery Channel - Everest: Beyond the Limit

Going Home

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It's fitting that I write the last blog from a hotel near LAX on my way home. I've just been in the piano bar, and coincidentally, a Nepali couple who were on my flight also turned up for a nightcap. One of them asked the Cuban bartender for a "hot meal" but he brought them hot milk instead. They're arguing about it right now, neither side able to penetrate the other's accent. It's the Babel factor.

The days since we departed base camp have been a frenzy of travel: a tooth-rattling, two-day dirt-road journey through Tibet and over the Friendship Bridge into Nepal, then a lounge-lizard feeding frenzy in Kathmandu restaurants like Kilroys and Fire and Ice, then a hurried session of goodbyes as we taxied off to jostle onto flights home.

I've spent this time thinking about the season that was and what it means. It was a lucky season, blessed by good weather. Sure, there were tragedies, but expeditions got off lightly given the enormous numbers of people who stood on top.

Fewer tragedies don't alleviate the burden of any single tragedy, though. In the last days at base camp there was a forlorn Italian woman visiting the Himex camp, hoping that Russell's Sherpa crew might locate a missing member from the Italian team who I'd originally heard had made it off the mountain. It turns out that one climber named Marco (see the blog "Babel") had survived, but another, Pierangelo Maurizio, was still unaccounted for.

As we left, Russell's Sherpas and any climbers left on the mountain were looking in abandoned tents for the climber and keeping an eye out on the ridge. More than 10 days have passed since the man was last seen. No one holds much hope for his survival now, but his friends wonder…

In Kathmandu our oldest team member, 71-year-old schoolteacher-turned-farmer Yanagasawa from Japan, became a celebrity when it was confirmed that he was indeed the oldest man to climb Everest. Last I saw him, a Japanese film crew were pursuing him around the Hotel Tibet.

And last I saw of Tim he was holding an X-ray that clearly showed two broken bones in his hand. A local clinic recommended surgery. More metal into the big boy's body it looks like.

Darius will remain in Tibet and Nepal with his wife and friends; Fred will be back doctoring in no time; and Rod has been splashed around in the press for his cell phone call from the summit. One publication, taking journalistic license to the typical extreme, reported that he asked his family if he should "pick anything up" on the way home; he did no such thing. He had just enough battery power (he taped the batteries to his chest to keep them warm) to make a half-minute call to a preapproved voicemail box that registered his GPS location to prove he was on Everest.

The film crew took off as one, returning to England to edit the Discovery Channel series, Everest: Beyond the Limit. Russell remained at Everest with Conrad Anker's crew, hoping to make a summit bid if the jet stream ebbs again.

I'm looking forward to getting home to a Utah summer, to mundane house repairs, to feeding my cat and most of all, back to watching my daughter grow up.

So how many people climbed the mountain this year? Russell says he's got no idea. He thinks it's impossible to know anymore because there are so many folks on both sides that no one can tally the numbers accurately – maybe not even the redoubtable Elizabeth Hawley of Kathmandu, who has kept score for decades.

Unofficially, people are saying 300, with a death toll of about eight. But what if the score is 2,700, 3,000 or 3,001? It won't be long before the summit count on Everest is 5,000, then 10,000. Will that make the mountain less interesting, less appealing to climb, less a pinnacle of human endeavor, less a keystone (or tarnished keystone) in climbing's identity myth?

At the outset of this trip, I wondered if a bunch of strangers who'd paid a fee to buy onto an expedition could find the necessary camaraderie to climb the mountain. It did seem to come together by the end, with some people finding that "certain thang" more than others.

A lot of the climbers on the trip say they'll never do another high mountain again; they've ticked off Everest and they're moving on. Others hint that the bug has bitten them and they might pursue more Himalayan adventures.

What is certain is that without Phurba and his Sherpa friends, as well as the Sherpas on other teams, few of the Western summiters would get there. This year, Phurba's crew fixed ropes from the foot of Everest to the tippy top of the summit. They made it as safe as possible. They and other Sherpas carried up the tents and pitched them, humped up countless oxygen tanks, took most of them down and otherwise tailored this mountain for their clientele. That's the way it is, and that's why the Sherpas own the mountain.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Still More Summit Pics

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All images on this post were pulled from the Z1 camera carried by Ed Wardle to the summit. Thanks Ed!

Pictures: Courtesy of Ed Wardle

More Day 1 Summit Pics

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All images on this post are screen grabs from Sherpa Cam footage. Thanks Sherpas!

