Discovery Channel - Everest: Beyond the Limit

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

Survivor

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I saw it in his eyes the moment he staggered into the medical tent — real fear. The man had come straight off the mountain. Still dressed in his down clothes and wearing a harness, he had an oxygen mask strapped onto his wild-eyed face and connected to a tank inside a backpack carried by a Tibetan he'd met on the glacier.

Spasms of wet-sounding coughs bent the climber over at the waist. We sat him in a chair and Dr. Monica calmed him down with a few soothing words. When his explosive breathing calmed, he revealed his name and his story.

Gavin Bate, a Brit, had been well over 26,000 feet (8,000 meters) that morning on May 19, up near the Second Step, heading toward the summit on an intended traverse of Everest (as David Tait had done earlier on this trip). Then "everything went wrong" and he quickly "lost his marbles." He couldn't think straight, his breathing became tortuous and he began to lose consciousness. "I knew it right then," he said. "This was it."

He was being attacked by just about everything high altitude can toss at you without actually killing you. His lungs were filling with fluid, his brain was probably also being hit with a buildup of fluid between the cranium and the soft matter, and all of these symptoms were leading to a shutdown of his body. He still had enough of a survival instinct to pick himself up and spin around, though, and several Sherpas on the mountain who saw his plight helped him down with "a shoulder here and a push there."

"They were amazing, just amazing," Gavin said with admiration for the mostly unknown-to-him men who got him down Everest far enough that he could carry on to the glacier and into our camp.

While I watched Monica check his stats with a pulse oximeter and listen to his lungs with a stethoscope — then pronounce him largely free of edema — he went from a guy who'd stared at death to a happy survivor sipping tea. A day later he strolled into camp to thank everyone. He'd slept on oxygen last night and aside from a light cough, he was well.

Russ and Monica have seen much worse cases of mountain maladies — and so have I — but it rattled me to watch this guy stagger in looking so distressed, so afraid for his life.

When I used to habitually climb Himalayan peaks I watched pulmonary edema quickly overcome a friend and take his life. It happened 25 years ago, on a peak in Pakistan called Broad Peak, and although that was many years ago, it's something I have never forgotten.

So, after Gavin left our camp and shuffled across the black rocks and ice to his camp, a radio call came down to ABC from Mogens. He'd decided to use bottled oxygen on his climb because he'd been feeling way too physically stressed up to Camp 2, and I felt relieved.

It's great to be among the elite who can say they've climbed the highest point on Earth without a bottle of 02, but it's also good to play it safe. Twelve years ago when I climbed Everest, there were those around me who climbed it without oxygen, and lots of others, like me, who happily sucked gas from a bottle. What I remember best about that day in 1995 isn't who had better style points than me, but the view and the amazing feeling of being so high up, and the feeling of intense happiness to walk back down the mountain alive and well.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Babel

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Everything is going according to plan for the two Himex teams as they move up today to Camps 2 and 3 in good weather. However, Mogens radioed down at about 2:30 p.m. to consult with our doctor, Monica, about experiencing restrictive breathing on the way to Camp 2.

I scoped a pair of American skiers carrying skis to the summit, then carry the skis back down to near the Third Step, put them on, make a couple of kick turns then turn around and climb back to the route and head on down.

An emergency erupted last night when a loosely knit four-person Italian group with Cho Oyu Trekking raised the alarm from 27,000 feet (8,300 meters). Russell and two other large commercial operations (one Swiss-owned, by Cary Kobler; one Russian-owned, called Seven Summits) quickly got involved. The state of play is confusing to everyone, especially with the multilingual communications.

It appears that four Italians, at least one climbing without oxygen and all without Sherpa support (and possibly without radios), became separated on their way to the summit. One climber accelerated past his team members, tagged the summit then headed back down past them. The rest continued up, apparently reaching the summit but falling into disarray during the descent.

