Search Results for Tag: Everest-Lhotse traverse
Waiting for first summit attempts on Everest and Lhotse
High Camp in the Western Cwm
The preliminary work on Mount Everest and Lhotse is entering the final phase. According to Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, expedition leader and head of the Nepalese operator “Imagine”, today ten Sherpas were to climb up to Everest South Col at about 8,000 meters to pitch up Camp 4 . “Kilu Pemba and myself will fix Lhotse Camp 4,” Mingma wrote on Facebook yesterday. He wants to lead two Chinese clients to the 8516-meter-high summit of Lhotse. Five more Chinese from his team will tackle Mount Everest, including – as reported – the double amputee Xia Boyu, aged 69. Mingma is known as an early starter at the eight-thousanders. “I am quite sure that we will be the first team on the summit of Lhotse,” he told me in March when we met in Kathmandu. “We are planning to reach it at the end of April or in the first week of May.”
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Two teams will try Everest-Lhotse traverse
Halo above Everest Base Camp
The base camps on both sides of Mount Everest are slowly but surely filling up. For the Nepalese south side, the government in Kathmandu has issued around 275 permits to foreign climbers. The route through the Khumbu Icefall has been already completed. Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, expedition leader and head of the Nepalese operator “Imagine”, is enthusiastic about the work of the “Icefall Doctors”: “The route to Camp 1 is best so far. They used to experience ladders in more than 20 places but this year it is only in three different places with two ladders joined maximum.” As the 32-year-old informed on Facebook, there are still two big crevasses between Camp 1 at about 6,000 meters and Camp 2 at 6,400 meters to be crossed. “It is expected to have at least three to five ladders joined.”
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Comments deactivated On the death of Ueli Steck: One of the best, but not a reckless gambler
Ueli Steck (1976-2017)
Ueli Steck is dead. Fallen to death somewhere on Everest. Incredible. I can not believe it. What has happened? The exact circumstances are not yet clear. The body of the 40-year-old was found somewhere between Camp 1 (at 6,100 m) and 2 (6,400 m). Steck climbed solo on Nuptse, slipped and fell about 1,000 meters deep, reports the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”. In the past week, Ueli had reported via Facebook on a “quick day” climbing from Base Camp up to 7,000 meters and back again. The attached photo showed him with trailrunning shoes. Typical Ueli, I twittered with a twinkle in my eye – and the thought: Only one like him gets away with this, “The Swiss Machine”, the “Speedy Gonzales” among the high-altitude climbers, undisputedly one of the best.
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Comments deactivated Two fast men on Everest: Jornet and Steck
Kilian Jornet (r.) and Emelie Forsberg (l.) in Kathmandu
“I feel really acclimatized and strong in altitude,” said Kilian Jornet – already before he set off towards the Himalayas last weekend. As a training for his eight-thousander expedition, the speed specialist had climbed along with his Swedish girl friend Emelie Forsberg in Norway, and the day before their departure both had started at the Trofeo Mezzalama in Italy, one of the classic races for ski mountaineers in . Kilian had won second place in a team with the Swiss Martin Anthamatten and Werner Marti, Emelie had won the women’s competition along with the Swiss Jennifer Fiechter and the French Laetitia Roux. Jornet and Forsberg traveled via the Nepalese capital Kathmandu to Tibet. Within the next two weeks, they want to climb Cho Oyu, with an altitude of 8,188 meters the sixth highest mountain on earth. “If everything goes well, we could be on the summit on 7 or May,” said Emelie, for whom it is the first experience on an eight-thousander. And Kilian adds: “For me, it will be good preparation for Everest because I’ll be better acclimatized when I get there.”
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Comments deactivated Steck before Everest expedition: “Rather late than early”
Ueli Steck
He looks forward, not back. “I will never forget what happened on Everest in 2013,” the Swiss top climber Ueli Steck tells me. “But I believe I will have absolutely no problem with it. It’s over. I’m very motivated and I’ll go with a very good feeling.” In spring 2013, a Sherpa mob had attacked Steck, the Italian Simone Moro and the Briton Jonathan Griffith and had threatened them with death. This spring, Ueli will return to the highest mountain on earth. His goal: the traverse of Mount Everest and Lhotse. The 40-year-old will climb with Tenji Sherpa, with whom he had already scaled Everest without bottled oxygen in 2012. The 24-year-old belongs to “a new generation of Sherpas, who really enjoy climbing and are not only interested in doing business,” says Ueli. “I’m really looking forward to being en route with him.”
As reported, Steck had completed an intensive training camp with the German David Goettler and the Italian Hervé Barmasse in the Khumbu area in February. Subsequently, Ueli returned to Switzerland for a few weeks. He will set off to Kathmandu on 8 April.
Ueli, during the training Camp in Nepal in February you ran and climbed a total of about 250 kilometers with 15,000 meters in elevation. How much has been added since then?
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Special expedition training
Barmasse, Steck, Tenji Sherpa and Goettler (from l. to r.)
What a high-caliber training group! The Swiss Ueli Steck, the Nepalese Tenji Sherpa, the German David Goettler and the Italian Hervé Barmasse have been preparing themselves for their expeditions in spring in the village of Chukhung in the Everest region for ten days. Steck and Tenji Sherpa plan to traverse Mount Everest and Lhotse. No one has yet managed to do this without bottled oxygen. Goettler and Barmasse want to open a new route via the Shishapangma South Face in Tibet. In the course of the training, mountain running was at the focus. “I ran three times from Chukhung (4,730 meters) to Island Peak (6,180 meters),” writes Ueli. He had climbed and run a total of about 12,000 vertical meters over a distance of around 150 kilometers. “My body and my soul feel great,” says Steck. “I really enjoy being here in Nepal with such good friends. Just climb and run and nothing else.”
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Comments deactivated Good against winter depression
These days I received a funny Christmas card of an expedition organizer. It showed a Santa Claus on Mount Everest, with his finger in front of his mouth: “Pst … definitely too high for my reindeer.” This reminded me that I wanted to wish my old friend Chomolungma Merry Christmas. For years, he can be reached by mobile phone. At the first ring, he takes the call.
Namaste, Chomo! This is Stefan.
Hej, I haven’t heard from you for a long time.
Sorry for that. I wanted to check on your condition.
Sunshine, minus 26 degrees Celsius, 65 km/h at the summit, good visibility.
Sounds like calm winter weather.
I like it.
Have you heard that you’ll be visited?
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Comments deactivated Ueli Steck: “If you go too far, you are dead”
Ueli Steck at the IMS in Bressanone
If “The Fast and the Furious” had been a film about climbers, Ueli Steck could have played the leading role. The Swiss is just extremely fast. The Eiger North Face in two hours and 22 minutes, the 82 four-thousanders of the Alps within 61 days, solo via the Annapurna South Face to the 8091-meter-high summit and back in 28 hours, through Shishapangma South Face within ten and a half hours – for good reason Ueli is nicknamed “The Swiss Machine”. As if he had a tuned engine inside like the cars in “The Fast and the Furious”. Just recently, Steck has returned from India. I met him at the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Bressanone in South Tyrol and talked to him about his tendency to speed, about aging and his next plans.
Ueli, you just turned 40 years old and you were not at home. How did you spend your birthday?
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