Coming Down the Mountain

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The past few days, people in the Himex team have trickled down the mountain, first to ABC, then to BC. Initially, they all had that million-mile stare, but now it seems they've put their experiences into perspective.

Rod Babar was among the first to arrive in ABC, rocketing down all the way from the top with Darius and Ed Wardle in a single day. He's never at a loss for words, but his description of standing on the summit watching "the sunrise paint the high summits of the Himalaya a shade of tangerine," was, even for a guy who doesn't consider himself spiritual "a spiritual moment." He also made his Guinness Book of Records cell phone call from the summit.

Darius was all smiles when he strolled into camp with Rod. He'd seemed supremely confident in the weeks leading to summit day, never doubting that he'd get to the top, but he admitted that two-thirds of the way along the ridge, he became so overcome by tiredness that he considered giving up. A brief rest, a search of his soul and turning up his oxygen flow a couple of notches got him moving again. Yet the moment of near physical shutdown and almost-defeat surprised him.

When Fred Ziel arrived at ABC midway through the day on May 22 after another night camped on the mountain, you could see in his face that his experience was an emotional one. "It'll take me a few days to figure out what this means to me," he said.

I suspect Fred was not dry-eyed on the summit. He'd tried Everest twice before, and on one attempt he'd become a frostbitten iceman in a storm that drove him back a short distance from the summit. Back at base camp he seems relaxed and calm, patiently waiting for the day we drive away from Everest.

Li Yong was barely seen on summit day. He left Camp 4 with a Chinese team, summited early, then zoomed downhill to party with his countrymen. He's already headed back home to Chengdu.

Guides Woody and Dean strode back to ABC directly after summiting as well. It was their third and fifth times to the top, respectively. They'd never seen such a perfect summit day — there was no wind. "It was so warm I had my gloves off on top for quite a while," said Dean.

The rapid speed of their ascent amazed everyone — they climbed almost the whole ridge in the dark. That's because of perfect snow conditions. "Where we'd found rock in the past, this time there was a sidewalk of firm snow stuck to the ridge," said Woody. That made for rapid climbing.

Ed Wardle, who filmed the climbers clustered on the summit, seemed a bit taken aback by the human toll along the route. "I counted six bodies. Some are from this year, some from other years." He described one victim, said to be a Brazilian, who lays lightly covered by snow and a foam pad, a few paces from the tents of Camp 4, where the living eat and sleep. Others sit along the route. But the dead didn't particularly bother or spook Ed; they seemed simply an unfortunate reality of the Everest landscape.

It's not well known, but Phurba's Sherpa team often move bodies to less visible resting spots and cover them as best they can. It's physically impossible to take bodies down from up high (too exhausting, too dangerous to the living), but they do the best they can to keep the living and the dead from bumping into each other.

It was great to sit by the radio and hear Tim Medvetz shout, "On top of the world, yeah!" Weighing in at 240 pounds, with a host of motorcycle-crash induced injuries, including a fused ankle and a spine encased in a titanium cage, he had a harder time than most and his rebellious nature (well, what do you expect, he's an ex-Hells Angel) didn't always mesh with Russell's strong leadership style.

During summit day, Russ goaded the slowly ascending biker on with shouts into the radio of, "Get off your big arse," and "Stop crawling and climb like a man." It was a "tough love" dynamic that worked. When Tim sauntered into ABC after a slow descent that included a night at Camp 3 with Lakpa Sherpa, the cooks banged pots and pans and everyone turned out to greet him.

We all knew he'd be a slow mover on the mountain (Russ had threatened to turn him around like last year if he didn't reach certain points along the route in reasonable time out of fear of him running out of oxygen), but when he revealed he'd broken his right hand early on summit day, I had to be impressed.

As Monica cut off his glove to reveal his swollen, bruised paw, Tim explained that he'd stumbled on the ridge in the dark and cracked bones in his hand when he reached out to stop his fall. "I didn't tell Russ I'd broke it," he said. "He might have turned me around."

After their summit, Woody and Sherpa Lakpa carefully roped Tim down the obstacles of the ridge, like the ladder that spans the Second Step. This 20-foot metal ladder was originally placed by a Chinese expedition in the '70s (after the original 1960 Chinese ascent, on which a climber scaled the tricky step in socks, resulting in toe-chopping frostbite) and it's regarded as the scariest bit of the climb. Tim says his next adventure is to hunt a Kodiak bear and then climb Pumori, a Nepalese peak.

Mogens summited in the second group. He feels he made the right choice to use oxygen, as his asthma was hitting him hard on the ascent until he plugged into the bottle.