Details are scant, but one Italian, Marco, collapsed that night in a tent at Camp 4. Lacking a radio, his companions used their satellite phone to call Italy and a frantic call was patched through to ABC saying that some of the team was missing and that one person was dying at Camp 4.

According to Russell, while he and other team leaders tried to make sense of where the Italians were, one of the allegedly missing walked into ABC unscathed. He had little information on the rest of his team, other than that he'd continued past them. It appears that their connection to each other was so loose that they didn't know each others' full names, adding to the confusion.

The rest of last night and this morning the drama played out in various camps on the glacier. While I watched Russell and Cary orchestrate a solution to the problem by radio, the Italian who'd arrived last night sat on a rock, seemingly stunned and silent, while an Italian woman looked on in a state of distress.

It seems that the two Italians accompanying the stricken Marco, themselves exhausted, had left him at Camp 4, apparently in the care of Russian team leader Alex of Seven Summits, who was on his way up with clients. More radio talk revealed that Alex had his own problems and was dealing with several broken oxygen masks.

Russell offered Marco oxygen and high-altitude medicine from his stash at Camp 4. As the day went on, Sherpas arrived to assist, Marco plugged into oxygen, got to his feet and he, along with the other two Italians, continued down toward safety.

Unless anything else goes wrong, what began as a verge-of-death situation will likely end up as another near-miss on Everest. Cary Kobler, a bear-sized man who often works closely with Russell in such situations, modestly brushed off the team effort, saying that all they'd done was make a few radio calls and contribute some oxygen. But if they hadn't been there to put all those pieces together, would this ill-prepared team of Italians be coming home alive?

Signing off,
Greg Child

Blast Off

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A raft of news — good, grim and surprising — is coming out of ABC this morning.

The surprising: David Tait and Phurba Tashi have quit their double traverse of Everest. After reaching the south side base camp (they met no climbers ascending the South Ridge, so they fixed ropes downward, which must be something of a first), David contacted Russell to say that he was exhausted and was proceeding by helicopter to Kathmandu and that he'd fly home to the U.K. Phurba Tashi, on the other hand, will probably travel overland back to the north side base camp, where he'll be back at work soon.

ABC is full again. I arrived yesterday at noon, after a snowy hike from interim camp. Once here, I was immediately directed to gaze through a telescope to witness the down-going summit traffic. Between 60 and 80 people summited on May 15 and May 16. At noon on May 17 as I drank coffee, 13 people climbed the final summit crown.

The grim: Among others, two Japanese teams got into trouble yesterday. One Japanese man collapsed and died above the Third Step, where his body remains. He was a former Himex client who Russell had ordered down during a previous season. Another client, reportedly a 70-year-old woman, summited, yet collapsed at a higher camp. According to a Japanese observer, she was in the process of dying even as a rescue was being mounted. I'm unsure whether she survived or not at this time.

Since I got here a stream of minor casualties from other teams have staggered through the Himex camp. Minutes ago, a Westerner on oxygen stumbled through, supported by several Sherpas. Our doctor, Monica, treat two serious cases of frostbite this morning. One Japanese man had frozen fingers and toes, and a Sherpa turned up with frostbitten, blistered fingers.

It's hard to get a read on why the Japanese teams courted such mayhem up there. One Japanese observer I spoke to disdainfully dubbed the philosophy behind the Japanese commercial operations as "Summit or Die."

He became critical as he translated the conversation between Monica and the frostbitten Japanese climber, when the Japanese team leader revealed the team had no first-aid kit. Nor was he impressed with the antiquated equipment and the team's lack of down suits.

The frozen-fingered climber reportedly had hand protection better suited to a sub-alpine stroll — basic wool gloves and windproof overmitts (rather that the puffy, hand-saving down mitts most climbers use above 26,000 feet).

Said the Japanese observer, in essence: The clients on these expeditions have no acclimatization — they begin breathing bottled oxygen on the way to the North Col. The trips are marketed to older clients who are physically unable to make the up-and-down, camp-to-camp acclimatization jaunts that, for example, Himex requires of its clients. So, they make a single shot for the summit relying on oxygen rather than real acclimatization — and that's not safe.

