Second attempt. This spring, Maya Sherpa, one of Nepal’s most famous and best female climbers, will tackle Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. “I am happy to go there again,“ the 40-year-old told me as we met in Kathmandu last week. “I have found sponsors who support me. However, my goal is not only to climb Kangchenjunga, I like to climb more 8,000-meter-peaks as the first Nepali woman.” In May 2017, Maya and her Nepalese friends and teammates Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita and Dawa Yangzum Sherpa had had to turn around on the 8,586-meter-high Kangchenjunga, about 300 meters below the highest point. The entire group of summit candidates had run out of ropes. “One of our Climbing Sherpas told us then that they had made the same mistake in spring 2013,” said Maya. “At that time, they went up to the summit. On descent, two Sherpas and three foreign climbers died because there was no rope, they were tired and it was extremely slippery in the upper part of the mountain, especially on the rock.”

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The Everest spring season is on. This Saturday, eight “Icefall Doctors“ will be celebrating a puja in the base camp on the Nepalese south side of the highest mountain in the world, a Buddhist ceremony, during which the gods are asked for their blessing. Next week, the Sherpas, who are specialized in this task, will prepare this year’s route through the Khumbu Icefall. At the beginning of April the first commercial teams are expected in the base camp. “I’m wondering how busy it will be on the south side with every year we see the numbers increasing significantly,“ says Arnold Coster, when I meet him today in Kathmandu. “And I wonder how many actually switch to the Tibetan side.“

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More than 400 summit successes, five deaths. This is so far the balance of this spring’s climbing season on Mount Everest, which is slowly but surely coming to an end. The two Indian climbers who had been missing for nearly a week with a probability bordering on certainty are dead. A Sherpa rescue team discovered the body of Paresh Chandra Nath above South Col. Rising wind prevented the search for the second missing, Gautam Ghosh. The chance of finding him still alive is virtually nil. The dead bodies of Dutchman Eric Arnold and Australian Maria Strydom have been meanwhile transferred by helicopter to Kathmandu. The corpse of Indian Subhash Pal, who had also passed away during summit attempt, should be brought today to Camp 2, to be flown out from there subsequently.

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Nepal needs strong women like Maya Sherpa. “With our women expedition project we want to inspire women doing what we really are capable of even after being married and having children”, the 36-year-old climber writes to me. In July 2014, she scaled the 8611-meter-high K 2 with Dawa Yangzum Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita. They were the first female climbers from Nepal on top of the second highest mountain in the world. A week and a half ago, I introduced the trio’s new project in my blog: the planned ascent of Kangchenjunga next spring. I got Maya’s answers to my questions concerning their plans a few days after the article had gone online.

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