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Daily News:
6/1/2000 Report
For earlier reports: See the
News Index for a list of all the Daily Reports. See
the Home Page for Individual Stories.
Receiving Reports from Over 30 Teams on Everest this Spring 2000.
EverestNews.com is
planning to provide You with coverage of K2 2000 with reports from the Brazilian
International Expedition 2000, Waldemar Niclevicz Leader (7 members including
Hans Kammerlander) and the USA International Expedition 2000
Members of the USA
International Expedition 2000 K2 Expedition include Andy Collins (UK), Andrew
Evans (Canada), Peter Grote (USA), Nasuh Mahruki (Turkey), Gary Pfisterer (USA)
Expedition Leader, Billy Pierson (USA), Hamish Robertson
(Australia),
Chris Shaw (USA), Tony Tonsing (USA), Ivan Vallejo (Ecuador), Fabrizio Zangrilli (UK).
Both
Expedition will be attempting the Abruzi Ridge.
Update:
All well here in Pakistan.
We are scheduled to leave for Skardu on May 30th and plan to arrive in base camp
on or about June 10th. Everything looks good for the satellite connection.
We have the permit and should be able to be in touch. Sounds like it was a busy
finale on Everest. There is already one Korean team in or near base camp
on K2 but they are doing the SSE spur. All for now. Cheers Gary
More on these K2
Expedition and others in the coming days.
Did we mention
Broad Peak 2000 Coverage coming soon !
In 1991, Steve Bell,
founder of Jagged Globe, became the first Briton to lead clients to the summit
of an 8,000m peak with an ascent of Broad Peak. Few professional companies lead
expeditions to the mountain. This is a rare chance to follow the 2000 team's
progress via dispatches sent from the expedition leader, David Hamilton (UK).
Update: Katmandu feels
very civilized after the hills and hotels of Tibet. We came down so quickly from
the mountain there was little time to realize we were here until we woke up with
the strange sensation of sleep without being inside a sleeping bag. We left our
Advanced Base Camp and walked the ten miles to Chinese Base Camp on 27 May,
followed closely by our 33 Yaks and 11 Yak drivers. Four jeeps and a large truck
picked us up there and we drove 2 hours in the setting sun to the small village
of Tingri, Tibet. Our first dose of city life was Momo's and boiled potatoes,
and a bottle or two of extra fizzy Chinese Beer. At 5 am the following morning,
we were off again across the Plateau, sun rising and heat on high in the jeeps.
By noon we were at the border town of Zhangmu, carrying our packs down through
town for an hour as they are paving the road and it is currently closed to
vehicles. A long wait for our truck and baggage almost meant we would be staying
the night, but just before 4 pm, everything arrived and we were able to descend
the steep hill to the Friendship Bridge and enter Nepal.
Dinner was a stroke of
traveler's luck, a riverside cafe where steaming plates of rice, lentils and
fresh banana's were served up by a family very happy to have 16 hungry climbers
descend on them. Dinner cost 80 cents for all we could eat and we made the most
of it. We arrived in Katmandu and the Summit Hotel at 10:30 pm.
And a few more
comments on the summit.
Cho Oyu traditionally
has three camps, but on our successful summit bid, we used only two of them.
Using the third Camp would of put us closer to the summit, but sleeping and
eating at 7400 meters is very difficult. And as a number of members had acclimatized
very well and were climbing strongly, we left Camp II at 2:30 am on 19 May. We
reached Camp III about 6 am. From here we climbed straight up through a steep
rock band comprising about 30 meters of near vertical rock-a quick way to wake
up. A number of previous expeditions had problems here, with some of their
members turning back, but the time we had spent in the glacier training and
members experience meant we climbed this with little problem-a challenge best
described as 'sporting,' At 7800 meters, Jaime Vinals and Kam soo Sherpa decided
to descend, while myself, Alex, Richard and Ang Temba continued. We knew we
would summit later in the afternoon, but the weather was good, only the
occasional cloud rolling over, so we kept climbing steadily on up to the immense
summit plateau and across to the summit. We knew we were there when Everest and
Lhotse rose above the ridge and the North Face dropped away steeply below. We
spent about half an hour on the summit, then climbed down quickly, getting
through the rock band by dark. From there it was just a long walk down the 400
meters and back to our tents at Camp II. We'd been climbing about 19 hours and
up for 24 by the time we were back happily in our sleeping bags.
Jaime was to spend a
total of five days above 7,000 meters, but deep snow on the 21st and 22nd
precluded them reaching above Camp III again. Hugh Lowther and Jose Rodriguez
both climbed to 7000 meters earlier in the expedition, but the effects of high
altitude didn't allow them to continue onto the summit this time.
Over the next few
days, we will pack up our climbing equipment, have two lunches every day and
soon be heading home.
Update:
As
details of the Inventa Everest 2000 Environmental Expeditions marathon summit
attempt trickle in to Everest Base Camp by radio from climbing team members
still descending the mountain, it becomes clear that it was an extraordinary
effort under horrible conditions.
Check their Site for
the rest of the update with interesting details: www.everestcleanup.com
Everest South Side:
"The 14 year old boy"
As pictures of the 14
year old Nepal boy (Temba Chhiri Sherpa who attempted Everest) come to
light after he returned from the mountain. Temba looks older, somewhat sad. The
latest News out of Nepal has him losing 4 fingers on one hand.
A
Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond by Jim Whittaker,
Tom Hornbein (Introduction), Edward Kennedy (Foreword), John Glenn
(Foreword) Availability: This title usually ships within 2-3
days.
For earlier reports: see
the News Index for
a list of all the Daily Reports. See the Home Page for
Individual Stories. If
you are New to EverestNews.com, treat us like a book, you have much to read. We
suggest you start with April 99 and read April and May 1999 to get an idea what
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goal is to report on all climbers. A hint, if you are reading old pages you need
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