The Good: Russell gathered his clients and guides together this morning for a briefing. He gave the go-ahead for everyone to move up the mountain starting today (for Team 1), and tomorrow (for Team 2).

The teams: Number 1 consists of Fred, Tim, Rod, Darius and Li Yong, with guides Dean and Woody. Team 2 is composed of the Japanese quartet and the climbers going without supplemental oxygen, Josette and Mogens.

If the weather holds and there are no delays, that'll put the Himex clients on top May 21 and May 22.

Russell's briefing was a take-no-prisoners lecture on the hazards of climbing Everest: He sugar-coated nothing, warning his people that death is a real possibility up there and reminding them of the people who've already died. He chastised those who've been with him in the past and disobeyed his orders to come down, and he made it clear that his word on turn-around times is final. It was a sobering lecture. But Russell Brice isn't known for feel-good chats about climbing Everest; he's known for chilling sermons that bring his clients back from the summit alive.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Kazakhs Survive

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The two Kazakh climbers we saw pushing to the top of Everest without supplemental oxygen on April 30 then descending into the night are back at ABC, alive and comparatively unscathed. But hearing their tale makes it clear that they pushed the envelope of survival.

When asked if they thought they may not make it down, Maxut Zhumayev, 30, grinned grimly and told me, "Every minute we thought about death."

Following up from where my last dispatch left off, our own five Sherpas reached ABC at 7.30 p.m. on April 30 after summiting, and a night of partying ensued in the Himex camp.

Meanwhile, we'd last scoped the Kazakhs descending the Third Step at 4:48 p.m. that same day and the two men were still battling down. That was a worry, as it meant they would descend some hard ground by night well above 26,000 feet. No radio communications came from them until they reached Camp 4 at 27,000 feet and called down to their outfitter at base camp at around 4 a.m.

Russell Brice, still at base camp, was in on the communications loop and let our ABC team know that the Kazakh boys were "in trouble" at Camp 4. Reports that one of them was unable to move one leg and that both had frostbite filtered in.

Lakpa Sherpa, who works for their trekking outfit Arun Trekking, set out from ABC using oxygen in order to race up to their location. He gathered more Sherpas on the North Col and the group hurried up the ridge to meet the two men.

When the Sherpas found the Kazakhs, they had worked their way down to 25,900 feet near Camp 3. Lakpa told me that while Maxut was in fair shape, Vassily Pivtsov, 31, was laying on his back in the snow, gasping, eyes bulging, hands waving around.

Lakpa judged the man to be on the verge of death, so he shoved an oxygen mask on him. Initially, Vassily fought the mask because using the oxygen would taint their goal of making the entire ascent and descent without supplemental oxygen. But after a few slaps from Lakpa he accepted it for the sake of survival.

Around 1 p.m. on May 1, the Sherpas radioed ABC to report the Kazakhs were going to survive. By 5 p.m. they were at the North Col. At 6.30, cameraman Ed Venner met them as they staggered back to ABC. Maxut walked in under his own steam, but Vassily needed frequent support from the Sherpas and had been dropping to his knees and clutching his chest.

At ABC the men revealed that they'd gone 48 hours without a drop of water during their summit push and descent. In between guzzles of fruit juice, they joked around. Maxut, elated, turned to Everest and said he was proud to have climbed the peak for his father and for being the first Kazakh to do so without oxygen.

Vassily was more withdrawn, more physically wrecked. Diagnosed with some frostbite to his feet and with some gurgling in one lung (lung damage rather than pulmonary edema, according to a doctor), he recovered enough to phone his wife later that night.

This morning, when I met them for the first time, they accepted me into their tent and poured me tea. They seemed to drift off on tangents as they spoke (both in English), but they were elated to be alive. Burned noses and parched lips looked to be the worst of their injuries, though I didn’t see what shape their feet were in.

