Tibetan North side of Mount Everest

Twelve footfall pitches. That’s the size of the new mountaineering center, which the Chinese want to build on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest. According to the state newspaper “China Daily” the giant complex in the town of Gangkar, also known as Old Tingri, by the year 2019 is to be completed in 2019. The site is located about 60 kilometers northwest of Everest, on the travel route of expeditions that head to the highest mountain on earth.  According to the “China Daily”, the mountaineering center will cost more than 100 million yuan (13.7 million euros). Accomodation and restaurants for mountaineers are planned, furthermore a helicopter rescue base, offices for expedition operators, repair shops for cars, motorcycles and bicycles as well as a mountaineering museum. The mountaineering scene is discussing the project on social media. Some see no less than the downfall of adventure on Everest.  The Everest north side “will turn into a Chinese Disneyland,” says one. Another believes that a chair lift to the summit is only a matter of time. Dominik Mueller, head of German expedition operator Amical Alpin, doesn’t see why there should be outrage.

Dominik Mueller: “More security”

Dominik Mueller

“There are many people discussing who don’t know the situation on the north side,” writes Dominik to me. In the so-called “Chinese Base Camp”, there are only a few teahouses and “a completely dilapidated house, in which the local liasion people and officers have to live.” The question of security is even more important than infrastructure, says Mueller, adding that there is not yet any mountain rescue on the north side. Since helicopter rescue flights are forbidden, all accident victims and climbers suffering from high altitude sickness have to be treated by the expedition doctors in tents and then evacuated from Base Camp by jeep. “When this mountaineering center is built at lower altitude than Base Camp, at last there will be the possibility to transport climbers who suffer from high altitude sickness, injured and other sick people quickly from Base Camp to lower region and treat them in appropriate rooms,” writes Dominik. “The bottom line is that this will improve the quality and, above all, increase the security. Therefore I welcome the project.”
Similarly, Adrian Ballinger, head of US operator Alpenglow Expeditions, commented via Instagram a few weeks ago: “It is still nice to know there is rapid evacuation when the unexpected occurs. It’s also another real step in the Chinese/Tibetan commitment to the mountain and the importance of well managed climbing. Stoked!” Since 2015, Ballinger has been offering only Everest expeditions on the Tibetan north side of the mountain.

Top seller Everest

Commercial mountaineering has become popular in China by now. Large expedition groups from the “Middle Kingdom” are seen on the eight-thousander in Tibet – last September Billi Bierling told me about a Tibetan-Chinese expedition on Cho Oyu with about 150 (!) members – as well as on the highest mountains of Nepal. The leaders in China have recognized that mountain tourism and mountain sports make money, especially, of course, on the highest of all mountains. Mount Everest – like all prestige mountains around the world – sells well, not just in the west, and not just to climbers. As early as 2005, I saw Chinese tourists with breathing masks, who were taken by horse-drawn carriages from Rongbuk Monastery to Chinese Base Camp. “You can not turn the wheel back,” believes Dominik Mueller, head of Amical. “In the future there will be even more day trippers due to the good and easy accessibility of the Base Camp.” The question remains whether a mountaineering center near Everest must really have the size of twelve football pitches.

Manaslu in Nepal

That has little to do with a lonely mountain experience. It’s more like a rolling wave. The first summit successes of this fall season are reported from the eight-thousanders Manaslu and Cho Oyu. Citing Mingma Sherpa, head of the expedition operator Seven Summit Treks, the Kathmandu based newspaper “The Himalayan Times” reports, that at least 30 climbers reached the 8163-meter-high summit only until 9 a.m. on Friday morning. At this time more than 50 others were still on the way to the highest point.

Guess what

Queue on Cho Oyu

A long queue towards the summit formed also on Cho Oyu, as a picture taken by American Adrian Ballinger shows (see right). “Guess what? We are on summit!”, American Daniel Mazur, head of the operator Summit Climb tweeted. In addition, Adventure Consultants reported  that three climbers of their team had reached the highest point.

Adrian Ballinger and his team partner Emily Harrington want to climb – performing their “as-fast-as-possible-there-and-back” expedition – to the 8188-meter-high summit on Saturday. That’s what German Billi Bierling is planning too. If she is successful, Cho Oyu will be her fifth eight-thousander.