But Josette, who stuck to her guns about trying the mountain without supplemental oxygen, gave up her bid at Camp 3. She says she felt too cold and too slow. Back at base camp she seems disappointed, but she knows the mountain is there for another day.

The Japanese master-guide Hiro, with clients Taka, Yanagasawa and Kobi, all summited that day, too. That 71-year-old Yanagasawa climbed the mountain is nothing less than stupendous. Few of us in camp really thought he'd do it. He seemed so slow and frail. But as Russell says, "The Japanese have strong minds; don't underestimate them." The 71-year-old slowly made his way down Everest, and today, May 25, and he'll arrive in base camp riding a yak, as he's finally gotten a bit tired to walk the 14 miles from ABC down the glacier.

Hearing these guys recount their experiences brought back my own memories of climbing the North Ridge in 1995. Back at base camp, in the editing shack of the Discovery Channel film crew, we've been viewing footage from the summit days.

I've seen every inch of the final day's climbing, recorded by the helmet-mounted Sherpa cams. It's been a surreal stroll down memory lane: There was Mushroom Rock, which truly looks like a human-sized mushroom; the rocky bumps called the First, Second and Third Steps, and the final pyramid of snow and rock that tapers into the summit, always covered in prayer flags. It all came back to me.

While I've been bashing away at this blog, writing about these folks who joined together to climb Everest, I've been wondering if I'd come up with an understanding of why anyone, including myself, would go through all the risk and pain this mountain demands.

In the end I've relearned what I knew all along: there is no logical reason to climb. You do it simply because you see something beautiful in the shape of the peak, or because you are curious to know what lies on top, or to look down on the lowlands where we live.

People cannot live long up there on the big mountains. The altitude alone will eventually kill you. But to spend a little time there satisfies a curiosity I cannot explain, but which you’ll understand if you ever go there.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Team 1 Summit Pics

With technical difficulties behind him, Greg came through with a summit motherload. Everyone on both teams is doing well. Here's the first batch of pics — thanks Fred!

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Pictures: Courtesy of Fred Ziel

Escape to Old Tibet

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Yesterday, some of us escaped the crushing boredom of base camp by hopping in the back of a truck and going for an hour-long, spine-jarring drive down the Tingri Road to a place of grassy meadows and a village called Tashi Dum.

It was Russell's idea to get us out of base camp to a lower altitude and warmer climate because his weather data showed a sudden bout of wind and snow that would keep us base camp-bound for an additional couple of days. Bad weather seemed to be engulfing the whole mountain — he heard from the south side that some teams there had been driven back from their summit attempts.

So, with faces covered in dust masks and scarves, we crammed into the back of the truck and made the journey down the Rongbuk Valley past Shanty Town, the monastery and the Chinese guard posts, then turned off the main road into a valley of tan hills and grazing country.

It sounded funny to hear a tough-shelled guy like Russell Brice call this outing a picnic, but that's precisely what it was — a spread of snacks laid out on a warm field of grass beside a clear stream. The U.K.-based film crew played cricket with a makeshift bat made from a plank and a tennis ball; others dozed in the sun while a cloud loaded with spring snow pellets gathered overhead. A few others hiked to a tiny village called Tashi Dum, population 200.

This village occupies a special place in the Russell Brice Everest agenda. He sponsors a school here, where he plans to install solar panels and lights soon, and he hosts a cleanup campaign here and in another nearby village.

One of Russell's key camp staff, a Tibetan named Karsang, is from this village. Karsang began working as a yak driver, but he quickly rose through the ranks of the Brice empire, learning to speak English and then summiting on Everest with Russell's clients.

Karsang's son Tashi guided us past the picnic site to Tashi Dum. We passed a waterwheel-driven mill grinding barley on a huge millstone in the same way old Tibetans have ground their meal for centuries. Yaks and goats grazed blissfully on the greenery. On the edge of the village, horse carts drove alongside SUVs on the dirt road. Narrow alleyways snaked past prayer flags tied to an incongruously placed satellite dish. Curious kids followed us everywhere. Then we slipped away to bounce back up the road to base camp.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Summit Team Named

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Yesterday, 17 Chinese climbers reached the summit of Everest early in the morning. That brings the total number of people (that I am aware of) who've climbed the North Ridge to the summit this season to 26. The Chinese got up ahead of predicted high winds that are scheduled to hit today and last a couple of days.

Weather data from Meteo Tech of Switzerland, to which Russell subscribes and which tracks jet stream patterns on Everest, predicted this wind spell, but the data show a good weather window in mid-May. That will surely scramble teams back onto the mountain.

