K 2 Base Camp

Trouble’s brewing in the base camps on K 2 and the neighboring eight-thousander Broad Peak. “I got surprised to see climbers here without ropes.”, writes Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, head of the Nepalese expedition operator Dreamers Destination from the base camp at the foot of K 2, the second highest mountain on earth. Only on the normal route via the Abruzzi spur, three teams are climbing without ropes, says the 31-year-old Nepalese: “If this is how climbers come on K 2, then we can expect (the events of the) year 2008 again on K 2.” At that time eleven climbers from seven nations had died in a true mass summit push on the 8,611-meter-high mountain.

Mingma has agreed with the Austrian expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach that Dreamers Destination will fix the ropes on the Abruzzi route on K 2 while Furtenbach Adventures will do the same on the normal route on the 8,051-meter-high Broad Peak and later make mutual use of the ropes. Also Furtenbach is hopping mad that other teams neither participate in the work to secure the route nor in the costs.

“Unfair and fraud”

Broad Peak

“I think, it is, to say the least, absolutely unacceptable to arrive unprepared after the big commercial teams, to use their fixed ropes and to be not fair enough to contribute,” Lukas writes to me. “Most of these teams/climbers should have to leave without fixed ropes, because they are not able to climb the mountain in Alpine style. This is parasitism. It is unfair and fraud.” His Pakistani liaison officer spoke to the officers of the other teams about the problem, but without success, writes Lukas. The 39-year-old threatens to publicly name those teams if they refuse until last to make their contribution and nevertheless use the fixed ropes. Also the self-proclaimed “professional climbers” who want to distance themselves from the clients of the commercial expeditions are in Furtenbach’s bad books: “Two Americans say they will climb with their 40-meter rope in Alpine style and won’t pay anything. In the same breath they explain that they will use our ropes when necessary.”

South side of Mount Everest

The spell is broken. For the first time this spring, climbers have scaled the summit of Mount Everest also from the Nepalese south side of the mountain. An employee of the Ministry of Tourism informed from the Base Camp that today 14 climbers reached the highest point on 8,850 meters. The route is now secured up to the summit with fixed ropes. According to consistent reports three members of an expedition of the British Gurkha military brigade were among the successful climbers.

Hundreds are waiting for their summit chance

A first attempt by a Sherpa team to fix ropes up to the summit had failed last week due to bad weather. On the south side about 375 foreign mountaineers and as many local climbers await their summit chance. On the Tibetan north side, the first climbers of this spring season had already reached the highest point on Friday and Saturday. Some 170 climbers from abroad have got a climbing permit from the Chinese authorities.

South side of Mount Everest (l.) at first light

Bad news is good news, learns every prospective journalist. But actually it also can be good news, if there is no bad one. This spring, this applies particularly to Mount Everest, after the disasters of the past two years. In spring 2014, the season on the Nepalese side ended prematurely, after an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had killed 16 Nepali climbers. 2015 even turned out to be a year without summit success on both sides of the mountain due to the devastating earthquake in Nepal. On the south side, 19 people lost their lives, when the quake triggered an avalanche that hit the Base Camp. Later all climbers departed. On the north side, the Chinese authorities closed all eight-thousanders after the earthquake in the neighboring country. This year, in my view, the Everest season is running so far largely normal.

Rope-fixing team soon on the top?

North side of Everest in the last daylight

On the Nepalese side of Everest, Climbing Sherpas have prepared the route up to a point just below the 7,900-meter-high South Col. They had to interrupt their work because of smaller avalanches in the Lhotse flank. Some commercial teams have meanwhile stayed overnight in Camp 3 at about 7,000 meters for further acclimatization. On the Tibetan north side, the rope-fixing team of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) has reached an altitude of about 8,200 meters on the Northeast Ridge. The team “hope to go to the summit on the 5th”, American climber Adrian Ballinger wrote on Instagram yesterday. On the south side, it’s expected by next week that the rope-fixing Sherpas will reach the summit.

Not unusual

Anything else? The Nepalese newspaper “The Himalayan Times” reports that so far 17 foreign and ten Nepalese mountaineers had to be flown out from Base Camp because they showed symptoms of HAPE and HACE. These figures seem to be spectacular at first glance, but are likely to be on average of a normal Everest season. On the south side, there are some complaints about the work of the Climbing Sherpas, but this also happens time and again. Lastly, the media excitement about helicopter tourist flights over the Khumbu Icefall is understandable and justified. But that the topic receives so much attention at all, shows that the real climbing season on Everest has been running so far without major incidents. And that’s good news, right?

One of many suggestions

One point, two ways (© IMG/Mike Hamill)

Already in 2013 it was reported with bold letters, that soon there would be a ladder at the key point in the summit area. And it was also whispered about that during the general assembly of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) in Pontresina in Switzerland in October – much to the annoyance of the Nepalese delegation. The ladder was only one of many suggestions, said then UIAA honorary member Ang Tshering Sherpa, who meanwhile has been elected once again President of the Nepalese Mountaineering Association (NMA). The 60-year-old pointed out that in spring 2013 for the first time double ropes had been fixed at bottle necks like the Hillary Step. These measures had “led to a safer and more secure climbing season with no reports of traffic jams”, Ang Tshering said in Pontresina.

Double ropes at critical points

Experience means maintaining what has worked well. The Everest Expedition Organisers’ Association (EOA) has announced that this season second ropes would be fixed at critical points. Dawa Steven Sherpa, leader of the Eco Everest Expedition 2014 and a member of EOA, mentioned not only the Hillary Step but the “Yellow band” (7600 meters) and the “Geneva Spur” (7900 meters) on the steep Lhotse face and also the “Balcony” (8500 meters) in the summit area. He was not speaking of ladders. These are now used by the Sherpas in the Khumbu Icefall above basecamp. The so-called “Icefall doctors” have begun to work on the route through the dangerous labyrinth of ice.