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

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

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

Battle Plan

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For the last two days everyone at base camp has woken up to cloudless views of Everest. That's motivated people to think about the days ahead. On the mountain we know that David Tait and Phurba Tashi are headed to Camp 4 and that tomorrow is their projected summit day. They will then cross over into Nepal the same day for their double traverse. There have been reports of plenty of activity up high as other teams position themselves for summit bids.

Everyone at BC and ABC has itchy feet for the summit. A few hundred folks have been waiting weeks for the classic period of mid- and late-May when the weather warms, the wind drops and the summit comes within reach. Yesterday, Russell announced his expedition's battle plan.

Starting today we will make a gradual shift back to ABC and Russell named dates for two summit pushes. "Don't put that in your blog, though," he said to me. "People in other base camps might read that and follow us up." So until the teams set out from ABC, the date is secret.

The teams are not secret, however. The first group will consist of Tim, Fred, Darius and Rod. Woody and Dean will be their guides.

The second summit team, which will leave a day later, will comprise the Japanese (led by Hiro, with young Kobi, 71-year-old Yanagasawa and Yoshida), and Mogens and Josette, who want to make their attempts sans supplemental oxygen. Their guide doesn't want to be identified in this blog or in the Discovery Channel documentary.

Each team will be accompanied by a summit cameraman — Ed Wardle with Team 1, and New Zealand climber/cameraman Mark Whetu with Team 2. Each climber and cameraman will be supported by a dedicated Sherpa; Sherpas for Mogens and Josette will tote emergency oxygen supplies just in case.

Numerous other cameras will monitor progress along the route, and several Sherpas will carry "Sherpa cams" — helmet-mounted microwave cameras that beam moving images down to monitors at base camp.

As for Russell, he'll position himself on the North Col like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, where he'll be in radio contact with every member, and where he'll monitor progress using a powerful telescope and a Sherpa cam monitor.

For a guy with an impeccable safety record on Everest — he's never lost a client and has roughly a 70 percent client success rate (a record marred by the death last year of a staff-member Sherpa near the North Col, likely to altitude illness) — Russell regards this eve of battle as the most nerve-wracking part of his job.

"I always get nervous near summit day. I get a knot in my stomach. I can't make a mistake, because summit day is when people can die," he said.

He tries to beef up the safety factor by carefully selecting summit days based on high-tech weather information and by trusting his own gut feelings so that clients can land on top when the wind is lowest. He also tries to avoid going up with masses of other climbers so his people don't get wrapped up in the dramas of other teams — and vice versa.

Being in constant radio contact is also key; the voice of Russell Brice monitoring their progress and reminding them when it's prudent to speed up or turn back is ever present in the ears of his clients.

"People sign a contract with me that says they'll agree if I tell them to turn around," Russell explains. " If they refuse to listen, if they walk out of that contract, I'm helpless. I can't reach out and grab them."

That's what worries Russell — people ignoring him and pushing themselves to the brink.

Before he became "Godfather" of the north side commercial climbing scene, Russell put his own time in on Everest as a climber. He first tried Everest in 1981. In his heyday he tried the miles-long Northeast Ridge as a two-man team. In 1988, with no Sherpas or supplemental oxygen, he and Harry Taylor climbed this massive ridge to where it connects with the North Ridge, but they didn't get to the summit because they'd gotten so strung out. In 1995, an enormous Japanese team completed the route.

Since then, he's made several summit climbs himself and has placed scores of clients on top. I got to the summit on one of his trips in '95, during one of the most successful and safest seasons on record.

Now that he's entrenched in the commercial era of Everest as one of the big outfitters, he says, "I want the mountain to be as safe for my clients as possible. Because when things go wrong up there, they go horribly wrong."

He talks about the vicious side of Everest — hurricane-force winds, killing cold — that few clients ever see because he shields them from it. He's well aware that his clients don't have the repertoire of "survival tricks" up their sleeves that he and his guides know from years of mountaineering experience. That's why getting people up and down from the Death Zone quickly is crucial to his success, which is facilitated by his skilled Sherpa team, his high client-to-Sherpa ratio, constant radio communications, ample oxygen and having "the right equipment in the right place at the right time."

