Thomas Lämmle on top of Makalu

Persistence pays off. The German high altitude climber Thomas Lämmle reached, as he wrote on Facebook yesterday, on last Sunday the 8,485 meter high summit of Makalu, the fifth highest mountain on earth. The 52-year-old from the city of Waldburg in Baden-Württemberg climbed without bottled oxygen and Sherpa support. Last year, Thomas had returned empty-handed from Makalu after four summit attempts, all of which had failed due to bad weather. Now, according to his own words, he also wants to tackle Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world, “before the snowfall – means May 21st”. Makalu was Lämmle’s sixth eight-thousander after Cho Oyu (in 2003), Gasherbrum II (in 2005 and 2013), Manaslu (in 2008), Shishapangma (in 2013) and Mount Everest (in 2016).

Five summit successes on Kangchenjunga

West, Main, Central and South Summit of Kangchenjunga (from left to right)

From Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain of the world, this spring’s first summit successes on this eight-thousander were reported. According to confirmed information, five climbers reached the highest point at 8,586 meters on 16 May, including Australian-New Zealand climber Chris Jensen Burke. It was already her tenth eight-thousander success. Chris reports an extraordinary feat: Pemba Gelje Sherpa from the operator “Expedition Base” climbed in a single push from the base camp to the highest point. The day before, he had accompanied a client from Camp 3 down to BC, wrote Chris.

German summiteer

Among the summiteers was also the German Herbert Hellmuth. For the 49-year-old from the town of Bamberg it was his third eight-thousander success after Manaslu (in 2011) and Mount Everest (in 2013). In 2015 on K2, he had to turn around at 7,000 meters.

Two more deaths

R.I.P.

Meanwhile, no day passes by on Mount Everest without dozens of summit successes. However, there is also sad news. A Sherpa who had reached the highest point on Monday with a team of the operator “Seven Summit Treks”, but had stayed behind on the descent, has since been missing. There is no hope of finding him alive. In addition, yesterday a Russian climber died in Camp 2 at 6,400 meters from the consequences of high altitude sickness. He had tried to climb Lhotse without bottled oxygen and had turned back 100 meters below the summit.

Soria’s first Dhaulagiri summit attempt failed

Carlos Soria

On Dhaulagiri, the 79-year-old Spaniard Carlos Soria and his comrades abandoned their first summit attempt. They had spent the previous night in Camp 3 at 7,250 meters. The wind was too strong, the expedition team said. The climbers are returning to the base camp. It is already Carlos’ ninth attempt on Dhaulagiri. Besides this mountain, he lacks only Shishapangma in his eight-thousander collection.

Update: Early this morning the news was spread on Facebook that also Maya Sherpa had reached the summit of Kangchenjunga. After having read it on several platforms, I included it in this summary. Obviously too hasty. Chris Jensen Burke wrote to me from the base camp that on 16 May, definitely only five climbers had reached the summit and that there had been no more ascents since then. Currently a summit attempt of the expedition operator “Asian Trekking” was on, wrote Chris: “Reports that Maya Sherpa summited are not correct.” I then removed the information about Maya’s supposed summit success from the report.

Andreas Friedrich on top of Mount Everest

Happiness can not be planned, but to a certain extent the presuppositions. “I reached the summit, and I and my Sherpa Son Dorjee had it for us,” Andreas Friedrich, who, on 13 May, was the first German this spring season on the top of Mount Everest, tells me. “It was an incredible luxury to stand alone up there. I was very lucky.” He owes it to the foresight of his experienced expedition leader Russell Brice, says Andreas. The old stager from New Zealand, head of the operator Himalayan Experience, had stayed with his group at Base Camp, when almost all of the teams who planned their summit attempt for the days around 20 May had flown by helicopter to lower regions to recover in “thicker” air. “So we had an advantage of a few days and reached the summit as the first team of a commercial operator,” says Friedrich.