The last couple of days have been sunny and warm around base camp. People ate; washed their clothes, hair and bodies; ate again; filmed and were filmed; then gathered in the Pleasure Dome/Tiger Room with the Sherpas to watch a Bollywood film and down a beer.

The line between feeling you are doing something productive in the game to climb Everest and devolving into a state of stultifying boredom has become narrow indeed.

Another film crew — Atlantic Productions — recently arrived at our camp. The cooks are now feeding more than 40 people, said Lachu, head cook, as he stood hand-making 300 momos (a savory pastry filled with yak meat).

The new crew is making a film about the legendary British Everest heroes George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who disappeared high on the final ridge in 1924. It's long been speculated that maybe (and it's a small maybe) they made it to the summit, thus beating Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's summit in 1953. There's strong evidence that they didn't get to the top, but the tantalizing possibility that they pulled it off has fueled several modern expeditions to search for the bodies in hopes of finding a camera that Irvine carried.

A few years ago one search expedition found Mallory's broken, frozen body near Camp 4. A snapped rope and a broken leg indicated a fall. Conrad Anker, who found the body, is back at Everest on the Atlantic production. Will yet another search of the rocky, snowy terrain up there reveal Irvine's frozen corpse — and his camera? Will the film be retrievable and offer a photograph of the 1924 climbers on the summit? That possibility propels the searchers.

Our own expedition spent yesterday looking inward, as Russell gave each of his clients a "performance review" to take to heart in the coming days. Despite the slothful pace of base camp life, the countdown for the summit has started.

Russell took each climber aside for a private chat in which he gave them a verbal report card about their strengths and weaknesses vs. their ambitions on the mountain.

I asked Russ to sum up his assessments. His comments included these highlights:

Tim must move with the group on the summit push rather than set his own times to leave and return to camps, and he must accept decisions from the guides and Russell. If you've seen Episode 6 of the previous season of Beyond the Limit, you saw Tim ignore Russell's orders to turn around from his slow summit push and descend. Russ wants no repeat of that situation. (It's a running joke here that if Tim ignores Russ, he'll get Tim's mother on the satellite phone.) For a guy who prides himself on having "a problem with authority," this order could be a challenge, but Everest looms so large in his eyes that this biker-rebel promises he'll get with the program on summit day.

Russ advised Mogens to use oxygen on his summit push. It's a touchy subject for the Dane as he's staked his ambitions on an ascent without supplemental oxygen. So far, Mogens is sticking to his guns and leaving the oxygen behind. Russ is coming from a position of safety — he knows his clients are more level-headed and warmer when plugged into oxygen. He’s also aware that Mogens has hit the wall in the past when trying to climb Everest without oxygen, and he’s concerned that his recent hard time going to Camp 2 (the climb pummeled him — he threw up, and he took far longer than his previous times) doesn’t present an ideal scenario for a no-02 climb.

David Tait and Phurba Tashi got the go-ahead to leave ahead of the main group to slowly march up the glacier and then move from camp to camp on the mountain to begin their epic double traverse. It's the green light David has been waiting for, though yesterday he spent hours plugged into his iPod, thinking hard, digging deep and psyching up. He seemed quietly, stoically nervous all day, until he burst to life in the evening, buying rounds of beer for the team at Russell’s bar. As for Phurba, he’s calm as Buddha, enthusiastic to return to the summit for his 12th ascent. He's even joked about walking another day or so down from Nepal base camp to his village to visit his family.

The others got the green light to proceed on the appointed summit day (date as yet undecided) — except for Betsy, who won’t be on the summit team.

Betsy freely admits that she has found the going harder than most up high, but the episode several days back on the way to Camp 2 when she took five hours to get halfway and continuously felt the urge to curl up in the snow and fall asleep, led Russ to hold her back.

Today I spent some time talking with her to see how she has taken Russell's verdict. She seems philosophical and accepting of the decision. She knows now that she’s not destined to climb Everest for very real reasons — namely, a lack of climbing experience and not the right physical stamina for high altitude.

In talking to her, it's apparent there was a strong metaphysical aspect to Betsy's desires on Everest. She felt that by reaching the highest point on Earth that she’d be closer to the religious sense she carries inside her, and closer to the presence of a loved one who’d passed on.

