China shows its friendly face. For 10 May, the Chinese government is planning “to provide a charter flight free of charge form Lhasa to Kathmandu for all Sherpas – not just for Climbing Sherpas, but also for cooks and kitchen helpers”, Ralf Dujmovits wrote to me calling it “a generous gesture” – despite  the expected propaganda of the Chinese. The most successful German mountaineer arrived in Lhasa, like many other western climbers who were on expedition in Tibet. “The China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) generously bears the costs of transport to Lhasa, accommodation and meals. And they take care of the visa formalities for the stranded climbers coming from all Tibetan peaks”, the 53-year-old said.

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He cannot just carry on as if nothing had happened, says Dominik Mueller. The head of the German expedition operator Amical alpin today abandoned his expedition on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest – after consultation with his clients, who according to Dominik also did not want to continue. “When I look in the faces of our cook, the kitchen boys and all the other Sherpas here, I cannot climb on in good conscience”, Dominik tells me by phone from the “Chinese Base Camp” at 5,150 meters, where according to his estimate are still 250 to 300 climbers and staff. The team’s cook has lost his house in Kathmandu, many others have not even been able to contact their families. “We can not sit here on a beautiful island and make for love, peace and harmony while there are thousands of deaths around us.”

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The quite inconceivable really happened. A huge avalanche from Pumori, triggered by yesterday’s earthquake in Nepal, hit the Base Camp at the foot of Mount Everest at full force. The seven-thousander is located just opposite the highest mountain in the world. But hardly anyone had expected that an avalanche from Pumori would reach the edge of the Khumbu Icefall. “I ran and it just flattened me. I tried to get up and it flattened me again. I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was dead,” said George Foulsham, a mountaineer who lives in Singapore. The 38-year-old marine biologist was lucky and survived. It is not yet totally clear how many climbers lost their lives in Base Camp.

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My heart is heavy. My thoughts are with the people in Nepal – and also with the climbers on Mount Everest. After the devastating earthquake on Saturday, the death toll is rising continuously. Meanwhile, it’s more than 2,000 across the country. And also from the base camp on the Nepalese side of Everest more and more victims are reported. As reported before, yesterday’s earthquake had triggered a huge avalanche from the seven-thousander Pumori vis-a-vis Everest that had hit the Base Camp at 5,300 meters. Today, the area was shaken by ​​strong aftershocks of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale.

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This will be an illustrious group of mountaineers. In April, not only expedition leader Dominik Mueller and his clients but two German record holders will gather in the base camp of the German operator Amical alpin on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest. Firstly, the most successful mountaineer of the country, Ralf Dujmovits. The 53-year-old has already reached as so far only German climber the summits of all 14 eight-thousanders. On the other hand Alix von Melle, who scaled six eight-thousanders and thus leads the ranking of the most successful German women on the highest mountains in the world. Both want to climb without bottled oxygen, but they’ll do in separate teams: Ralf with the Canadian Nancy Hansen, Alix with her husband Luis Stitzinger. Van Melle says she has closed the chapter of the abrupt end of their Makalu expedition in May 2014. “This is over and mentally processed. I feel quite well again”, the 43-year-old told me.

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The Everest climbers are in the starting blocks. In four weeks, the majority of them will travel to Nepal or Tibet. The final decision of the Nepalese government, whether and, if so, how exactly the permits of the prematurely terminated spring season 2014 are valid for 2015, is still to be made. Dominik Mueller, head of the German operator Amical alpin, doesn’t have to worry about that.  The 43-year-old leads an expedition to the Tibetan north side of Everest. His team will include not only “normal” clients but also three top-class mountaineering professionals from Germany. Ralf Dujmovits, so far the only German who climbed all eight-thousanders, wants to scale Everest without bottled oxygen – together with the Canadian Nancy Hansen. Alix von Melle and Luis Stitzinger plan to do the same. The German couple has so far climbed six eight-thousanders. Dominik Müller worked as an expedition leader on six of the 14 highest mountains. He reached the summit of Cho Oyo twice. “During the other expeditions, I had to put aside my personal interests being the leader”, Dominik told me. This time on Everest this could be different.

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His bookmark is still in the book of Everest. Ralf Dujmovits scaled all 14 eight-thousanders, as the only German so far. Only on Mount Everest in 1992, Ralf used bottled oxygen – something that the 53-year-old sees as a blemish by today. This spring, Ralf wants to travel to the highest mountain in the world for the already seventh time, for the fourth time to the Tibetan north side. Last year Dujmovits reached there an altitude of 8,300 meters on the northeast ridge. At that time he got angry about his own mistakes. And so Ralf’s repeatedly announced “definitely last” attempt on Everest became once again just his most recent try. This year, he wants to climb in a team with the Canadian Nancy Hansen. I met Ralf at the trade fair ISPO in Munich and asked him about his Everest plans:

Ralf and Mount Everest, a never ending story?

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Failure is hard, even for a climber who is up to every trick in the mountains. „I’m not satisfied“, Ralf Dujmovits admits. On Monday he arrived safely back in Advanced Base Camp ABC) at 6400 meters. But what happened to him on Saturday in Camp 3 will probably captivate him for a long time. „I really felt fine all the way up to 8300 meters. But then within half an hour everything changed“, Ralf told me on Monday. The uneven ground, the white frost on the inside of the single-walled tent which melted, dripped down and made everything wet, including his lighter. „It just threw me off course that I could no longer melt snow.“

I ask the 52-year-old whether everything would have been different if he had chosen another tent for Camp 3. „It’s possible. But I chose the lightweight tent because I wanted to reduce the weight as much as possible“, Ralf answers. „If you can carry more, you surely take a different tent.“ And if he had found a better place for his tent? „Then perhaps it would have been different.“ If and would and when, pure speculation. „I ‘m not the kind of man who blames everything on the external circumstances. I am also self-critical“, says Dujmovits. „It was just the way it was.“

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Ralf Dujmovits is annoyed. More about himself than about the fact that his dream to climb Mount Everest without bottled oxygen has disappeared. At 8300 meters, Germany’s most successful high-altitude climber decided not to start to the 8850-meter-high summit but to turn around. “I have performed badly”, says Ralf when he calls me by satellite phone from Camp 2 at 7700 meters. “I made a double fault.”

