Rescue flight on Everest

A committee is to get to the bottom of it. Since Friday, new guidelines for helicopter rescue have been in force in Nepal, with which the government wants to prevent insurance fraud with “fake rescue flights” in the future. A “Tourist Search and Rescue Committee” will monitor all rescue operations. The committee includes representatives of the ministries of home and of health as well as of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA), the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and the tourist police. Helicopter companies, expedition and trekking agencies, hospitals and insurance companies are now obliged to provide all details of rescue flights and medical care as well as insurance invoices in a timely manner so that the committee can review them. In the event of irregularities, the committee is also responsible for punishing the black sheeps in the sector.

No more intermediaries

The government dropped its original plan to place the rescue operations completely in the hands of a police unit in the Ministry of Tourism. Now the expedition and trekking agencies have to take on their responsibility. They are to arrange everything necessary to rescue their clients in case of emergency. Only the patient and a helper or guide will be allowed to be flown by the rescue helicopter. Hospitals are to provide the agency concerned with a cost estimate for the treatment of the client. Intermediaries between insurance companies and tourism agencies are completely banned from the rescue service.

CAAN to cap costs for rescue flights

Return flight by helicopter

After last spring’s climbing season, massive insurance fraud with “fake rescue flights” had been uncovered. Guides are said to have urged climbers and trekking tourists even when they felt unwell to get on a rescue helicopter and be flown back to Kathmandu for treatment. These flights were then invoiced to the insurance companies – often at a completely overpriced rate. A commission of inquiry of the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism named eleven companies from the helicopter and trekking industry as well as four hospitals in Kathmandu that allegedly cheated insurance companies. But this is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

The commission found out that some mountain guides had also mixed baking soda into the food so that their clients got diarrhoea and were flown out by rescue helicopters. In addition, helicopters were packed with allegedly sick climbers and trekking tourists, afterwards the insurance companies should pay for several individual flights instead of one. According to the government more than 1,300 helicopter rescue flights were reported in the first five months of the year alone.

International insurance companies had threatened not to cover any more rescue flights in Nepal unless the government intervened. They demanded to cap the cost: to 4,000 dollars per flight. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal is now to set a cost ceiling, depending on flight hours, distance and rescue altitude.

Animal with four back legs

But is a committee really the smartest solution to get a grip on the problem? I am skeptical. Committees usually do not tend to work quickly and effectively – or as the British author John le Carré  wrote (in his spy novel “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”): “A committee is an animal with four back legs.”

Maya Sherpa

Second attempt. This spring, Maya Sherpa, one of Nepal’s most famous and best female climbers, will tackle Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. “I am happy to go there again,“ the 40-year-old told me as we met in Kathmandu last week. “I have found sponsors who support me. However, my goal is not only to climb Kangchenjunga, I like to climb more 8,000-meter-peaks as the first Nepali woman.” In May 2017, Maya and her Nepalese friends and teammates Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita and Dawa Yangzum Sherpa had had to turn around on the 8,586-meter-high Kangchenjunga, about 300 meters below the highest point. The entire group of summit candidates had run out of ropes. “One of our Climbing Sherpas told us then that they had made the same mistake in spring 2013,” said Maya. “At that time, they went up to the summit. On descent, two Sherpas and three foreign climbers died because there was no rope, they were tired and it was extremely slippery in the upper part of the mountain, especially on the rock.”

More ropes, more manpower

Maya Sherpa, Dawa Yangzum Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa (from the right) on Kangchenjunga in 2017

It is not an option to move the last high camp on Kangchenjunga at 7,400 meters further up, says Maya: “I saw no safe place for tents there. We need enough ropes and manpower, that’s the solution.” The three Sherpani, who became the first Nepalese women to climb K2 in Pakistan, the second highest mountain in the world, in 2014, will not be complete up this time. Pasang Lhamu gave birth to a son last November and is missing this time. It’s still open whether Dawa Yangzum will come along. “There are still two weeks to go. Let’s see what happens,” says Maya. “Otherwise, I go alone, with other people.”

