I know this view. But how different is Mount Everest looking now this fall. The Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki has pitched his Advanced Base Camp (ABC) exactly where our tents stood eleven years ago. In spring 2005, I accompanied the Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, the German Ralf Dujmovits and the Japanese Hirotaka Takeuchi to Everest North Face and reported from ABC at 5,500 meters on DW Radio and the Internet on the progress of the expedition.

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Hiro has experienced a lot on Everest. „It is a very special mountain for me”, Hirotaka Takeuchi wrote to me, after I had asked him for his statements on the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent. „I learned a lot from climbing Mt. Everest, and all those lessons and experiences were very important and helpful to me to climb all the fourteen 8,000 m peaks. Thus, I think Mt. Everest was a great learning place forme.” In one of the ‘classrooms’ the Japanese climber had been close to lose his life. 

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