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

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

David Tait and Phurba Tashi Summit

This morning at 6:10 a.m., David Tait and Phurba Tashi radioed down to Russell Brice at base camp that they were standing on the summit of Everest.

They left their tent at 11 p.m. the previous night and climbed through the dark. They were ahead of what reports indicate may be up to 60 climbers heading to the top today and tomorrow. Once on the summit they spent time making radio calls and satellite phone calls, then they swapped out their oxygen tanks for fresh ones and descended into Nepal via the South Ridge, thus embarking on the first leg of their double traverse of Everest.

As soon as they began their south side descent, radio contact was lost on the north, but radio reports coming from south side outfits like Adventure Consultants (who will work with them in Nepal) reported the pair descending safely. Last we heard they'd gotten below the Hillary Step and were well on their way toward the South Col.

Right now, at 9.30 a.m., I'm listening to south side guide Kenton Kool relay the positions of the traverse team to Russell Brice. They are near the Balcony, a feature at about 28,000 feet (8,500 meters). Everything looks very good for this first phase of their traverse. Both men sound strong, and their first challenge is pretty well behind them.

Signing off,
Greg Child

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

First Shorts on Everest?

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Many teams, ours included, have descended the 14 miles of glacier back to base camp for a week of rest before the summit bids begin. The air is thicker here and the body can rejuvenate at 17,000 feet, whereas it gradually wastes away at ABC at 21,000 feet.

I've learned of another pair of successful summit climbs that occurred on May 2, when two Sherpas (names as yet unknown to me) with a large Indian expedition reached the top. The Sherpas left a statue of Buddha on the summit in honor of the Buddha's birthday.

When I was coming down the ropes from the North Col on May 4, I encountered a surprising sight: a man nearly naked at 22,000 feet, clad only in shorts, soaking up the morning sun. Introducing himself as Wim, a Dutchman, he explained that he planned to make the world's first ascent of Everest in shorts. He was serious. He had it all planned out. He'd only climb in the best weather, he said; he'd wear full Everest clothing when sitting in camps, and a Sherpa would accompany him carrying his warm clothing, which he'd put on if cold weather blew in on the way to the summit. "Of course, I'll wear my warm clothes if the storm comes in — I'm not crazy," he said.

"What gave you the idea to try this?" I asked.

He explained that he'd been forced to trek through deep snow on a previous trip. He'd worn shorts throughout what was apparently a tough time and it opened his mind to greater possibilities for shorts-wearing feats.

Maybe this is a valid first, something that ought to be in the Guinness Book of Records. Maybe it's better placed in the Darwin Awards category. I'll leave it up to you. But this much is for sure: The legs represent a large percentage of body surface area, and in the biting, dry cold of 26,000 feet the slightest breeze can sap the body of warmth, even on a sunny day.

Now, as I sit relaxing at base camp ensconced in the Tiger Room (Russell insists "the Pleasure Dome" is a misnomer) I can look up the valley at Everest. It's clear and apparently windless up there. "It's a summit day, where is everyone?" Russell asks rhetorically.

Well, everyone is recuperating. Some teams have even driven down to Shigatse, at about 15,000 feet, for R&R. Already I can notice the benefits of being lower. It's warmer, the air is thicker, I sleep better, food tastes better and so does beer.

While we rest at base camp, Sherpas from many teams, ours included, are still on the mountain positioning camps and gear for the summit attempts. I know I've said this before, but not much would get done up there without the indefatigable Sherpas. Phurba and his crew will join us at base camp soon.

It's also time to give kudos to the hardworking kitchen guys. Sure, they cook great meals, but there's a massive amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes on in the kitchen that barely gets noticed.

Take our water supply at ABC, for instance. At 21,000 feet, there isn't much flowing water — it's nearly always frozen. It's also polluted from the hundreds of people camped up there and the endless supply trains of yaks that lumber up and down the glacier. So, every drop of water must come from the glacial ice beside ABC.

The gathering of ice takes place about 16 times a day. A kitchen staff member, like Norbu Wong Chu, a Tibetan teenager, walks to the twisted ice formations on the East Rongbuk Glacier and hacks at the ice with a pickax.

After a strenuous swinging session, Norbu fills a sack with the ice chips, slings it with a tumpline and totes it back to camp, the 80-pound weight hanging from his forehead — the traditional load-carrying mode in these parts.

Once in the kitchen, guys like Sakure from Nepal and Zangbu, a Tibetan, start the melting process on two propane burners. Ice chunks are rendered into water in one pot, then ladled into another and brought to a boil. The melting never stops because every drop of water for drinking, cooking and washing comes from the glacier. It's hard work and these guys do it every day. Behind every cup of tea on Everest, there's the swing of a pickax.

Signing off,
Greg Child