|
International
Mountain Guides (www.mountainguides.com) Everest 2002 Expedition
April
26 High winds, icefall problems: The route remains
unfixed above Camp 3, except for a couple hundred
meters of rope run out yesterday by Willie Benegas
and his Sherpas. Today a number of Sherpas
headed up from ABC to take a crack at the Lhotse
Face, but turned back due to rockfall caused by
the high winds above on Lhotse. The icefall is now
becoming an issue among many of the teams on the
mountain, as the quality of the route work is very
poor this year. Dave Hahn reports that it is
"the worst he has seen" and our IMG
Sherpas report that it is worse than past
years. There are numerous loose anchors,
many pickets driven in only part way, loose
ladders and ropes, and generally shoddy work.
It all calls into question how the icefall route
is currently being managed by the SPCC (Sagamartha
Pollution Control Committee). The SPCC
collected $2800 for each 7 person permit issued by
the Ministry, plus extra money for extra persons
on the permits...somewhere in the $50,000 range for
this season, but has only spent a fraction of
this getting the work done (they have only hired 3
sherpas to do ALL the icefall work).
I don't want to see any of our team members or
Sherpas injured if an anchors pulls out,
especially since we have paid thousands of dollars
to SPCC for the icefall route. The SPCC
representative was at Base Camp, and our Sirdar
told him the route was a problem, but he left
without doing anything. This morning we have
filed a complaint with our Liaison Officer.
Eric
Simonson
Khumbu
Base Camp
|
|
