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Manaslu 2003 featuring Dan Mazur
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Manaslu, at 8163 meters, is the eighth highest
peak in the world. It is located in the
west-central part of Nepal, and our team will
climb it by the original route. We will be
climbing during the "spring" or " pre-monsoon"
season, when the hazards of weather and snow and
avalanche are traditionally at their lowest. Dan
Mazur Jeff
Justman will be co-leading this expedition, his
reports are here. |
Dispatch 11:
Greetings, This is Daniel Mazur writing to you from
SummitClimb.com. I apologize if it seems I have not
written for quite some time, but we have just returned
from the Himalaya, where we had two exciting
expeditions and visited with some of the former
Maoists. Did you see the article about Daniel Mazur in
the May 1st, 2003 issue of Climbing Magazine? It was a
surprise to us! Now there is a new Ch-Oyo DvD, just
out, and it features Daniel Mazur and friends,
climbing what is claimed to be the most accessible
8000 meter peak in the world. We are now providing
mountaineering training and health care to our men and
women climbing Sherpas, through the Mount Everest
Trust. The Everest 50th Anniversary Golden Jubilee
celebration in Kathmandu was interesting, in case you
missed it. Now, we are planning our future expeditions
to Ama Dablam, Everest, Pumori, Lakpa Ri, and many
others, which Daniel will be leading and climbing
affordably together with friends, old and new, perhaps
you. I would like to invite you to participate this
autumn, and next year as well. Be sure to visit me in
Seattle this summer and in the early autumn in order
to meet with us personally, drink some of the famous
Seattle coffee and to climb together with all of us
and old and new friends on our very famous local
Glaciated 4000 meter volcanoes, only three hours from
Seattle. Don't want to climb the Himalaya, but still
wish to visit the remote unspoiled beautiful Himalayan
environments and cultures of Nepal and Tibet? We have
some exciting new trek options for you to explore.
Also, we are confirming our annual video-slide lecture
schedule for next January and February, 2004, when we
will be coming out to visit you, to tell exciting
visual stories of big mountains and cultures, and
raise money for what we believe are some very good
causes. Get in touch with Todd at
EverestSpeakersBureau.com if you would like to be
involved in hosting and organizing lectures.
Please find below the
summary of our spring 2003 expeditions:
1. Just Back from the
Himalaya:
a. PUMORI, NEPAL'S
MOST CLIMB-ABLE 7000 METRE PEAK, just across the
valley from Everest, with constant views looking into
the west face (normal route) of the world's highest
peak. 7 of our team members and 3 Sherpas summited. At
the time, no other teams were climbing this mountain,
and the weather was great. The leaders were Daniel
Mazur and Jay Reilly. Everyone agreed, the staff of
climbing Sherpas and cooks were outstanding. b.
MANASLU, THE WORLD'S EIGHT HIGHEST MOUNTAIN, in remote
Nepal. We just decided this is the world's easiest
8000 metre peak (yes, we think it is easier than Cho
Oyu). Our international team made a democratic (one
member-one vote) unanimous decision to be super-safe
and cautiously descend the mountain, after we received
13 meters of snow in 30 days, and all of our tents
were buried several times (luckily we brought tons of
extra equipment). 5 expeditions were on the mountain,
and all of the other teams left, too, after two
climbers from another team summitted and then were
nearly blown off the summit in a 300 metre fall. The
weather was very snowy on Manaslu this year, but we
were proud to be extremely safe and democratic, and
are coming back next year. The climbing was
fantastically beautiful and very easy, we just had
some unusual storms. The leaders were Daniel Mazur,
Jeff Justman and Shane Edmonds was also an assistant
leader. Our Nepalese staff of skillful cooks and top
notch climbing Sherpas provided amazingly superb
service in the face of challenging conditions.
2. WE MET 100
MAOISTS, during a week long trek to our climbing
Sherpa's village. It was an exciting but peaceful
meeting. Nepal is having peace now, a cease-fire
agreement, and appears to be settling down to some
calmness. What a surprise, compared to the rest of the
world!
3. MAN AND WOMAN
SHERPA TRAINING: We are working together with the
Mount Everest Trust to provide formal mountain
climbing training and certification to our men and
women climbing Sherpas. YES ITS TRUE! WE NOW HAVE BOTH
MEN AND WOMEN CLIMBING-SHERPAS. WOW! In fact, we are
proud to include in our trips, and offer for hire,
some of the best men and women climbing Sherpas in
Nepal and Tibet. GOOD.