It isn't cheap to sign on to a Himalayan Experience trip — it costs more than $40,000. Base camp is loaded with outfits doing it cheaper. For about $9,000 or less you can sign up with bare-bones do-it-yourself companies that provide a no-frills base camp environment and minimal oxygen, but no radio (unless you pay extra) and little in the way of dedicated Sherpa support.

That option has clear appeal to the cost-conscious, but it's a system with no safety net and it begs the question, "How much do you value your life?"

David Sharp, the climber who died in 2006 and whose death was surrounded by a media frenzy of inaccuracy and furor, had paid into one such bare-bones operation. When he couldn't go on anymore on the North Ridge and collapsed into a fatal dream world above 26,000 feet, he was alone and unsupported, he had no radio to call for a rescue, and the outfit he'd signed on with had no idea where he was.

Himalayan Experience clients and Sherpas encountered him and tried to get him moving, but it was too late. David Sharp wasn't his client, but Russell swept the base camps to identify him, then Russell (not Sharp's outfitter) contacted his family with the tragic news. A year later the Sharp family traveled with Russell to base camp, and placed a monument to their son on Cemetery Hill.

Full-service outfitters like Russell shake their heads at the $9,000 false bargain. " They piggyback on others," he says.

When Russell Brice is zipping around camp organizing clients, film crews and trekkers, as well as fixing the umpteen things that fall apart at base camp, he can seem brusque, impatient and a bit short-tempered. Who wouldn't? But when the yaks**t hits the fan on Everest, his outfit and the network of full-service agencies he's allied with have been the ones to help stricken climbers time and again.

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

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

Base Camp and Beyond

In honor of the Everest blog Friday tradition, enjoy a little slice of base camp in pictures. More yaks!

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Pleasure Dome Days

Received Saturday, April 14

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Fourteen of Russell's 30-strong Sherpa team marched into base camp last night after rigging ropes and installing ladders (to span crevasses) to the North Col. All expeditions in "Everestville" will eventually use this highway of ropes after they've acclimatized. That the Sherpas, from Nepal and Tibet, have been able to pave the way so early shows how mountain fit and permanently acclimatized they are.

"The boys are chomping at the bit to get up this hill," said Russell after the Sherpas had briefed him on conditions up there, which they say present lots of hard, exposed ice. Many of those Sherpas have been trained by Russell and his guides.

Meanwhile, the Himex climbers remain at base camp, slowly acclimatizing. Some of the team are nursing headaches and lethargy, symptoms of our recent arrival at 17,000 feet (5,200 meters); others seem unaffected. Regardless, everyone must patiently adjust to the thinly oxygenated atmosphere surrounding us.

Even if the world's best Himalayan climber arrived at base camp fit and strong and decided to immediately stomp up Everest, that climber would collapse and probably die from a cocktail of high altitude maladies. The human body cannot push fast to 26,000 feet (8,000 meters); weeks of patience are essential.

So we bide our time, hiking around the stupendous valley, getting to know one another, and relaxing in the Pleasure Dome (which was recently party central for my 50th birthday; a grand place and great people to share hitting a half-century).

The Pleasure Dome was also recently the site of what might be an Everest record — namely, world's highest vacuum cleaning. Russell's Pleasure Dome is carpeted wall-to-wall and scattered with thick Nepali rugs, so periodic sweeping is required. But the sight of teammember Betsy Huelskamp pushing a vacuum cleaner struck me as a mountaineering first.

I even joined in, vigorously siphoning glacial dust from the floor until I was breathless. People who've been to my house will regard the idea of me getting behind a vacuum cleaner as a first in itself, but I assure you it was strictly for acclimatization training.

Jokes aside, several other firsts are planned by members of this team.

Mogens Jensen, a Dane, triathlete and lifelong asthmatic who doses himself with medication twice daily to fend off attacks, figures that getting to the summit will be a first for asthma sufferers. Climbing the highest peak seems the opposite of what an asthmatic should be doing, but Mogens wants to up the ante by climbing without bottled oxygen. Pharmaceutical company Smith Kline Beecham, which manufactures the medications Mogens takes, is backing his adventure. This year is his third try at Everest. Last year he cycled from Kathmandu to Tibet to acclimatize. He's ferociously fit.

Another first comes from Rod Baber, a Briton who has climbed the highest point in every country in Europe. He'll try a technology first by making a cell phone call from the summit. Motorola is backing his venture.