Three times on Everest

Maya on Everest

Maya Sherpa has stood her ground as a woman in the men’s world of mountain climbing. She is a professional climber since 2003. With her husband, the expedition operator Arnold Coster, she leads expeditions and works as a mountain guide. The mother of a seven-year-old daughter has scaled Mount Everest from both sides, to date a total of three times. She was also the first female Nepali woman on Cho Oyu (8,188 m) in Tibet, Pumori (7,161 m), Baruntse (7,129 m) and Ama Dablam (6,814 m) in Nepal and on Khan Tengri (7,010 meters) in Kyrgyzstan.

Mental strength counts

In addition, Maya is president of the “Everest Summiteers Association” – and, since last August, also Vice President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA).”I feel very proud. I never thought that I was going to be elected.” She says, she wants to take care of all climbers, not just for women. “Ever since I’ve been climbing, I’ve been giving other women an example of what’s possible. I love to share my experiences and give advice to them. I think that helps.” In the meantime, she is not only accepted by her male Sherpa colleagues, but also by the clients. “Physically, women may be a bit weaker,“ says Maya. „But if you‘re mentally strong, this doesn‘t matter.”

Maya Sherpa, Dawa Yangzum Sherpa, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita (from l. to r.)

The trio wants the triple. After having climbed Mount Everest and K 2, Maya Sherpa, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita and Dawa Yangzum Sherpa plan to scale next spring also the third-highest mountain in the world, the 8,586-meter-high Kangchenjunga in the east of Nepal. Via the normal route, with bottled oxygen. They climbed Everest still separately – Maya for the first time in 2006, Pasang Lhamu in 2007 and Dawa Yangzum in 2012 – but K 2 in Pakistan in 2014 for the first time together as a team. As early as in 2015 the trio wanted to climb Kangchenjunga. However, at that time the expedition did not come about for financial reasons. This time, too, there is still money left, Maya Sherpa, who is to lead the first Nepalese women’s expedition to Kangchenjunga, writes to me. The Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN) has announced to provide financial support as well as Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, managing director of the expedition operator Seven Summit Treks, says Maya Sherpa. The Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) has not yet decided whether it will also participate in the costs. In addition, the three Sherpani try to get a free permit for their expedition by the government.

Adventurer of the year 2016

Kangchenjunga

It is sad to hear that these three mountaineers of Nepal have to scrape together the sponsorship money for their project so tediously. After all, the Sherpani trio has made a name for themselves not only in their home country but worldwide. For example, the readers of the renowned US magazine “National Geographic” voted Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita “Adventurer of the Year 2016”. The 32-year-old is currently guiding the members of a commercial expedition on Aconcagua, with an altitude of 6,972 meters the highest mountain in South America.

Working also as expedition manager

Maya Sherpa on Everest

In spring 2016, Maya Sherpa – on an expedition operated by her husband Arnold Coster – climbed Mount Everest for the third time. Maya also leads expeditions herself. “There are no other Nepali women who do this kind of job,” writes the 38-year-old. Last fall, Maya led a five-member group to the summit of the seven-thousander Himlung Himal, “without my husband,” as she stresses. “I just like to work on the mountain.” Nepalese women, says Maya, can also work as Climbing Sherpas as Dawa Yangzum has proved during her Everest ascent in 2012, when the now 26-year-old carried the oxygen bottles of the expedition up the mountain.

Inspiration for other women in Nepal

With their new joint Kangchenjunga project, the three Sherpani want to encourage their country women. “It’s a good example for other Nepali ladies that if we try it together we can do everything,” says expedition leader Maya Sherpa. “If we climb alone, only a few people see us. But if we climb together many people are looking at us. And then maybe some other young women will show their interest to do something like us.”

A mountain in Gokyo Valley

You can’t just set off. If you want to climb am mountain in Nepal you should check the rules beforehand, otherwise you might experience a nasty surprise. Like the three Spanish climbers, who recently opened new routes on two six-thousanders. They were under way without permits, now the authorities in Kathmandu are investigating the case. They are facing a stiff fine and a 10-year-ban from mountaineering in Nepal. My compassion for the Spaniards is limited. I find their justification (“We are not pirates, we have left our money in Nepal at all”) flimsy. If you follow this argumentation, you could bilk any national park fee worldwide. Nonetheless there have been some construction sites the Nepalese “mountain management” for a long time, which are allegedly worked on but whose status does not change.