They told their story in a daze, but the important parts of their ordeal came through dramatically: the wind that bit through their clothes all day and slowed them to a crawl on their 24-hour ascent, which began at 10 p.m. at 25,900 feet on the night of April 29; their frigid night during the descent when they crawled into an empty Chinese team’s tent at 27,000 feet (their own tent was 1,300 feet lower), which they reached in the dark and which contained neither a stove, food nor sleeping bags.

They shivered all night in that tent and since they had no stove, they couldn’t produce water. That was why they spent 48 hours with parched throats and dangerously low bodily water intake. By morning they almost couldn't move from the exhaustion, but they knew "if we stay at 8,300 meters (27,000 feet), we die."

They headed down and met a Chinese climber who gave them a little water from his canteen. When Maxut describes the way that water felt trickling down his throat, he goes into an animated mime of joy and then desperation that it was merely a mouthful.

The men took a huge risk, but it paid off. They came to Everest with a huge body of experience — since 1998 they've climbed, always together, most of the 26,000-foot peaks in the world. Only Manaslu, Lhotse and K2 remain. They plan to head to K2 in June after some R&R in their hometown of Almaty, Kazakhstan.

It was a gift for me to meet these guys and shake their hands. They're the real McCoy. Sure, they're the sort of alpinist who I may read an obituary about sometime soon because they so totally lay it on the line. But that's the path they've chosen. They are genuine alpinists. In no way can they, nor I, justify the incredible risks and commitment they accept on their climbs, but that's what they do, and on-the-edge adventurers like them make this world a more interesting place.

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:

 

Hard Times at ABC

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It's so windy right now that nothing can be done on the mountain. At 6 a.m., the Sherpas fled the North Col, where it was too cold and windy even for them. I can stare up at the summit from my high-altitude office (my tent) and see scrolls of cloud ripping from the top of the mountain at warp speed. Something must be in the air — maybe it's the low atmospheric pressure — because there's been lots of sickness in camp today.

This morning, a trekker attached to Himex developed moist, rattling sounds in his lung, probably the onset of pulmonary edema. Immediately, Dr. Monica ordered his evacuation, so a seat was rigged up and strapped to the back of Dorje, a Tibetan member of the crew, to carry the trekker down. Beside Dorje, a Sherpa carried an oxygen bottle connected to a face mask strapped to the trekker's face. Five other Sherpas headed down to base camp with the trekker. Later in the day, another member of the Himex team developed altitude illness and is slated to descend tomorrow.

Eight members of this group have now had to descend to the safer, lower altitude of base camp, some 3,800 feet lower than ABC. All are managing well as radio reports from base camp confirm. Most people will return in a few days.

I'm not naming any of the ill members right now because this blog might precede phone calls to families. What I'm certain of, is that all of the ill are doing well.

Yesterday was a key day for the climbing clients of the team when Russell and his three guides rigged up an Everest boot camp to test the climbing skills of the clients. Ropes were rigged on an ice formation and the clients had to show what they know by climbing one strand of rope using an ascending device, then rappelling down another rope. It's all essential stuff to have wired in advance if you plan to get up and down the thousands of feet of rope to the summit.

Results were revealing.

Betsy raised everyone's eyebrows when she tried to attach her crampons to her boots upside down. "I'm not a climber," she later admitted, qualifying that 10 years ago she wore crampons on a trekking peak in Nepal, but that guides and Sherpas had looked after her climbing needs.

"Everest isn't the place to learn how to climb," Russell later told her, adding he'd allow her extra tuition to improve her crampon and climbing skills.

"I'm a fast learner, and I've gone through harder stuff than this in my life" Betsy told me later, looking at the North Col, 2,000 feet above us. She added, "If I think I'm being a liability to others, I'll burn rubber down this mountain."

I'm sure lots of readers will think I am picking on Betsy, but I'll just repeat Russell's professional opinion: "Everest isn't the place to learn how to climb. Betsy misrepresented her mountaineering experience to me."