David Tait, a British financial whiz, and Sherpa Phurba will try the first double traverse of Everest. That means they'll climb it twice. First, they'll go up Tibet's North Ridge to the summit, then down Nepal's South Ridge. They'll then turn around and climb back up the South Ridge, cross the summit again, and head down the North Ridge to where they started — namely, the Pleasure Dome.

Ah yes, the Pleasure Dome. It's going to be hard for us all to leave this comfy oasis in a few days when Russ gives the order to head to Advance Base Camp. Right now, I'm looking out of the dome's window, watching the jet stream blast a plume of snow from the summit. It's 4.30 p.m. here and already the temperature outside is plummeting. But in here I can almost fool myself into thinking I'm home, safe and warm.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Welcome to Everestville

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Not far out of Shegar, the buses gear down and climb a 17,000-foot pass, then wind into the valley leading to base camp. A storm last night has dusted the rolling, tan hills and boulder-strewn river banks with snow. We share the road with occasional yaks, horse-drawn carts, motor bikes and SUVs.

At the Rongbuk monastery, the massive north wall of Everest suddenly appears out of a smoky haze of cloud. Everyone gets off the bus to take it in. Fred Ziel, one of the climbers riding on my bus, stares at the mountain. This expedition will be his third try at Everest. In 2003, on the Nepalese side, he climbed above the Hillary Step. That's maddeningly close to the summit, and he returned with a frostbitten nose. In 2005, Fred tried Everest's North Ridge and got as far as Camp 3.

Other than Everest, this 53-year-old California endocrinologist and family man has quietly racked up an impressive list of 26,000-foot (8,000-meter) peaks. He has summited three (Manaslu, Broad Peak and Shishapangma) and climbed high on K2, the second-highest peak on Earth, which makes Dr. Ziel the most experienced climber on the team.

Back on the bus we pass the infamous Shanty Town, a skid row of tents that Tibetan yak drivers have built up in recent seasons to cash in on the expedition trade. Rough and muddy as Deadwood, it boasts trinket shops and sometimes brawling pubs.

A couple of miles later we hit base camp, and what an extraordinary sight it is. This portable city sprawled in front of the Rongbuk Glacier houses who-knows-how-many expeditions, including a Chinese team of 70 climbers with a barracks of tents and two trucks sporting transmission towers. Base Camp is Wi-Fi live, and a cell tower ensures that everyone with a dual-band/Tri-mode cell phone can call home.

Russell's Himex camp, though, is the centerpiece of Everestville. After we offload our gear, Russell welcomes us into his high-altitude suburb, sending us to find vacancies in the 36 tents his Sherpas have pitched to accommodate the climbers and film team.

In addition, there's a plywood shack for the Discovery TV crew to use as a camera workshop and edit suite, and 11 spacious 30x15-foot tents for Sherpa housing, dining quarters, storage, communications headquarters and bathrooms. Yes, we've got toilets and showers here (so long as a barrel with a toilet seat is your idea of a john).

Best of all is Russell's luxurious mushroom-shaped, 20-foot-tall, 25-foot-diameter pleasure dome. Years of Everest trips have taught Russ that the "key to success is to keep everyone comfortable." With this in mind he's brought along this insulated, carpeted shelter, with chairs and tables, a chrome wet bar, flat-screen TV and sound system, and a gas heater. Oh yeah, it's got a vinyl window facing the big E. I'm looking out that window right now as I type this dispatch.

Everest is in cloud and the sun is setting. My head feels like a hammer is gently tapping on it, as today we've driven 1,000 meters higher than Shegar — to a base camp height of 5,200 meters. Gazing out that window, I count about 120 other tents housing our fellow expeditioners, spread along the gray, gravely snout of the glacier.

A few other Everestville factoids before I sign off: Our water is siphoned out of a glacial lake by several hundred feet of pipe and fed into a 1,000-liter tank; the cook tent currently has a supply of about 100 bomb-shaped propane tanks; four generators and a host of solar panels will feed our battery chargers, lights and appliances.

As we lounge in the pleasure dome — which a member of the film crew has just dubbed "the most extreme night club in the world" — it's easy to forget that luxury and technology alone aren't enough to get a climber up Everest. That's up to the body and the mind.

Signing off,
Greg Child