Absent liaison officers

Ama Dablam

Thus, the now practiced system of liaison officers is very much in need of reform, not to say that it must be abolished. “When 15, 16 or perhaps 17 expeditions on the same mountain have all shelled out for an liaison officer and not one of them is present it just seems completely underhand and verging on fraudulent”, British expedition operator Tim Mosedale wrote on Facebook after his Ama Dablam expedition this fall. Not enough, his liaison officer asked for more money during the de-briefing, says Tim. Only when he threatened with a formal complaint, she signed the necessary forms. The expedition leader was particularly upset because, as reported, Lhakpa Thundu Sherpa had been killed by ice debris and another mountaineer, who also belonged to his team, had been injured. “Indeed even if the liaison officer had been present when we were dealing with the complex rescue and recovery operation last week she wouldn’t have been any help at all”, Mosedale wrote. For months, a proposal by the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) is on the table. “We asked the government to send only one liaison officer per mountain, not 30 or 40 on Everest or other mountains,” NMA President Ang Tshering Sherpa told me recently.

Incorrect coordinates, wrong names

Another major construction site is the opening of allegedly or really still unclimbed mountains in Nepal. In spring 2014, the government in Kathmandu had published a list of 104 “virgin” mountains, which were then opened for expeditions. It turned out that the given satellite coordinates were partially wrong or inaccurate. An assumed first ascent of a six-thousander in the Rolwaling Valley this autumn turned out to be a repeated ascent because the mountain had previously been listed under a different name.

No continuity

A Khumbu mountain near Lukla

In addition, there are still plenty of mountains in Nepal that have not yet been recorded on the official lists as possible destinations for mountaineers. If you discover such a nameless mountain and want to climb it for the first time, it becomes really difficult. The Ministry of Tourism has still no regular procedure for obtaining such a permit. What one person responsible has promised can be revoked by the next. There have already been such cases. And they will surely continue to occur, considering how often the government is changing in Nepal. The current cabinet is already the seventh since early 2011.
Against this background, the fact is hardly surprising that we still wait for the overdue reform of the expedition rules (which would then also apply to Mount Everest), laid down in the “Tourism Act”. Every year it is announced that consultation has begun. As a rule nothing follows – or the next change of government.

Simplify procedures

What could help? In a first step the bureaucratic burdens should be purged. I talked about the problem with an Austrian mountaineer who has often been on expedition. He, for example, proposed to “turn the logic”: Instead of a list of mountains in Nepal, which are allowed to be climbed, should be a “blacklist” of forbidden summits, he says. All others mountains would then be open for climbing, and the permits could be given – as now – with fees according to the altitude of the mountains. If uniform and lasting procedures are desired, it would also make sense to entrust the NMA with issuing all permits for expeditions in Nepal. So far the NMA is only responsible for expeditions on mountains with an altitude up to 6,600 meters. The higher peaks are managed by the Ministry of Tourism. With the described consequences.

Ang Tshering Sherpa

The numbers fill Ang Tshering Sherpa with confidence. “We hope that mountaineering in Nepal will revive very soon,” says the President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) when we meet at the International Mountain Summit in Bressanone in South Tyrol. According to his words, expeditions to Nepalese mountains higher than 6,500 meters, which are managed by the government, have already achieved 87 percent compared with the time before the devastating earthquake in April 2015. Climbing on mountains lower than 6,500 meters, managed by the NMA, has even fully recovered. Trekking is between 40 and 50 percent again, depending on the region, the head of the NMA says: “We need to let the world know that the best way to help Nepal is by visiting. Each and every person who spends time in Nepal will help to revive the economy and rebuild the infrastructure.”

