First glance on Everest (l.) and Lhotse

“I don’t have any ambitions to climb Mount Everest,” says Ang Dorjee Sherpa. “Too dangerous! Finally, I have a wife and three children.” However, the 47-year-old was a member of Everest expeditions twice. At the end of 1991, Ang Dorjee worked as “Mail Man” for a Japanese expedition who wanted to climb the mighty Southwest Face for the first time in winter. The Sherpa brought the news of the failure at 8,350 meters as “postal runner” into the valley. Two years later the Japanese were back again – and successfully: A total of six climbers reached the summit on a partially new route, the first team on 18 December 1993. The first ascent of the wall in (meteorological, not calendrical) winter was done. That time, Ang Dorjee did not play the postman, but worked as a cook for the Japanese.

Again and again, Japan

Ang Dorjee Sherpa

To date, the Sherpa has a special relationship with Japanese mountaineers. In the guest room of his “AD Friendship Lodge” in Namche Bazaar at 3440 meters photos are hanging on the wall showing Ang Dorjee with Junko Tabei, the first woman on the Everest, or even with Uchiro Miura, who was, aged 80, the oldest man ever to climb Everest. For several years Ang Dorjee also worked in summer for three months as a cook at a Japanese mountain lodge. And many of the trekking groups he is nowadays guiding through the impressive mountains of Nepal, are from Japan.

Accustomed to earthquakes

Bridge across Dudh Cosi

During the devastating earthquake on 25 April 2015, Ang Dorjee was in Kathmandu to make final preparations for a Japanese travel group. “The Japanese did not even want to leave after the quake. They were accustomed to shocks from their home. But I sent them home. Their safety was for me more important than the money.” In Namche Bazaar, fortunately there was hardly no damage, says Ang Dorjee. adding that in the region the two villages Thame and Khumjung were hit, “especially the houses that had been built in the traditional way.” His own Lodge got only a small crack in the back wall. “Nothing bad!”

Icefall Doctors are making good progress

Namche Bazaar

For this spring season, Ang Dorjee is somewhere between slightly skeptical and cautiously optimistic. “But in spring even more climbers from expeditions arrive than trekkers. For us, fall is almost more important because it’s the main trekking season.” The Sherpa expects for the climbers who will come to Namche in the next few weeks a good summit chance to reach the summit. “I heard that the Icefall Doctors have already made good progress in preparing the route,” says Ang Dorjee. When I ask him about the mood among the Sherpas – after two years of deadly avalanches and without summit successes on the Nepalese side of Everest – Ang Dorjee smiles: “No matter how bad it is, we Sherpas are very good at forgetting and restarting.”

Everest Southwest Face

“Everything was said 40 years ago. Nothing has changed.” Doug Scott was tight-lipped when I asked him last spring about the British Everest Southwest Face Expedition in 1975. Late on 24 September, today exactly 40 years ago, Doug and his team comrade Dougal Haston, had reached the summit of Mount Everest after they had first climbed the more than 2000-meter-high, extremely difficult rock wall. After their summit success Scott and Haston survived a bivouac at 8760 meters. Their first climb of the Southwest Face was a milestone in Himalayan climbing, one of the “last big problems” was solved. Five expeditions had failed before, among them a British one in 1972.

Superb climbers

Route(s) through the Southwest Face (© Thincat)

This expedition as well as the successful three years later was led by legendary Chris Bonington. “In a way the expedition was my baby”, Chris told me last spring. “It was my vision and concept. Then I got together the group of superb climbers to actually complete it.” The team was based on climbers from the British 1970 Annapurna South Face and 1972 Everest Southwest Face expeditions and included aside from Scott and Haston such excellent climbers as Mick Burke, Nick Estcourt, Peter Boardman and Paul (“Tut”) Braithwate. “I had always seen very clearly in my mind that my first priority was the success of the expedition and not just the success of getting to the top of the mountain, but also the success of doing so harmoniously”, said the meanwhile 81-year-old Bonington. “And from that point of view it was a wonderful expedition. The only very serious cloud of course was the fact that in the second attempt we lost Mick Burke.” He disappeared during a second summit push. Burke was last seen alive only a few hundred meters from the highest point.

“Possible without breathing mask”

Bonington (l.) and Scott (in 2015)

The successful climb of the Southwest Face was a perfect teamwork. Scott and Haston were the members to complete it. “The way we did was a bit like the way the North wall of the Eiger was first climbed”, said Chris Bonington. “We found the easiest way, a kind of ‘serpentining’ our way up the mountain.” It was “the only line possible, the natural line”, Doug Scott finally told me last April. He and Haston had been using breathing masks. “When I bivouacked at 8,700 meters without oxygen, I knew, it would have been possible without it”, said Scott, aged 74 now. Afterwards there have been only a few successful climbs through the Everest Southwest Face. “The obviously challenge that nobody has done is a direttissima”, said Chris Bonington. “That is to go straight up the middle of the rock band and thus straight up to the summit.” Another “last problem”.

Alexei Bolotovi (1963-2013)

What should have been a highlight in the history of climbing on Everest, ended in tragedy. Russian climber Alexei Bolotov fell to death in the Khumbu Icefall. Together with his compatriot Denis Urubko the 50-year-old mountaineer wanted to open a new route via the steep Southwest Face. As Denis said on phone, the rope broke on a sharp edge of rock when Alexei was abseiling. Bolotov fell down about 300 metres and died instantly. He was found at 5600 metres.
Denis and Alexei had announced that they wanted to start for their attempt in the Southwest Face this morning. Within eight days, they planned to climb via a new difficult route to the summit – without high camps, without Sherpa support, without bottled oxygen. „If they are successful in Alpine style, I would be the first to congratulate”, Reinhold Messner had told me in an interview. 

Twice Piolet d’Or

Alexei Bolotov was one of the best mountaineers of Russia who had a lot of experience on 8000ers. In 2001 he made the first ascent of 8410-metre-high Lhotse West. A year later, he stood on the summit of Mount Everest, without supplementary oxygen. Alexei was awarded the Piolet d’Or, the climber’s Oscar, twice: as a member of the Russian expedition that firstly climbed the West Face of the 8000er Makalu in 1997, and for the first ascent of the North face of  7710-metre-high Jannu in Nepal. A great climber has died. R.I.P.