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Ralf Dujmovits has abandoned his summit attempt without bottled oxygen on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest. He called me from Camp 2 on 7700 meters and said he wanted to descend further down to the Advanced Base Camp at 6400 meters. More details later.

The first climbers came from the south. On Friday evening local time, the Chinese Wang Jing and five Sherpas reached the summit of Mount Everest via the Nepalese normal route. However, I hesitate to call it a complete ascent. The team had been flown by helicopter to Camp 2 at 6400 meters after the “Ice doctors” had stopped to maintain the route through the Khumbu Icefall. After the avalanche disaster on 18 April – as reported – all commercial expeditions on the Nepalese side of the mountain had been cancelled.

Today the first summit successes were also reported from the Tibetan north side. A team of 15 climbers of the Russian expedition organizer “7SummitsClub” reached the highest point at 8850 meters during snowfall and wind. The German climber Ralf Dujmovits had to struggle with these difficult weather conditions  too when he ascended from Camp 2 at 7700 meters to Camp 3 at 8300 meters.

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The time has come. Ralf Dujmovits, Germany’s most successful high-altitude climber, has started his summit attempt on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest. On Thursday, he climbed up to the North Col at 7000 meters, today to Camp 2 at 7700 meters. There – as reported previously – he had deposited a material bag. “The wind has blown strongly, I had trouble to pitch my tent”, says Ralf when he calls me by satellite phone from Camp 2. “But now the tent is ready, I have cooked and eaten.” The 52-year-old is targeting Sunday as summit day, the weather forecast so far promises for 25 May good conditions with relatively little wind.

On Saturday, Ralf wants to climb up to an altitude of about 8300 meters. He will leave his tent at Camp 2 and pitch at Camp 3 a mini tent that he had already used on Aconcagua at the end of 2013. The traffic on the normal route keeps within limits, reports Dujmovits. “Some climbers want to reach the highest point on 24 May. Thus the whole thing is equalized. On Sunday, 40 to 45 climbers might start to the summit. If you consider that the entire season is focusing on this weekend, these are quite a few. So far, I have not seen anyone who is climbing without oxygen, apart from me.” Everything is served. And Ralf seems to be optimistic: “I’m in good shape and make good progress.”

Update: A Hungarian blog user told me that his compatriot David Klein is also climbing without bottled oxygen and has already reached Camp 3.

Update II: According to a press release of the Nepalese tourism ministry the Chinese female climber Wang Jing and five Sherpas have summited Mount Everest from the south side of the mountain. As reported, the team had been flown by helicopter to Camp 2 and had started the ascent from there.

“It would have been a dream to take this beautiful route, but I do not dare to climb in this crumbly zone.” Ralf Dujmovits sounds a little bit disappointed when he calls me via satellite phone from the Advanced Base Camp (ABC) on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest. Actually, the 52-year-old wanted to scale Everest via the route that Reinhold Messner had opened during his solo ascent in 1980: beneath the North Ridge, then through the upper part of the Norton Couloir, onto the summit plateau. The wind was the reason that he abandoned his plan, explains Ralf: “It is blowing for 14 days now. There is a rocky interruption in the upper section of the Norton Couloir, where it is the steepest. There is no snow, probably it is rather sandy.” Even the point where Messner had left the couloir is free of snow now. This challenge at an altitude of more than 8000 meters is too big for him, because he will be climbing alone and without bottled oxygen, says Ralf. “This is too difficult, too exciting. I’m getting older, I have not enough power for that.” Now he will try to climb to the summit on the normal route, “though it pains me”.

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How could the Portuguese explorer Fernando Magellan see so many campfires at the southern tip of South America in 1520 that he named the region “Tierra del Fuego”? Actually, the typical constant rain there should have extinguished any flame. During their expedition to Monte Sarmiento in Tierra del Fuego Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, Ralf Dujmovits, Ralf Gantzhorn and Rainer Pircher had only two half days without rain. Furthermore wind speeds up to 150 kilometers per hour at a height of 1800 meters. Thus the plan failed to climb the main summit of the 2246-meter-high, pyramid-shaped mountain via the North Face. In addition to bad weather the team had bad luck. A snow cave at 1600 meters, where the climbers had deposited their gear during their first attempt, had disappeared, when they climbed up for the second time.

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Two weeks have passed since Ralf Dujmovits has decided to abandon his winter expedition on Nanga Parbat due to the strong risk of icefall. Two weeks to reflect on his experiences in Pakistan and also to look ahead. I call the 52-year-old German climber at home, in the town of Buehl at the foot of the Black Forest.

Ralf, what does German winter feel like, compared with winter in Pakistan, in particular on Nanga Parbat?

I stood at Frankfurt airport and then at the stations in Mannheim and Karlsruhe wearing a short-sleeved shirt, all around me people wrapped up in winter clothes. I had to get used again to the warm temperatures. We have a very warm winter in Germany, a real contrast to what we had in Pakistan. Whatever, I feel that I`m arriving also mentally and I am enjoying the warmth again.

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