Less but true liaison officers

Mount Everest

As NMA president Ang Tshering has to work on several construction sites related to expeditions. For example, the case of an Indian couple that made headlines all over the world, because they had obtained their Everest certificates by fraud, faking the summit pictures of other climbers. “We need to monitor more strictly and seriously those climbers who are not good for climbers’ image,” says the 62-year-old. The Nepalese liaison officers are no big help. They usually take their money that the expedition teams have to pay, are not seen at the base camps, but confirm afterwards that team member have reached the summit. “We asked the government to send only one liaison officer per mountain, not 30 or 40 on Everest or other mountains,” says Ang Tshering.

Everest aspirants should be more experienced

Ang Tshering (2nd f.r.) with Reinhold Messner (l.)

But it is difficult to implement such reforms because “unfortunately the government is changing every six or eight months. You have to convince them. And when they are about to understand, they change again.” That is why the discussion about new mountaineering rules for Mount Everest is already lasting for such a long time, says the head of NMA, adding that the reform is urgently needed: “Everest is the highest mountain in the world and it is not easy to climb. Either they climb in the European Alpes or the Nepalese mountains or elsewhere abroad, they do need more experience.”

“Mountaineer only interested in price”

Like others, Ang Tshering sees the problem that especially new expedition operators from Nepal are attracting clients offering dumping prices: “They are picking up people who have not any knowledge about climbing, how to use the equipment. Such agencies are spoiling the tourism industry.” The NMA president is also head of Asian Trekking, one of the country’s leading expedition operators. “We must not compromise the safety conditions ot the other Nepalese operators who are well prepared, well organized and more experienced than the new companies who have no knowledge about expeditions”, says Ang Tshering Sherpa. “Climbers, however, are only looking at the price, they don’t look at the safety conditions. This is the problem.”

South side of Mount Everest

The workers were the first. Today nine Sherpas reached the summit of Mount Everest, as first climbers this spring, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA). The Sherpas belonged to a team including members of several expedition operators, which fixed ropes up to the highest point at 8,850 meters. It was the first summit success on the Nepalese side of Everest since 2013.

Two seasons ended prematurely

I deliberately ignore the alleged success of Chinese Wang Jing and her Sherpa team on 23 May 2014. She had been flown by helicopter to Camp 2. That spring, the season had ended prematurely, after an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had killed 16 Nepalese climbers. In 2015 a huge avalanche which was triggered from the nearby seven-thousander Pumori by the devastating 25 April earthquake had hit Everest Base Camp and killed 19 people. After that all expeditions had departed.

Way is paved

After the Sherpas have now prepared the normal route on the south side up to the summit, the way for the members of the commercial expeditions is paved. Several teams want to take the very the first good weather window for a summit attempt. It is due to open from Saturday to Monday.

South side of Mount Everest

Backing for the Nepalese authorities: The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) “fully supports the decision to propose more stringent measures for climbers wishing to scale the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest (29,029ft / 8,848m)”, as it said. These measures will include individuals having to prove they have already scaled a peak higher than 6,500 meters, thus eliminating the possibility of novice climbers scaling the mountain. “Everest should become a mountaineers’ mountain again”, said UIAA president Frits Vrijlandt.

“Restore a sense of dignity and glory to Everest”

“We support the requirement restrictions on age (denying access to those under 18, and over 75) and the minimum requirements regarding physical and mental ability to assure you are able to climb by yourself or with a partner. If you have to be hauled up the mountain you don’t really belong on Everest.” Vrijlandt said that the Nepalese authorities “have Everest’s best interests at heart”. The UIAA president was in 2000 the first climber from the Netherlands who scaled Everest from the Tibetan North Side and in 2003 the second from his country who completed the Seven Summits.
The UIAA said that they and the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) “believe implementing these measures will drastically improve safety on an increasingly overcrowded mountain, lessen pressure on guides who are often reduced to risking their lives assisting ill-prepared climbers and restore a sense of dignity and glory to Everest.”

Plea for self-responsible climbing

The new Everest rules have still to be implemented into the Mountaineering Expedition Regulation, which is part of the Nepalese Tourism Act. But I think, the country’s new government is currently facing more pressing problems that have to be solved than dealing with Everest climbing, for instance the still continuing blockade of Nepal’s border to India. Even in case the new measures on Everest come into force before the beginning of the next spring season, the question remains how to ensure compliance with the regulations. The Tourism Ministry will hardly establish training grounds where the Everest aspirants have to prove their climbing skills before granting them permits. Thus the expedition operators will have to ensure that their clients comply with the conditions to climb Everest. The operators would be well-advised to transfer the responsibility to the clients themselves, because in the end every climber who wants to scale Everest should be self-responsible for his decisions on the mountain. That would be a major step forward.