Far from seeming shattered by not getting a chance to stand atop Everest — "I'm over it," she said — she's moved on rather quickly. She now sees the importance of going home alive and in one piece to the family who form her strongest relationships. Although she feels she’s been somewhat of a New-Age-speaking outsider in this otherwise all-male climbing team, replete with its sometimes Animal House sense of humor, she says she remains concerned about the welfare of her teammates. So, she may just stick around at base camp to witness the upcoming action.

Signing off,
Greg Child

First Summits

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What started as a cold, cloudy day has turned warm, at least at ABC, and has given up the first summits of the season.

At about 1 p.m., word got around camp that Phurba Tashi Sherpa and four of his top men had reached the summit. The Discovery film crew trained their massive Digi-Beta camera with its 560mm gyro-stabilized lens on the summit, and we watched some amazing action on a small TV monitor.

At 1.15 p.m (times are approximate), in between shifting clouds, we saw two Kazakh climbers, Maxut and Vassily, who we heard were trying to blitz Everest "alpine style" — climbing without supplemental oxygen and without fixing their own camps. They were inching their way up the slope above the Third Step, moving very slowly.

At about 1.30 p.m. we saw a red-suited climber — one of our Sherpas — standing on the summit. At 1.50 p.m. there was a dramatic encounter as three Sherpas bounded downhill and crossed paths with the still-climbing Kazakhs. Even though we were miles away, we could see the climbers exchanging pats on the back. The Kazakhs moved on toward the final rocky section, called The Dihedral, before the summit. Then the clouds blew in.

It's fair to assume the Kazakhs would need about another hour from the point we last saw them to reach the summit and that they'd still have enough time to get back down in the last light of day to their highest camp. It's also fair to assume that they are taking considerable risks at this point, but they're very experienced and know what they're getting into.

On this same day last year, Phurba Tashi Sherpa and his team also reached the summit. This is said to be (pending verification) the earliest date for summiting on Everest's north side. Last year, the summiting Sherpas hit the top in the afternoon and marched all the way down the mountain back to ABC by 9 p.m. for dinner. That's nothing less than amazing. And they'll probably be back here tonight at roughly the same time to plenty of admiration from this crew, and to massive plates of their favorite food, rice and dahlbat.

Signing off,
Greg Child

April 29, 2007 Good Weather Blows In

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Yesterday, an early morning radio call from Russell at base camp predicted a change in the weather. He could see the entire mountain from there and saw the clouds shifting from the northeast to the northwest.

By breakfast, winds had calmed down all over the mountain. The Sherpas, already at the North Col, seized the initiative. By lunchtime we saw them from a telescope at ABC nearing Camp 2 at 24,500 feet (7,500 meters); by nightfall they'd be at Camp 3 at 26,000 feet (7,900 meters).

Phurba Tashi Sherpa, leader of the nine-man Sherpa team and veteran of at least 10 Everest summits, radioed down to predict that on April 29 his crew would be at Camp 4 and would have ropes fixed past the exit cracks and up the North Ridge to Mushroom Rock. On April 30 he believed they’d summit — weather permitting.

With the ropes and camps near finished, the way is open for a possible summit frenzy in the coming weeks.

Even so, summit bids are still weeks away for the Himex group. Acclimatization continues for the climbers and film team. On April 28, most of the climbers headed up to the North Col to sleep at the head-hitting altitude of 23,000 feet. From ABC we saw at least 100 people moving up the North Col ropes; at times, a dozen people were clipped into a single strand of rope as thin as a pencil.

"Ropes were tight, twanging like violin strings," said Scottish cameraman Ed Wardle when he got back to camp.

This morning, the group returned to ABC. Their first slumber party on the mountain had hit each of them differently.

First into camp was Josette Valloton, the Swiss guide. A professional climber, she rocketed up and down the North Col and slept well. Fred Ziel appeared next; he says he slept a little cold. David, Mogens, Darius and Rod all arrived in short order.

Headaches plagued Rod during the night until the painkillers and Diamox kicked in. Darius, sleeping like a log beside him, barely noticed a thing as Rod spent the night "banging my head against the wall, moaning and getting up to pee" (a side effect of Diamox). Darius' sole complaint was rib pain from breathing so deeply on the ascent.

The whole camp credited Betsy for coping with the altitude and sleeping soundly at Camp 1, though guide Dean Staples, who shepherded her on the climb, cautioned that her ascent time of six and a half hours was too slow. Clients are expected to make the climb from ABC to North Col in five hours. That's because the next obstacle — the climb to Camp 2 — is a notoriously gut-busting grind, exponentially harder than the climb to Camp 1.