4. OUR SHERPA'S
VILLAGE, BUILDING A HEALTH CLINIC. Our climbing
Sherpas have asked us to build a health clinic in
their village. We are working with the Mount Everest
Trust and going forward with fund-raising in order to
do so. If you know anyone who can donate time,
supplies, knowledge, ideas, and funds, please get in
contact. Right now, if someone in the village gets
sick, they have to be carried in a basket on a friend
or relative's back for three days to get minimal if
any care, and perhaps no medication because the doctor
seems to be on permanent vacation and there is no
money for supplies.
5. EVEREST 50TH
GOLDEN JUBILEE celebration was a big thrill. We saw
leading lights like Ed Hillary, Ms. Junko Tabei,
Reinhold Messner, Jamling Norgay, Alan Hinkes, Ms.
Pemba Dolma Sherpa, Scott Darsney, Jean-Christophe
Van-Waes, and the prime Minister of Nepal. Dan saw his
climbing partner from Everest, Roman Giutashvili, now
aged 67 years, who still looks like he is 45 years
old.
DETAILED STORY OF
SPRING 2003 EXPEDITIONS: PUMORI AND MANASLU: I just
made the Kathmandu - Bangkok flight by a few hectic
minutes. It wasn't looking that good at 10:30 am this
morning, when me and health-minister Aryal appeared to
be stuck for another day in boiling hot,
mosquito-infested, Maoist-dominated, rural-Nepal. We
appeared to be hopelessly stranded in this poverty
stricken village four days walk from Kathmandu, yet
only a 30 minute flight away, when the slate-grey
clouds cracked open to spit out a tiny propeller
plane, which smacked down onto the mud runway, under
the watchful gaze of 50 camouflaged Nepalese army
troops and blue-shirted police, hiding in sandbagged
trenches. By noon, we were back in the boiling heat of
Kathmandu, and after Mr. Murari Sharma of Parivar
Trekking made a frenzied delivery of my international
plane ticket and two partially packed bags, and I
sprinted across from the domestic to the international
terminal, I was inside and on the plane, just in time
for the 1:40 flight. By nightfall, I was in Bangkok,
in order to make my connection to the Seattle flight
in a few hours. Certainly quite a "phase-shift", from
waking-up in the boiling hot potato fields in the
middle of nowhere, watched by sullen Maoist troops and
hungry swarms of flies, mosquitos and leaches, to
eating barbecued prawns in an immaculate hotel-lobby
restaurant. The joys of modern travel, from the fifth
century to the 21st, quick as a flash. Another
exercise in training for stress-coping.
My little Kathmandu
departure story was a final chapter in the saga of the
spring of 2003, with our two expeditions, one to
Pumori and the other to Manaslu.
Our team of
international climbers successfully climbed 7000 meter
Pumori, just across the valley with stunning views of
Everest. We placed 7 members and three Sherpas on the
summit of this classic beautiful peak, which is
rapidly becoming known as one of the "most-climbable"
7000 meter peaks in Nepal. Pumori was a fantastic
achievement for us, and our second succesful climb of
this exciting, moderate, ice and snow peak. Our team
moved on to attempt Manaslu, the eight highest peak in
the world, located in remote central Nepal. It was a
surprisingly fun and easy climb, on one of the most
gentle of all fourteen of the 8000 meter peaks.
Although the technical difficulty of the mountain
itself was quite minimal, the weather posed a massive
challenge. Our team was the first to arrive in
basecamp, and one of the last to leave. There
eventually came to be five expeditions in basecamp,
and eventually, all dwindled to only us remaining as
the last team, through 6 successive snow storms which
totally flattened all of the camps on the mountain,
several times, including the higher camps as well as
basecamp itself. Luckily we had brought plenty of
extra equipment, rope (3000 meters), tents (27), and
stoves (30), so our climbing members and skillful and
creative Sherpas were able to patch together our camps
and keep things dug out to a workable level.
Eventually, we estimated that more than 13 meters of
snow fell. We had a very comfortable basecamp, and our
cooks provided non-stop feasting with imaginative
quantities of fresh vegetables, fresh eggs, hot
drinks, fresh meats for the non-vegetarians, and
massive breakfasts, huge steaming kettles of soup,
very tasty desserts, all expertly prepared and served
by our 9 kitchen staff.
