I was right on track with my feeling yesterday: The Spanish climber Kilian Jornet gives up due to the snow masses on Everest. The 28-year-old announces that he will return from the highest mountain on earth without having climbed it. Bad weather conditions forced him to abandon his plan to speed climb Everest via the North Face, says Jornet: “During the first few weeks we were acclimatising well and the conditions were good. However, when we were getting ready to prepare the attempt the weather began to change. There were some heavy snow storms and a large accumulation of snow. As a result, although we were in good physical shape, there was a high risk of avalanches and in the absence of good safety conditions it was impossible to climb.”  

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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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No mercy for Everest cheaters. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times” a three-member investigation commission recommended that the Nepalese government should withdraw the summit certificates of the Indian climbers Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod and forbid the couple to go to Nepal for mountaineering for at least ten years. It is seen as a formality that Tourism Ministery will nod the recommendation through.

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He is going to make it a round half-dozen. For the sixth time, Japanese Nobukazu Kuriki wants to tackle Mount Everest in the post-monsoon season. The 34-year-old says, he is planning to climb the highest mountain on earth solo, without bottled oxygen, this time via the Tibetan north side. Last year Kuriki had tried to reach the summit from the Nepalese south side – and had failed on Everest for the fifth time: He climbed up to 8,150 meters, about 200 meters above the South Col, before he abandoned his summit attempt due to deep snow and strong winds.

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Ambitious or overwinded? The climbers’ scene is discussing the upcoming Everest project of the Spaniard Kilian Jornet. As reported before, the 28-year-old Catalan will set off to Tibet next Sunday to climb or rather run up the highest mountain on earth, within his project “Summits of my life”. The plan sounds crazy: if possible in a single push from Rongbuk Monastery to the 8850-meter-high summit; without bottled oxygen and Sherpa support; if the conditions on the mountain are right, on a seldom climbed route (Norton or Hornbein Couloir); and as if all that were not enough, in the monsoon. Of course, this evokes memories of Reinhold Messner’s legendary Everest solo in 1980. But Jornet will not be climbing alone. And he is a completely different type of climber than the South Tyrolean was at that time.

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It sounds as if someone overextends himself completely. On Sunday next week (7 August), the Spaniard Kilian Jornet wants to ​​set off to Tibet to climb Mount Everest. Not in the “usual” way but speedy, in a single push, without bottled oxygen and Sherpa support, on a seldom used route, during the monsoon season. And the 28-year-old has never before been above 8,000 meters. Plenty of reasons to be skeptical and suspect that it just could be a cleverly arranged PR stunt – were it not for Kilian Jornet and his partner on the mountain, Jordi Tosas.

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Damn, it’s itching. Inevitably as a mosquito bite on a muggy summer day is the annually recurring announcement of the Nepalese government to set up new rules for climbers on Mount Everest. Mind you, the announcement, not the implementation. This year is no exception. This week Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal from the Nepalese Tourism Ministry told the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times” that the “Mountaineering Expedition Regulation”, which is in force since 2002, should be amended: According to the draft, mountaineers who are older than 75 years should be banned from climbing Everest as well as double amputees or blind climbers. In addition, each Everest aspirant should have climbed at least a seven-thousander before. Déjà-vu?

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There are things that simply cannot be understood. Like the recent decision of the Nepalese Tourism Ministry. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, the Ministry refused to issue the compulsory summit certificates to all Climbing Sherpas who scaled Mount Everest this spring season.

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Again one of the really great high altitude climbers was torn out of his life: The 55-year-old Swiss Norbert Joos fell to death on Piz Bernina in the canton Grisons. According to Swiss media reports, Joos had guided a group to the 4049-meter-high summit. On the descent the roped party of three, to which Joos belonged, fell 160 meters deep. Joos was found dead, the other two climbers, a woman and a man from Italy, survived seriously injured.

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The truth will out. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, the Nepalese Tourism Ministry has initiated sanctions on the Indian couple that – as reported before – has obviously submitted faked summit pictures to get their Everest certificates. Most likely these certificates will be canceled and the cheat climbers might be banned from mountaineering in Nepal for up to ten years. “Department of Tourism will also take necessary action against the Liaison Officer, Climbing Sherpas and expedition organizing company,” DoT director Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal told the “Himalayan Times”. The two Sherpas who had supported Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod on Everest were still “out of reach”, said the operator Makalu Adventure blaming the Sherpas for the goof-up.

The staff of Himalayan Database, the mountaineering chronicle of legendary Elizabeth Hawley, is also checking the case. I’ve contacted Billi Bierling. The 49-year-old German journalist and climber is the designated successor of Miss Hawley, aged 92.

Billi, you and your colleagues from the Himalayan Database have also obviously been deceived by the Indian couple when you interviewed them. What’s about the much-trumpeted climbers’ honor?

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Did they fudge on Everest? Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod were celebrated in their home country for being the first Indian couple who, on 23 May, had summited Mount Everest. Now there is considerable doubt that the two 30-year-olds really reached the highest point. The summit picture of Tarakeshwari Rathod that the two Indians submitted to the Nepalese Tourism Ministry to receive their Everest certificated, obviously turned out to be a forgery. Apparently by using an image editing software, the face of the Indian woman was copied to the summit picture of her compatriot Satyarup Siddhanta.

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“It was a good season,” Nishma Khadgi writes to me. She is responsible for marketing at Asian Trekking, the leading expedition operator in Nepal. “Things are largely normalized and morale of climbers and sherpas are positive which make us optimistic for the future seasons.” According to the Nepalese Tourism Ministry, this spring 456 climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest from the south side of the mountain, 199 were climbers from abroad. The official figures from the north side are still not available.

Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa and Swiss Kari Kobler are two other expedition leaders who have responded to my request to tell me their personal record of this spring’s Everest season. Mingma was on the south side, Kari on the north side. Both are now staying in Pakistan, where they lead expeditions to K 2, the second highest mountain on Earth. And they have another thing in common: Both expedition leaders scaled themselves Mount Everest in May.

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Before the season, actually all agreed: Commercial climbing on Everest would hardly cope with another year with accidents and without summit successes. It turned out differently. More than 400 ascents via the Nepalese south side of Everest, more than 100 on the north side, five deaths in the summit area. Everything back to normal? Any problems to point out? I’ve asked some expedition operators, who were on Everest this spring. The first three have already replied: Phil Crampton, Adrian Ballinger and Russell Brice. There are some coincidences. But read for yourself!

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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.

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He has a written proof. The China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) certificated that Thomas Laemmle reached the summit of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen on 23 May. As reported before, the German was among a handful of climbers who made it to the highest point at 8,850 meters without breathing mask this spring. “Finally, I took four breaths per step,” Thomas writes to me from Kathmandu, where he is waiting for the flight home. “But I was not at my limit. I was able to enjoy the climb, because it was almost windless and relatively warm. Unfortunately, the summit was wrapped in a cloud.”

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