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K2
2000 Coverage with Waldemar Niclevicz
reporting for Project K2 and Gary
Pfisterer reporting with the American International Expedition! Included is news
on other climbers on the mountain including Hans Kammerlander, Araceli Segarra
and many others.
August
3rd 2000 65th day of the Expedition K2 2000 Base Camp
(5100 meters)
My
dear friends,
I am
so sorry by the lack of news. We are extremely tired
after reaching the summit of K2 and we are trying to
leave here as soon as possible, or it will be too late
to save our frozen fingers. So, we are a little
nervous.
Fortunately
the weather has got better, so we have got a
confirmation of a helicopter tomorrow. We are going
down to Concordia (4700 meters) (about a 5-hour walk)
and God willing there are enough flight conditions to
arrive in Skardu, because Marco Camandona needs
medical care urgently.
Also,
sorry by the lack of photos. Due to the intense cold,
the digital camera didn't work on the Summit of K2.
But the conventional one did, so as soon as I arrive
in Brazil all of you will be able to see the photo
here in this site, as well the amazing images that we
have done and will be exhibited at Fantástico (TV
Program)
I
give you my sincere thanks, you that have been
cheering for our victory. Victory that is yours too.
Victory that is our sponsor's too: O BOTICÁRIO, TAM,
NET VÍRTUA and SPORTSJÁ, companies that have relied
on our potential and financed our expedition. Thank
you very much, all of you!!!!
Waldemar
Niclevicz Project
K2 2000 is sponsored by O Boticário, TAM, Net Vírtua
and Sportsjá.
63rd day of the Expedition K2 2000
BRAZIL CONQUERS THE MOST
DIFFICULT MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD on July 29th, at 6:30 PM.
My Dear friends,
I am here again, in my tent at
Base Camp, at 5100 meters, happy, although writing just with one hand, and
outside the snow keeps falling. It has snowed hard all day long, more than 20 cm
here on the base, the landscape is grey, sad.
Why am I writing just with one
hand??? Because I have my fingers frozen on the other hand. It was a cold night
after the summit, that I spent inside an ice crack, at 8400 meters, alone. That
is true, things that I had just seen in films, read in books, happened with me.
But that is not all, much more occurred in our conquest of K2.
I left base camp on the 26th,
with our four altitude porters. My meteorologist friend Dani Ramirez said
"Light improvement of the weather in the next four days, maybe a good
opportunity to try the summit "I did believe him. And it succeeded. Dani
"Muchas Gracias". So, during four days I jumped to Camp 1 and went
straight to Camp 2 (6700 meters). On the second day, on the 27th Abele Blanc and
Marco Camandona left in the morning, direct from Base Camp to meet me at Camp 3
(7450 meters). It was a hard day, many things failed. As soon I left Camp 2 with
the porters an accident occurred. One of them was hit by a stone. Even wearing
helmet he cried. My God, I thought. The weather was getting better and I did not
want to go down. Thus two of the porters when down from 7100 meters, taking the
injured colleague. We went on having just one porter, but with very few food.
Following us, very happy, Ivan and Fabrizio from the American Expedition, saying
that we could use their tents, which they had set some days before at 7300
meters. When we got there no tents at all, all of them had disappeared, taken by
an avalanche. While our friends were disappointed we went up a little further up
to 7450meters, the true place of Camp 3.
The weather was getting better
and better. On July 28th we went on enthusiastically, Abele, Marco and I towards
8 thousand meters!! Virgin ground ahead of us, with no fixed ropes, with no
footsteps. At 7700 meters we tried to find oxygen bottles that were left there
in 1998 inside a tent but we did not find anything. It meant that we would try
to finish the climb without artificial oxygen. Something very hard!!!
At 7950 meters we set Camp 4.
At 11:00 pm, on the 28th I started the final attack with the altitude porter
Meherban Shah, one of the four Pakistan climbers that had climbed K2. At the end
of the "Bottle's neck", at 8300 meters, he complained about cold
for the tenth time, consequently he returned to Camp 4. Later at 4:30, Abele and
Marco joined me, at about 8400 meters. The sun heated the "Japanese
path", while an ice wall (serac) of almost 80 m threatening to drop over
our heads.
At last, the true K2's summit,
there at the back, very far. It was 3:30 am, very late. The snow was on the
knees, delaying our progression and besides we had no artificial oxygen. But,
the weather was great. And we kept on to get there, Abele Blanc, Marco
Camandona and I one behind other. And, at 6:30 on July 29th we reached the 8611
meters of altitude. Excited hugs. We have got it, my God, we have got it.