Update 2 p.m.: According to the Himalayan Times at least 20 climbers have reached the summit of Cho Oyu – and at least 60 stood on top of Manaslu.

First view on Makalu (© Adrian Ballinger/Facebook)

“We walked into base camp, dropped our packs, threw on our down jackets, and looked up. Makalu chose that moment to expose her summit”, Adrian Ballinger wrote on Instagram after yesterday’s arrival at the foot of the fourth highest mountain on earth. “Awe is the only word to describe the feeling.” Ballinger is leading a team of US climbers that is remarkable in several respects. First, it is even the only expedition on this eight-thousander in Nepal this fall. Second, the team will try to realize the first ski descent from the 8,485-meter-high summit. And third, three of the five expedition members are women, two of them mothers, and that’s not just commonplace in high-altitude mountaineering.

This time without oxygen

Ballinger, head of the US operator Alpenglow, is an experienced expedition leader. The 39-year-old has reached the top of eight-thousanders twelve times, he scaled Mount Everest six times. Adrian succeeded in skiing from Manaslu and Cho Oyu. His team members are his countrywomen Emily Harrington, Kit DesLauriers and Hilaree O’Neill and, as the second man in the team, Jim Morrison. The 29-year-old Emily, Adrian’s girlfriend, wants to climb Makalu without supplementary oxygen. It would be her second eight-thousander after Mount Everest, the summit of which she had reached in 2012 with breathing mask. Kit, aged 45, was the first woman who set off by skis from the highest point on earth in 2006. But it was not a complete Everest ski descend due to the dangerous conditions in the upper part of the mountain. DesLauriers plans to ski from the summit of Makalu. The 42-year-old Hilaree wants it too. She already made a ski descent from Cho Oyu. In 2012, O’Neill managed to reach the summits of Everest and Lhotse within 24 hours. Jim Morrison is a building contractor from California who has made a name for himself in the scene with some first ascents and extreme ski adventures.

Opened up some doors

Quinn and Grayden in Nepal (© Hilaree O’Neill / Facebook)

O’Neill and DesLauriers are mothers. Hilaree has two sons, Kit two daughters. O’Neill’s husband Brian, the eight-year-old Quinn and the six-year-old Grayden accompanied the team on the trekking to the base camp. “Having our boys on the trek has opened up some doors with the locals”, Hilaree wrote on Facebook. “And they have been making lots of friends so far.” Her sons have already been several times at an altitude of 14,000 feet and are therefore well prepared, says O’Neill.

Incorporating adventure into family life

The two daughters of DesLauriers, aged six and seven, have stayed at home with Kit’s husband Rob. Not all people understand that she is going on an eight-thousander expedition as a mother of two children, DesLauriers admits: “Thankfully for me, there are those in contrast to the naysayers who believe that it’s a priceless example to children of both genders when women continue their passionate pursuits after becoming mothers.” She prefers shorter trips in favor of being with her children as much as possible. “Each time I leave home is hard for me, and I’m sure it’s not easy on the kids either”, says Kit. “Yet each time I return I’m more present as a parent and full of ideas about how to next incorporate adventure travel into our family life.”

David Goettler

More than 300 Everest dreams are gone. As many climbers returned home empty-handed after their expeditions had been cancelled after the avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall on Good Friday. One of them was David Goettler. The 35-year-old from the German town of Munich had wanted to climb the highest mountain in the world via the normal route on the Nepalese south side without bottled oxygen. Goettler was still acclimatizing when he heard the first still inconsistent reports about the avalanche. “Initially, I hoped that I might still be able to make an attempt”, David told me on the phone. Therefore, he first continued his acclimatization program. “But when I was on the summit of Island Peak (6000er in the Everest region) and wanted to sleep below the highest point, the news came that my expedition and all others would be cancelled.” He returned to Kathmandu.

“David, what made you abandon your project completely? You could have gone to the base camp and try to climb through the icefall by yourself.

Adrian Ballinger of the expedition operator Alpenglow, on whose permit I was listed, flew from Kathmandu to the base camp and spoke with his Sherpas. He also asked them if I could come. After having led his clients with bottled oxygen to the summit, Adrian intended to make an attempt without oxygen, together with me. But the Sherpas told him fairly clearly that there was a small but apparently very influential Sherpa group that threatened violence to anyone who would climb higher than the base camp. Also the base camp staff was threatened, e.g. our cook was told that his family would be hurt. I can never accept this and I do criticize it strongly.