Poster of the competition

As in the Alps, mountaineers in the Himalayas shall soon find shelter in mountain huts. Not in simple wooden or metal sheds. The new huts shall be functional, low maintenance, not too expensive, but, please, also nice and comfortable. The Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), in cooperation with the Nepalese development programme Samarth, announced a competition for architects and designers to find “an innovative high altitude accommodation unit which will be the first of its kind ever to be established in Nepal”.

Sustainable

The mountain hut has to be “resistant to the elements of heat, cold, rain, snow and wind”, the organizers of the competition say. The hut shall provide “comfortable shelter” for ten to 20 people who must be able to stay there for several days due to lousy weather. It must have enough storage room for climbing equipment such as ropes or harnesses and has to supply electricity and drinking water in a sustainable way. It must to be suited for self-catering as well as a mountain hut with staff, kitchen and a small shop. The competition’s closing date for registration is 1 April, for submission 10 April. The winner will be announced on 30 April and will receive a prize money of US $ 5,000. The 13-member-jury consists of architects e.g. from the USA, UK, France, Hong Kong and Singapore, but strangely enough not from Nepal.

All over Nepal

Trekking the Annapurna Circuit

The first hut is to be built at 5896-meter-high Paldor Peak, a popular trekking peak in the massif of Ganesh Himal, north-west of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu. The ultimate goal is to replicate the winning hut model “in all parts of the country along the Himalayas”. In taking this action, the Nepal Mountaineering Association probably responds to allegations following the heavy snow storms in mid-October that killed about 30 people in the area around the eight-thousander Annapurna, including many trekkers. At the time, critics raised the issue that there had been no refuges in the affected areas along the Annapurna Circuit.

Snow banner on Everest

Waiting for the calm after the storm. Currently the wind is blowing strongly in the summit region of Mount Everest – with speeds up to 60 knots (about 110 km per hour). A summit attempt of one of the about ten teams on the Tibetan north side of the mountain is out of question. Not until 16 May a good weather window with low wind is expected. On the south side of Everest, according to the U.S. expedition leader Eric Simonsen, the “Icefall doctors” brought down their ladders and ropes from the Khumbu Icefall. Until next season, the material is deposited in a storage in Gorak Shep, the last permanently inhabited small village near Mount Everest at 5200 meters. Thus there will be definitely no climb to the 8850-meter-high summit from the Nepalese side this spring. This week in Kathmandu, the Japanese climber Ken Noguchi presented on behalf of his environmental protection organization “Seven Summits Actions for Sustainable Society” a donation of $ 100,000 to Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA).

NMA to coordinate the aid

With the money that Noguchi collected in Japan, the families of the 16 victims of the avalanche on Everest (look at the moving video of the New York Times “Last minutes on Everest” below) shall be supported. The Nepalese government has commissioned the NMA to ensure the education of the children of these families.

Ang Tshering announced that his association was in the process of creating a relief fund to which the NMA would add a matching sum. “We are receiving emails and phone calls from our friends around the world with the interest to support the family members”, said Ang Tshering. In many countries climbers have started charity projects for the relatives of the avalanche victims – such as German doctor and mountaineer Matthias Baumann, who was at Everest base camp when the avalanche came down:

In 1999, Ken Noguchi became, at the age of 25, the youngest person at that time to scale the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. The cancellation of an entire climbing season on the Nepalese side of Everest like this spring should not repeat, the 40-year-old Japanese said: “If this happens again, foreigners will give up on Mount Everest.” Or switch to the Tibetan side of the mountain. The blind Austrian climber Andy Holzer is planning to do that next year. “I want to walk away from the chaos that has arisen on the Nepalese side. I do not want to become a pawn in the hand of the Nepalese government and the Sherpas”, the 47-year-old said after his return from Nepal.

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.