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.”

Mount Everest

Death on the Everest winter expedition: However, none of the climbers died but a government official. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times” the liaison officer, who was to accompany the winter expedition of the Basque Alex Txikon on behalf of the Tourism Ministry, died of high altitude sickness. The man passed away on the flight from Dukla (4,600 meters high) to Lukla (2860 meters) where he was to be treated in the hospital. The Spaniards Alex Txikon and Carlos Rubio want to climb Mount Everest without bottled oxygen this winter. The team has meanwhile – as reported – pitched up Camp 1 at 6,050 meters above the Khumbu Icefall.

Cash up and stay away

The rules for expeditions in Nepal, laid down in the so-called “Tourism Act”, require that each team must be accompanied by a liaison officer. Each expedition has to pay 3,000 US dollars – and provide tent and food to the government official in the base camp. However, it’s rather the exception than the rule that the liaison officers really find their way to the foot of the mountain. And when they get there, they usually stay only for a short time. The “Himalayan Times” asked the Everest expeditions after the spring season 2016: Of the 32 deployed liaison officers only 17 had reached the base camp. Six of them returned the same day, five more in the following three days. Only six liaison officers stayed at the foot of the mountain for more than two weeks. Many expeditions meet their liaison officer only twice: during the briefing before and the de-briefing after the trip – in Kathmandu.

NMA: one liaison officer per mountain

R.I.P.

After an Indian couple in 2016 had obtained their Everest certificates by fraud using fake summit pictures, another discussion about the questionable system of liaison officers had flared up. Government officials had confirmed with their signature that the Indian mountaineers had been on the summit. The Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) has proposed to the government to send only one liaison officer per mountain who really stays in the base camp and fulfills his duties. The liaison officer of the Everest winter expedition had obviously taken his job seriously.