That was just a small group. Most Sherpas were mourning. I can understand every single of them who says that he does not want to climb Everest this season. I do accept it and would never force anyone to fix ropes for me. But as a climber I still want to have the opportunity to consider the risks and then decide for myself whether I go or not. But after we had been told that there was no desire that anyone would climb, we ended our project too. This is an atmosphere in which I feel uncomfortable and in which I do not want to climb.

Mount Everest (from Kala Pattar)

In 2013, some Sherpas attacked Ueli Steck and Simone Moro in Camp 2. Now a  small group threatened violence and exerted pressure. Violence has become a topic on Everest. Do you think that the Sherpas have to tackle this problem because there is obviously a split in their community?

They must solve the problem in any case. These threats and the readiness to use violence are poisoning the atmosphere. The Sherpas are shooting themselves in the foot, they will realize quickly what happens if no more expeditions come. Especially the Sherpas of this small violent group, who work for operators who do not insure their employees sufficiently, would be the first who lose their jobs. I do not know how they would react then.

Last year I got the feeling that most people expected that the Nepalese government should tackle the problem. That did obviously not work. What role can and should the government play at all? Is it not rather the responsibility of the climbing community to solve this problem by itself?

I come to Nepal and pay my permit to the government and not to the Sherpas. So I would hope that the government and the SPCC (Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, the management of the Everest National Park) forward this money to the Everest region, or at least that a greater part of it reaches the Khumbu. Each hydroelectric plant, each bridge, each school, each hospital in the Khumbu area is sponsored from Germany, Italy, the United States and other Western countries. I wonder, and I think the most Sherpas also do: Where exactly is the money from the permits for 300 and more climbers, $ 10,000 each? On the other hand, it should go without saying that each client opts for an expedition operator that treats its employees responsibly. If I had decided to take the lowest bidder, I could have saved about 5000 Euros. But I did not know this operator, I did not know which kind of insurance he had for his stuff and how he treated his employees.

The Sherpas  – the “Ice doctors”, the high altitude porters and the Climbing Sherpas –  are risking their necks in the Khumbu Icefall. Do you understand that they are asking to be paid better for their dangerous jobs?

Their work must be paid in a way that both sides agree. That’s where I am absolutely of the same opinion as the Sherpas. But they need to negotiate the payment before the work starts. Each Sherpa signs a contract with his agency, in which is written exactly how much the amount of insurance is in case of death, how many times he has to climb through the Khumbu Icefall and how much money he gets. If I work as a mountain guide in the Alps and accept a job at Mont Blanc, I also know that there is the slope of Tacul where several other guides have already been killed by avalanches. Nevertheless, I do it for a certain sum of money which I negotiate in the run-up. I know what to expect. Just the Sherpas do know what to expect in the Khumbu Icefall. I was there in three different years, and it always dangerous to the same extent. This year’s disaster was that there were so many climbers at the wrong time in the wrong place. But that could also have happened in all previous years. I also know that I might be killed at the slopes of Mount Tacul. But I cannot strike only because an avalanche has come down and say: Now I want twice as much money, because it’s twice as dangerous. The Sherpas who work on Everest are clever, not uneducated. They have been already there and will return again, because they know it is very well-paid work. If they want more money, it’s okay too. But they should negotiate it before.

North side of Mount Everest

For the first time since the start of commercial expeditions on Everest, a season has ended prematurely. Do you think that the big operators will now switch to the north side?

I very much doubt. In one year’s time much will be forgotten. I also do not know if it would be the better choice for commercial operators to go to the north side. There are disadvantages, too. The Chinese government can tell from one day to the next: The mountain is closed now because the Dalai Lama has visited any country. In addition, the possibility to rescue climbers who are in trouble are by far not as good as on the south side, where rescue flights by helicopter to camp 2 are usual. On the south side I also sleep at a lower height in the last camp. I really don’t know which is the lesser of the two evils for a commercial operator.

I hope that the Nepalese south side will work well again, in the sense that the Sherpas, the expedition operators and the individual climbers cooperate and respect each other so that everyone can climb, in all variants.

What about your ambitions on Everest?

I still want to try Everest, at least once. If it is really true that the permit remains valid for five years, I will certainly return to the south side.”