At 7:00 we started our long
descent. In the rarefied (thin) air Marco and I lost our torch. Abele lit our
descent in the darkness, but just a torch for three wasn't enough. Abele and
Marco went a little further. And I found myself alone, at 8400 meters. I
looked for a shelter in an ice crack. I spent the night almost freezing, 30
degrees C negative. Marco and Abele arrived in our tent at 4:00 am. At
7:00 am Abele was surprised by a ghost's presence, it was me, that could reach
Camp 4, alive. We arrived at Base Camp exhausted. Now we are all Ok. I have the
beginning of freezing in my fingers of the left hand, nothing serious. Marco's
situation is worse, he'll probably need to amputate the extremity of two
or maybe three fingers. Abele, as always is great. K2 keeps imposing,
almost unbeatable.
Project K2 is sponsored by O
Boticário, TAM, Net Vírtua and Sportsjá.
Waldemar
Greetings Everyone,
Thanks for all the e-mail
messages. It is good to hear from everyone.
Please rest easy, we are all okay. We have four
members, possibly five if we can get enough porters
leaving base camp on 4 August. The remaining
members will be leaving on 10 August. Almost all
members are back in base camp, but everyone coming
back from the summit or summit attempts are totally
exhausted and shattered and will require 3-4 days of
rest in base camp before they can assist with clearing
the hill of tents and equipment so the bulk of this
dubious honor will fall to me. I am planning to
head back up on the 4th to recover and consolidate as
much of the tents etc on the hill in camp II.
Most expeditions left everything up there.
Hopefully by the 8th we can have a mass carry of kit
back to base camp and the porters are scheduled to
arrive on the 10th. We should be in Skardu by
the 15th and Pindi on the 17th or so.
It snowed all day on the 31st
and 1st, finally stopping about midnight last night.
There is over a half meter of new snow at Camp II and
the route is very difficult to descend. We have
two members arriving momentarily in base camp and one
final member staying in camp II and hopefully arriving
tomorrow in base camp. It is difficult to convey
how tired these folks are, but it is taking them about
three times longer than normal to descend each segment
of the route. Part of this is the deteriorated
conditions but part is just exhaustion.
Ivan just arrived in base
camp. This leaves Andy Collins and Fabrizio the
only ones from our Expedition still on the hill.
Hopefully they will struggle in tomorrow.
Hope to see you all real
soon.
Cheers, Gary
Leader of the Successful American International K2
2000 Expedition
YESTERDAY'S
UPDATE IS BELOW....
SUCCESS,
SUCCESS AT LAST !!!!
Greetings Everyone,
The infamous weather finally cleared
on 26 July and in spite of the fact that several
members had just come down the day before, three
members went back up that evening and all other
members except myself went up the following day to
various camps. Two members went directly to camp
III, six directly to camp II and one to camp I.
With limited tent space on the hill I waited to head
up to avoid a traffic jam in camp III. This was
good as when the initial members arrived at camp III
it was nowhere to be found, having either blown away
in the storms or been buried by them. Much
digging disclosed nothing and members there were
forced into other tents for the night. Down
suits and other equipment was lost and adjustments had
to be made.
To
make a long story short Nasuh Mahruki was with
Waldemar and his team in camp III on the night of the
27th. They pressed on to camp IV on the 27th [
Editorial note: We believe this should read the
28th.]and left for the summit on that night at about
midnight. Nasuh, Waldemar, Marco and Abele
summitted on the 29th about 6:00 pm. They spent
the following night getting back to camp IV arriving
in the early morning of the 30th.
Meanwhile on the 28th the two
members who originally went straight to camp III had
to descend to camp II because they had lost all their
equipment (down suits, food and gas) with the
camp. Four people in Camp II Andy Evans, Andy
Collins, Chris Shaw and Billy Pierson moved up to Camp
III with our only remaining tent a three person
Trango. The member that had gone to camp I
returned to base camp with tendon injuries to his
heels.
On
the 29th the Andy's, Chris and Billy moved their three
man tent up to camp IV and the two members that
had descended to camp II moved back up to camp III
with a two man tent removed from camp II re-equipped
for a summit attempt. I finally set off and
arrived in camp I.
Then
Andy''s, Chris and Billy left for the summit about
3:30am. on the 30th. They all made the top and
returned to camp IV about 6:00pm. Fabrizio
and Ivan moved their tent up to camp IV and I moved up
to camp II.
On the 31st Fabrizio and Ivan set
off for the summit at about 2:00 am. I set off
for camp III. Nasuh had made it down to camp II and
was heading to base camp. The four summiteers
were heading down to various camps. The weather
was going off again and as I headed up through the
pyramid the clouds came in and it began to snow
with the wind eventually picking up to 50mph. I
turned around about 10:30am as the game was obviously
off for me. I made it back to base camp by about
5:00pm. I have unconfirmed report that Fabrizio
turned around before reaching the summit and do not
know weather Ivan made it or not.