Then, as our team
moved into the high camp, ever higher winds began to
howl. Hoping conditions might improve, we set up our
tents in the highest camp, but it was so windy that it
was impossible to go outside of the tents unless one
was to crawl upon one's hands and knees. A team of
climbers from another expedition set up their last
remaining tent in the high camp near our tents. They
apparently disconnected one of our fixed lines from
the slope (we later
learned) and, using
it as a climbing rope, they put on their supplementary
oxygen masks and bottles and headed for the summit.
They reached the summit in a howling blizzard in the
middle of the day in zero visibility. On descent, one
of the climbers tripped and fell and slid, and pulled
the other climber down, and roped together, they
tumbled and rocketed down the glazed, wind-blasted ice
face, for over 300 meters, until they came to a bloody
and broken halt in a crevasse. Our team received
several emotionally very distraught radio calls and
personal visits for help from the other climbing team,
and we readied ourselves to perform a rescue. In the
meantime, the wind increased to a roaring wall of
snow, and we decided to evacuate the mountain, and
take the injured members from the other team with us.
We saw what had happened to the people from that other
team, and knew we did not want the same fate to befall
us. We determined that it was not worth the
consequences of possible injury and frostbite to
summit in such huge snowfall and high winds, and we
knew that Manaslu will be there next year, when we try
again. We tried to ready the descent route, but were
unable to make the first 40 meters, because the other
climbing team had removed the rope. Finally, the
weather settled enough, and we were able to start
making our way down, with our Sherpas leading the way,
and helping the injured members from the other team,
who had fallen. Another group of our super-strong
Sherpas worked their way up the mountain, coming from
camp 2, twice in one day, in order to bring hot
drinks, and help carry the member's rucksacks. What a
delight to see these Sherpas, staggering up through
the blizzard to help us and give us cups of hot tea.
It was an epic
descent in high winds, but thankfully everyone made it
back down in one piece, except for the two battered
and limping members of the other team, whose oxygen
bottles finally ran out, and a few cases of very
minimal frostbite. An Army helicopter landed in a
nearby village a few days later, and we stuffed the
entire expedition aboard this huge Russian chopper,
and heavily loaded, we lurched from the ground, and
were dropped in a hot Kathmandu cornfield a few
minutes later. Fly a half-hour, or trek out for a
week, the choice was easy for us to make, and the
expedition organizers at SummitClimb.com paid! Back in
Kathmandu, we enjoyed the Mt. Everest 50th anniversary
Golden Jubilee celebrations, and touched base with all
of our old Himalayan friends made over the last 15
years of climbing the giants like Everest and K2. Now
I am sitting on a 747 jumbo-jet typing this last email
of the season summing up our teams progress. Its hard
to believe this morning I awoke in a tiny hill village
of Nepal, where I am working with the Mount Everest
Trust to build a rural health clinic in a village with
400 families that has never had any health care. Now,
when someone gets sick, they have to be carried
several days in a basket to the nearest very crude
medical facilities. Because most of our climbing
Sherpas come from this very remote village, and have
been working hard for us, we feel we owe their
families a debt of gratitude, that we hope this health
clinic will partially repay.
Also, again with the
help of the Mount Everest Trust, we have enrolled 4 of
our newest Sherpas, two women and two men, in a 40-day
climbing certification course that has a very good
reputation as one of the best around. In this class
they will learn all rope techniques, glacier travel,
rescue, and full technical climbing skills. We are
proud to make an investment in their future, and a
wise one in ours, as we strive to continue our
reputation of employing some of the friendliest and
best trained women and men in the Himalaya, to work
together with our teams, to achieve our common goal of
climbing to the summit together, and back down, in
total safety.
Thanks again to
EverestNews.com, for all of the fantastic hard work
you have been doing, on your unique and badly needed
site: EverestNews.com, from all of us at
SummitClimb.com. We owe you a huge and rather
unrepayable debt of gratitude! I look forward to
seeing you on Ama Dablam in October of 2003 and at
slide-video lectures AROUND THE WORLD during January
and February, 2004, hosted by
EVERESTSPEAKERSBUREAU.COM
 Dispatches
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