Tim, always marching to the beat of his own drummer, sauntered into ABC way last. He and tent-mate Yong Li (the Chinese climber recently christened "Bruce Lee") had a tough night because Yong Li stayed out late playing cards in the Chinese camp on the North Col. Tim hadn't appreciated being disturbed by the stench of cigarette smoke when he returned, and apparently there was a bit of yelling.

Today, everyone who returned is resting, eating and hydrating. Head guide Bill Crouse is off to the North Col with the remaining three Japanese climbers, Yanagi (who at 71 keeps on trucking), Kobi, Take and their highly experienced leader Hiro. A few days ago, team member Masa developed early stages of cerebral edema and had to be evacuated to base camp. He's now headed back to Japan.

Today, all but one of the five ill film crew is returning to ABC. Only cameraman Barrie Foster remains at base camp, still trying to figure out whether he's able to adapt to higher altitudes. And the trekker who went down on oxygen with signs of pulmonary and cerebral edema is well and good.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Climber Gallery

Tagging the North Col

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After an early start and a hike across the frozen flatlands leading to the foot of Everest, the whole crew arrived at the ropes leading to the North Col. We weren't the only ones there. By the time I clipped my ascender to the rope, about 60 people were above me, and when I descended four hours later, I scooted past at least that many people, maybe more.

This was our first major climbing foray to altitude — North Col lies at about 23,100 feet. The plan was to tag it and then head back to ABC, using the logic of acclimatizing that says you should climb high and sleep low. By the end of the day, everyone was pleased with their performance.

It was a dramatic day for weather, with high winds raking the summit and ghostly cloud shadows scudding fast across the gray-white glacier. Mogens and David sprinted up the face in two hours and 20 minutes; Josette made it in about three hours; most others took about four to four and a half hours. Betsy climbed with guide Dean Staples; she reached a point near the North Col and went down with a lot more knowledge about climbing than she had a couple of days earlier.

It's been 12 years since I've been to the North Col and it's much different than I remember. The glacier has sunk into itself, causing the ice wall we scaled to collapse into a more jumbled face. It's still pretty easy to climb: The face has an average angle of 25 degrees and every inch is lined with ropes, one for up and one for down, but global warming has clearly taken a toll on the ice.

As I headed up, I caught up to Rod, whose head was banging away with a dehydration headache. Perhaps he should have gone down, but he wanted to press on as he'd never been so high on a peak before. He swallowed two liters of water then kept plodding on.

"I don't recall this thing," I said to Rod a little later, pointing to a 200-foot-tall ice cliff right above us. It was fractured into a fragile pile of blocks that everyone had to pass under. It was one of those things that might sit tight for a year, or might collapse on our heads at any minute — kind of a mountaineering Russian roulette moment.

"If this thing goes, we're dead," I said, so we sped up the pace and five minutes later were back in the clear, moving up the rope, while others slid down another rope a few feet away. Rod's head pounded all the more for the effort, but he got to the Col in pretty good time.

The campsite on the North Col (Camp 1) is now so crowded that there are two levels separated by a few vertical feet and a crevasse spanned by a standard, hardware store-bought, household ladder. In total, about 50 tents are dug in up there and more are soon to sprout.

Old ropes dangle from an ice cliff above camp, frozen in place and swaying in the wind. They appear out of the most unlikely spots, like vines growing out of a cliff, and they show the way that the snow and ice cover everything in time, foot by foot and year by year, burying and compressing anything the climbers leave behind.

Filmmakers Ed Wardle and Mark Whetu had lugged their cameras all the way up to catch the traffic on the way up and down. Tim's arrival at Camp 1 was all but an autograph event, as his reputation from last season's Discovery Channel series ensures he's recognized by most anyone with an Everest dream. "Get it on!" he yelled to the mountains.

After tagging the campsite, we all slid down the ropes in about 20 minutes enveloped in a white fog of swirling snow and cloud. Climbers were still dragging themselves up and down, some pinch-cheeked, stumbling and absolutely hammered by the altitude, others (mainly Sherpas), skipping up or down with a smile and a "Namaste."

Today as I write this — the morning after our climb — we've all just emerged from snow-covered tents and a well-earned sleep. Tim's back is bugging him (remember, this guy has a metal cage around his spine from a motorbike crash), but some medication from our doctor and a rest will set him straight.

Weather on the mountain is still not the best for the Sherpas to push on with rope-fixing. Nevertheless, weather permitting, everyone returns to North Col tomorrow to sleep and keep the acclimatization training on schedule.

Signing off,
Greg Child

More pics from the North Col trek: