Ralf Dujmovits

The good weather window on Mount Everest has not yet opened. “Heavy snow in Everest Base Camp at the moment,” American Dan Mazur, expedition leader of the operator Summit Climb, today wrote on Twitter from the Nepalese south side of the mountain. “Our Sherpas are working high up on the mountain, carrying oxygen, ropes, tents, food.”  On the north side of Everest, the Americans Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards climbed today to an altitude of about 7,600 meters. “For just today, I’m pretty sure Cory and I were the highest people on the planet”, Adrian wrote on Instagram. “Does it matter? Of course not. But it felt special.” The two climbers, who want to scale Everest without bottled oxygen, returned to the North Col, “as afternoon clouds try to cross the border from Nepal into Tibet”. The weathermen expect for the next few days more snowfall on Everest. Maybe one or the other climbers in the base camps on the north and south side will use the time to read again Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air”. It describes the disaster on Everest in spring 1996. The 20^th anniversary will be next Tuesday .

I have talked to Ralf Dujmovits about Mount Everest then and now. The 54-year-old is the first and so far only German who stood on the summits of all 14 eight-thousanders.

Ralf, you have taken an Everest sabbatical this year. Did you – like many others – want to see how the whole situation on Everest is developing?

I did not want to wait and see. I just had to take an one-year-break, otherwise the whole thing would have turned into work. I was now seven times on Everest. Six times I tried to wipe out the stain of 1992 when I had used bottled oxygen in the summit area. Sometimes you have to take a break and see something else. I’m looking forward to the summer in Pakistan. (Ralf and his partner, Canadian Nancy Hansen, will try to scale a still unclimbed seven-thousander.)

Dangerous Khumbu Icefall

Two consecutive years without summit successes on the south side, in addition two avalanche incidents with a total of 35 dead – do you think the current spring season will be crucial for the future of climbing the highest mountain on earth?

I think it’s not necessarily representative what happens on Everest this spring. Nevertheless, I see the advantage for those who are now on the south side that there are far less climbers. Thus the danger of traffic jams on the route is lower. Apart from that, I believe that some operators have realized that the south side is very dangerous. That cannot be changed only by taking a new route through the Khumbu Icefall. Of course, as a “Goodwill Ambassador” I should promote Nepal. I really like to do it. But in case of Everest I tell people very clearly: Go to the Tibetan north side!

Do you think that this will be the only change in Everest climbing?

I think the gap regarding price, organization and safety is widening right now. On the one hand we have very cheap options of the Nepalese operators who are able to acquire many clients, partly with dumping prices, on the other hand the established operators who have very high safety standards and charge higher prices. I believe, in the future clients want to have customized offers based on their personal needs. In this field, the Nepalese operators are clearly more active. They tell their clients: If you want to, you can book only one or another service, for example only food for Base Camp. I believe, the western operators still have to learn this, to say: We want to continue our high safety standards, but we will enable the clients to climb the mountain in a manner other than the traditional way, completely being led up the mountain, the full program.

High winds on Everest

Key word: Safety. Next Tuesday marks the 20th anniversary of the 1996 incident on Everest, when within 24 hours eight climbers lost their lives during a storm in the summit area. Is it possible to compare that time with today?

So many things have changed. The leading operator then was Rob Hall with Adventure Consultants. (The New Zealander was among the victims.) The standard in 1996 was relatively high for that time. But very reliable weather forecasts were still missing. With today’s quite reliable weather reports it should not happen any more that climbers run half unknowingly into bad weather. However, new problems have occurred due to the massification since 1996. At that time, there were three, four or five expeditions per season, today there are dozens. This has more likely changed to disadvantage and can be to the detriment of the guests.

Thus new disasters on Everest can not be excluded?

There will still be accidents – also because the global warming doesn’t stop at Everest. It is likely that big ice avalanches will continue to sweep down into the Khumbu Icefall from the Everest West Shoulder on the left or from Nuptse on the right. Thus the icefall remains dangerous. Previously the danger mainly resulted from the large movement of the ice. Seracs collapsed, crevasses opened, climbers fell into the depths because ladders were torn apart. This risk has remained at the same level, but the strongly increasing warming will provide additional risk potential.

On the north side too?

There the risk of ice debris is by far not as high as on the south side.

Let’s return to your Everest plans. This year, you stay well clear of the highest mountain on earth. But this doesn’t mean that you have completed this chapter, right?

First I will travel along with Nancy to Pakistan this summer. But in 2017, we are determined to return again to the north side of Everest. Most likely we will try to climb via the Messner traverse (solo climb in 1980) into the Norton Couloir.

Too many dramas for two hours

There is hardly another mountain disaster about which so much has been published as about that on Everest in the spring of 1996. Jon Krakauer‘s book “Into thin air” became a bestseller worldwide. But other involved climbers started writing too, such as the Russian Anatoli Boukreev who disagreed with Krakauer’s version on many points. There were accusations here and there. The story is complex: A melange of weather conditions, tactical mistakes of the mountain guides and the lack of climbing skills among some clients of the commercial operators led to the disaster. During the storm in the summit area, many dramas played simultaneously, each of them would have delivered alone enough material for a two-hour movie: such as the incredible survival story of Beck Weathers, the rescue attempts of Anatoli Boukreev, who set off again and again from the South Col to search for the missing climbers, or Rob Hall‘s radio call with his pregnant wife Jan Arnold in New Zealand before he froze to death (Hear below what Jan told me about the call when I met her in Kathmandu in 2003).

Only hinted

That’s the weakness of the movie: The reasons for the accident in 1996 were so complex, there were so many persons involved, and it happened so much during the storm that it is simply impossible to cover all the details and aspects in a two-hour movie. But that’s exactly what the director Baltasar Kormákur seems to have tried. Everything is somehow touched or hinted, but nothing is really deepened. For example the film suggests a conflict between the Sirdars of the various groups by showing two Sherpas with sullen faces who obviously do not want to cooperate. Why? Don’t they like each other? Where are the other Sherpas? Or this scene: Suddenly we learn that there are no fixed ropes at two key points in the summit area – cut – a Sherpa is shown pulling a female client with a short rope upwards. Who are they? Should this Sherpa really fix the ropes at the “Balcony” and the “Hillary Step”?

Distorted

Jake Gyllenhaal as Scott Fischer

There are real Hollywood stars among the actors: Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley, Robin Wright and Emily Watson, to list just a few. But they get little opportunity to develop their roles properly – simply because the film wants to cover too much rather than focusing on single aspects. That leads to the one or other misleading picture. So Gyllenhaal plays the US guide Scott Fischer, who died in the accident, admittedly with a great deal of verve. But the “real” Fischer was probably more than an often drunken, crazy, narcissistic freak as he comes off in the movie. But Gyllenhaal has just not enough scenes to draw a more differentiated picture of Fischer.

Always wind and avalanches

Speaking of little differentiated: If you believe the movie, there is virtually no time on Everest without wind, storm, avalanches or collapsing seracs – as if Everest was not spectacular enough without this dramatization. If the conditions were really like that, there would not have been almost 7,000 successful ascents since 1953.

Enough moaning. Maybe I am just dealing too much with high-altitude mountaineering and what is happening at the highest mountain on earth. Just go to the movies (cinema release on 18 September) and let “Everest” entertain you! Then you will probably enjoy it. Just think of the outside shower!

Jan Arnold about her last call to Rob Hall (recorded in 2003)