As I write only Chris has made it
back to base camp although we are expecting the Andy's
and Billy later today. Fabrizio and Ivan are
reported in camp II. All members of our team
that reached the summit did so without any high
altitude porter support or the use of supplemental
oxygen.
There was considerable other success
on both K 2 and Broad Peak in this brief window.
I will leave these details to Waldemar to report if he
hasn't already.
So when the weather clears, all that
is left is to go back up and clear the hill of tents
and equipment. If conditions are good at that
time I may make another attempt as well as Fabrizio
and Ivan if he didn't make it this time. Either
way we should be packing up to head home around the
10th or so.
Hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers, Gary
UPDATE.....Ivan
made the summit late in the morning on the 31st in
very bad weather. Fabrizio turned around just
above the bottleneck (about 8250 meters).
Fabrizio is in camp III tonight,
Andy Collins and Ivan are in camp II and Billy and
Andy Evans are in Camp I. Everyone is well and
safe and all should be in base camp tomorrow.
Cheers,
Gary
Leader
of the Successful American International K2 2000
Expedition
Note:
the message is a bit confusing on the
"Andy's", but as we read it he is saying
both made the Summit ! We will confirm ...
We
will post Waldemar's report just as soon as it arrives
!!!
The
Teams !
Newsflash
8:25am EST US: Sources who have been reliable for
EverestNews.com in the past, report to us that Um Hong
Gil, the Korean climber summitted K2 on July 31st in
the early morning. No News on any of the others.
Note
we believe Waldemar's people wrote the three updates
below. We DON'T know what this Day 62 update means.
Hopefully we will find out soon. We have not
"clean-up" these three updates much.
Day
62
Descent
to base camp 62nd day of the Expedition K2 2000
My
friends! I know how it has been hard to see the
messages, without being sure what is really happening.
I apologize a lot, but we are concentrated on the
final climb to K2, with no conditions to send
messages daily. We are going down to base camp. We'll
be in touch soon with news. I want to have just good
news for all. May God protect us on the mountain ! If
it takes longer to send news, it's because we are
waiting for good weather in the upper camps some
more days, so we can finish the climb successfully
Camp
3 (7450 meters) / Camp 4 (8050meters) 60th day of the
Expedition K2 2000
Going
to camp 4 (8050 meters)
If
everything is going well, we'll overcome 8 thousand
meters today, being face to face to the summit. A day
of great emotions and thin air. We'll walk with
difficulty up the mountain. The great obstacle will be
to overcome the "Shoulder", a 300- meter
protuberance. We must meet much, but too much snow on
its upper part.
Attempt
to get the summit (8611 meters) 61st day of the
Expedition K2 2000
Attacking
the summit
God
permit us to step on the heights of
8,611m. I count on your prayers, on your cheering.
It'll will be at least 15 hours further from our camp
4 (8050 meters) up to the highest part of K2, 8611
meters. Our plan is to leave at 10:00 pm. The descent
is the most dangerous part.
Waldemar Niclevicz
Day
57
Base
Camp (5100 meters) / Camp 1 (6050 meters)
Starting
the 7th lunge
My
friends! The weather forecast indicates an
improvement. Today the wind blows on the heights
between 100-130 km/hour and there is still a
probability of strong blizzard. After tomorrow the
wind speed falls to 30-60 km/h, and getting better and
better. So, let's go, faithfully we start our 7th
lunge today. God willing nature will help us to
end the climb successfully. I rely on your cheering.
Waldemar Niclevicz
Project K2 2000 is sponsored
by O Boticário, TAM, Net Vírtua and Sportsjá.
Day 56 Base Camp (5100
meters)
Resting
at Base Camp
Weather
forecast at K2 today by Dani Ramirez: "Very
cloudy sky, with moderate snow from morning to midday.
Lighter snow at the end of afternoon. Abundant mist.
Strong and very strong winds S and SW, with gust of
wind over 100-150 km/h at superior camps. The
low pressure persists - 997 millibars in the centre
and East of Pakistan, with a very consolidate and
important monsoon between India and Himalayans.
Isotherm 0 degree at 6 thousand meters"
Yes,
my friends, our situation at K2 is still hard. But the
weather is likely to get better soon, according to
images via satellite. The important is that Abele,
Marcos and I are in good mood to wait for good weather
as much as it's necessary. We can't stay here forever,
our permission to climb expires on August 15th. So, we
still have 3 weeks left to end the climb. I,
particularly, believe that we'll get the summit of K2
before such date. Nature will offer us a truce to make
up for our effort.
I am
sure that your hopes are with us, and that is
important too. It is extremely difficult to
endure so many days of continuous bad weather but
knowing we are not alone renews our enthusiasm.
I thank you for supporting us in our efforts.
Waldemar Niclevicz
Project K2 2000 is sponsored
by O Boticário, TAM, Net Vírtua and Sportsjá.
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