In the end, everyone is giving Betsy every chance to find her feet on this mountain.

Others didn't get such great grades either. Darius didn't know how to rappel, but he learned fast and considers he's now ready for the big climb; Tim and Rod needed pointers on using their safety tethers on the ropes.

David and Mogens decided to skip class, figuring their previous time on Everest gave them sufficient credit. Yong Li (from China) slid up and down the ropes fastest of all, but Hiro's Japanese clients found the rope work difficult.

My opinion? These folks are clients, not climbers. They don't have resumes that include years of climbing expeditions on which they've fended for themselves and climbed mountains under their own steam — leading the way, fixing ropes, setting up their own camps. All of this is done for them on Everest.

Here, they've paid their way into an elite guiding operation that will give them the support they need to have a chance to realize their dream of getting to the top of Everest. But they must be able to get up and down the mountain under their own power and be able to safely cope with the technical climbing challenges ahead of them.

The fascinating thing about this expedition — and one of the reasons that a Discovery film team and blog are covering their exploits — is that this is a group of everyday people who have chosen to take on the biggest challenge of their lives. They'll be examined closely by their guides before being allowed to attempt the summit, because this is no picnic — it's a journey into the Death Zone.

Tomorrow, the team will get their first taste of the mountain. They'll ascend the ropes and tag the North Col, then come back to ABC. It'll be a long, hard day, probably lashed by winds. Perfect training for what lies ahead.

Signing off,
Greg Child

A Hard Place to Live

[Click on the pictures to see larger versions with captions.]

Climbers, guides, Sherpas and film crew are all now at advance base camp (ABC) at 21,000 feet (6,400 meters). During the two-day hike, Everest was nearly always in view, its summit adorned with a jet stream blast of cloud flowing from the southwest.

We shared the trail with hundreds of yaks. The valley echoed with the jangle of their bells and the coos and songs the Tibetan yak drivers sing to their docile beasts of burden. Russell figures that 2,500 yaks are involved in the business of shuttling expeditions up and down this glacier.

While the 9-mile hike isn't very steep, the altitude gain can be punishing. It's common to arrive, spend a night, and succumb to sleeplessness, headaches, lethargy and puking nausea. The best cure for altitude sickness is descent back to base camp, and a few members of this group have already had to go down to rest up.

In fact, I haven't felt so great since I got here. The last couple of days I've been dreamy and wooden-headed, but now that I've drunk enough water to fend off altitude-induced dehydration I'm much more alert. Consider that at ABC we're camping higher than any point in North America, Africa or Europe.

ABC is situated in a dead end of the East Rongbuk Glacier on a narrow strip of glacier occupied by many expeditions. We all sleep on a constantly moving ice river that cracks and pops beneath us. Everest's long Northeast Ridge rises left of the camp and the North Col (location of Camp 1) is a wall of ice and snow at the end of the valley. Right now I can see 60 people threading their way up the slope that leads to Camp 1. From my tent they look like a line of ants crossing a sugar bowl.

The mountain is a beehive of activity. Russell's crew of Sherpas has been busy carrying masses of supplies, including oxygen, which will be used from 26,000 feet (7,900 meters) on up. The plan is to pave the North Ridge with enough rope to allow the hundreds of this year's Everest contenders to reach the summit.

The first summiters will likely be Russell's well-trained Sherpa crew, who believe they'll summit by the end of April. Because Russell's team has been fixing ropes on Everest for so many years, most of the expeditions are content to let his crew do the hard work and set the lines in place. In return, they pay a minimal fee ($100 per person) to cover the enormous manpower, oxygen and rope that the job entails; those expeditions who don't wish to pay use the fixed ropes anyway.

Meanwhile, the climbers in this group are getting their personal gear in order and training on the ice cliffs beside camp before making the move onto the mountain. The next destination will be the North Col at around 23,000 feet (7,000 meters). The gnarly thing about climbing high peaks is that as soon as you adapt to one altitude, you have to move up and suffer at a higher altitude.