“Experiences were worth frostbite”

“Although the weather was really lousy – minus 30 to 35 degrees, gusty wind – I was fully in high spirits up there.”After he had taken some summit pictures, the German climber took his time for another quarter of an hour and “absorbed these views: the mountains suddenly shrunken to miniature size, the glaciers that were only brushstrokes”. The 54-year-old flight captain from the town of Munich suffered second to third degree frostbite at all fingertips during his stay on the summit. “The hand will remain sensitive for the rest of my life,” says Andreas. “But it was absolutely worth it. The experiences I made, the lessons I learned and all these new feelings by far outweigh the problems I’ll have with my five fingers in future.”

Like in the 1970s

This spring more than 400 climbers reached the summit of Everest from Nepal, more than 100 from Tibet. That seems back to normal – after 2015 without summit successes on both sides of the mountain because of the devastating earthquake in Nepal and after the premature end of the season on the south side in 2014 due to the avalanche incident in the Khumbu Icefall. However, it has been different in the Khumbu area, says Andreas Friedrich: “The tea houses were empty. Namche Bazaar was like a ghost town.” Even at Base Camp it was emptier as usual, only about 290 foreign climbers had pitched their tents, says Andreas: “The atmosphere felt like in the 60s, 70s: very relaxed. There was enough space on the glacier. And that continued on the mountain.”

No playground

Dangerous Khumbu Icefall

Only on their descent from the summit, Andreas and his teammates got into a jam – just in the dangerous Icefall, they met all the summit aspirants who had chosen 19 or 20 May as summit days. There were some among them who actually were not up to the challenges of Everest,” says Andreas, who scaled the eight-thousander Manaslu (in 2012) and other high mountains in the Himalayas before he tried Everest: “People who didn’t know how to go with crampons and cross the ladders in the Icefall or how to use a jumar (ascender). I saw it with my very eyes and shook my head. Everest is not a mountain for practice, no playground.”

Emergency oxygen lacking

He was not surprised that five climbers lost their lives on Everest this spring, says Andreas Friedrich. “I think it could have been avoided if all, like Russell Brice, had deposited enough oxygen for the case of emergency at the South Col or in Camp 3.” But local discount operators like Seven Summits Treks had abstained from doing it, says Andreas. “Everyone who books a local operator’s expedition for 18,000 Euros, may rub his hands for five minutes because of this bargain. But it comes at a price. You pay for it with much less knowhow and with extras which must be bought.”

Brice: “They would have been turned around in my expedition”

Russell Brice

Expedition leader Russell Brice is also tackling this thorny issue: “Once again the cheaper Nepal operators who actually have very little back up and who continue to take unsuitable climbers who spend far to long trying to get to the summit and then end up with problems are the main cause of death this year.” Such members would have been turned around by his expedition much earlier, the head of Himex writes to me: “All these clients who go with cheaper local teams should understand that there is a reason that these teams are cheaper, and that there is very little support.”

Andreas Friedrich agrees. He had to dig deep into his pockets to finance his Everest adventure, but he is convinced that the money was well spent: “If I botch it up or something happens, I can 100 percent rely on the risk minimization and crisis management of Russell and his Sherpas. And that’s worth its price.”

P.S.: Everest climber Andreas Friedrich is also the founder of the aid campaign “Mountain Projects”, aiming inter alia to build a school at the Nepalese village of Kagate.

Early summit successes

Annapurna

Unusually early in the season, the 13 climbers of the expedition had reached the highest point on Tuesday: Six Sherpas, three Chinese, a Turk, a Macedonian, an Iranian and the Finn Mansikka. They had taken advantage of low snowfall in the period before the beginning of spring to set up the high camps. Annapurna is the eight-thousander with the highest fatality rate, usually there is extreme avalanche danger in spring. “We had a good weather with little cold wind on summit. On the way back to last camp, we lost one foreign climber and good Nepali friend”, expedition leader Mingma Gyalje Sherpa reported from Camp 4, the last camp below the summit. “I don’t how they slipped.”

Annapurna was Samuli Mansikka’s tenth eight-thousander. In 2014, he had summited Kangchenjunga and K 2, both without bottled oxygen. Only on Mount Everest and Lhotse, the climber from Finland had used a breathing mask. Samuli and Pemba, R.I.P.!