In the next few dispatches I'll be writing about the superhuman Sherpas who are the backbone of this expedition, as well as the ongoing adventures of the individuals who've signed up for Russell Brice's Everest expedition.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Blessing at Base Camp

[Click on the pictures to see larger versions with captions.]

Yesterday, Tibetan Buddhism infused base camp when monks from Rongbuk Monastery gave us a "puja" blessing. It's a tradition for expeditions to Everest and other Himalayan peaks to bring this slice of ancient mysticism into the lives of climbers.

Three monks presided over the ceremony, in which we sat around a stupa — an altar of stones — while prayer flags were strung from a pole, juniper brush was burned, rice and flour were tossed to the air, and chants and prayers were offered to bring everyone home safely.

The climbers each placed an item of gear on the stupa — an ice ax, a crampon, a personal memento from home — to be blessed. It seems good insurance to carry a Tibetan monk's blessing onto the mountain, whatever your at-home faith.

These are mellow days at base camp. Call it the lull before the storm, so to speak, because when the climb begins, the days will be hard and painful. It's no waste of time, though. As team members take hikes up the valley flanks, everyone is getting fit and deepening their acclimatization. Already our adaptation is showing, with most of us sleeping better at night.

Our first few nights at base camp were restless because nearly everyone suffered Cheyne-Stokes breathing, an altitude nasty in which the sleeper literally stops breathing for several seconds, then starts up again with an unsettling series of gasps. Our energy levels are higher now that we're getting better sleep.

These days are also valuable for team bonding. This diverse group barely knew each other before Kathmandu and now we're forming alliances and learning one another's histories.

Trying to figure out the motivation that's led each team member to Everest is one of my objectives for this blog, but it's a harder task than you'd think. I've been climbing for about 37 years and since day one I've been asked why I climb. I've never given a very good answer, other than to say it's something that got into my blood as a kid and intensified with every year and every climb.

Sitting over a cup of tea today with Mogens Jensen, the 34-year-old Dane who wants to make a "pure" (i.e., sans supplemental oxygen) ascent of Everest, I wondered what I'd hear.

Many people make it up Everest using bottled oxygen, but few dare try without it. The risk factor and difficulty of climbing the mountain with no gas is probably tenfold. And Mogens (pronounced like "bones") suffers chronic asthma to the extent that he must take state-of-the-art medications twice daily. Even so, he's a triathlete who trains about 40 hours a week. He's also multilingual and a teacher by trade.

Everest turned him on several years ago as a "test of the self" and an ultimate athletic event. He started high-altitude climbing on a smaller 26,000-foot peak called Cho Oyu, guided by Russell's crew. He then hit Everest twice, each year having to abandon his gas-free bids at 26,000 feet. Last year he got slammed by the altitude, ataxia and vision problems. This year, he's trained harder and he's already spent weeks trekking at altitude in Nepal.

"I feel ready for her, and I think she's ready for me," he says.

"Do you think that under any circumstance you'd use oxygen?" I ask him. "I mean, wouldn't it be better to use gas and get the summit under your belt in the end?"

Mogens thinks a bit and then tells me he'll stick to his guns. He's certain he can summit while plugged into a bottle of oxygen, but he'd rather hit the his body's limit and turn back. Mogens is a perfectionist, physically and mentally strong, yet he's also certain this will be his last try at Everest.

It's now 5.30 p.m. on April 16, and it looks like a storm is blowing in. Russell has given a yell around camp that if anyone has wash on the line or a tent door open, they better get organized because the storm might bring rain.

Rain? It seems too cold for that, but a dark curtain of cloud is blowing up the valley from the warmer lowlands rather than from the icy heights.

Tomorrow, some of the guides are heading to Advance Base Camp (higher than the summit of Mt. McKinley in Alaska), with a caravan of yaks to start organizing camp for the next wave of climbers and film crew. In a few more days everyone will move up, and then the real action will begin.

Signing off,
Greg Child