All entries in this category: About the project
Home at last
- 21 Sep 07, 05:41 PM
Well I know it has been ages since the last blog but I am sure you will all be relieved that the Horizon team finally managed to escape Everest and are now back home safe and sound.
Getting out of Base Camp was a complex logistical challenge and we were separated from our computer which is why the blogs dried up. In that time Ben and I took the opportunity to explore the surrounding valleys and even attempt a climb of our own. We are now the proud summiteers of Island Peak, 6200m.
Coming down was an extraordinary experience, every step we took brought thicker and thicker air. Unlike on the way up you could really feel the difference the oxygen levels brought. That was helped by the stunning return of greenery. Until I saw our first bush I hadn’t realised it had been 2 full months since I’d seen even a leaf.
We arrived in Lukla airport to catch our plane out of the mountains to Kathmandu just as the monsoon hit. Tragically this airport in the clouds was stuck in the clouds for 4 days. Every morning we’d go down to the airport in the hope of getting out only to be let down. Unfortunately Lukla isn’t the nicest place at the best of times and now in off season it had pretty much shut down. With not banks or shops all we could do was sit and stare at the rain preying for it to stop.
Having said that we were lucky. Logistics manager Mac MacKenny was stuck on the mountain for a full two weeks after we left, I didn’t see him again until we returned to London.
So we are back now and all I can say is it did turn out to be one of the most extraordinary experiences I could have had. It was a stunning environment to live in, often challenging but always rewarding and Ben, Graham, Dave and all the Xtreme Everest team where the best companions you could hope to spend two months in a tent with.
I shall miss it all.
Evacuation
- 31 May 07, 04:48 AM
This expedition has been a huge success. Nearly everyone on the summit team got to the top, and the vital arterial blood samples were taken at around 8500 metres.
I had an interesting interlude. I'd got a bit of a cold at base camp and when we heard of a rescue going on I foolishly headed UP the mountain instead of DOWN . I plodded up to Camp 2 through the wonderful silence of the Western Cwm and promptly keeled over on arriving mid-afternoon.
Next morning I was able to film the arrival of Usha Bista, the 22 year-old Nepali girl climber who had been found unconscious and alone at the Balcony. An old friend from my Mallory expedition, Dave Hahn of IMG had discovered her after returning from his own successful summit attempt. Despite his weariness he gave her Dextamethazone and oxygen and organised her rescue. Members of our own expedition took over her medical care and looked after her evacuation. When I saw her she had some frostbite to fingers and toes but what was upsetting was her rage at having been left to die by her team-mates. We are very used to hearing stories about Western climbers walking past dying colleagues, but this was an all-Nepali expedition. What was worse was the fact that her expedition leader had been with us the day before and had promised faithfully to send up Sherpas and oxygen to her aid. Then he just disappeared. I have no doubt that she would have died without the help she did receive.
After we'd filmed the overnight radio traffic from the successful summit attempt I filmed Pasang arriving with the precious blood samples, just two hours from the Balcony to Camp 2- surely a record. The blood was duly tested and filmed.
Next morning, feeling rather feeble, I decided to head back down the hill. Usha was bundled up and brought down too. As we approached the top of the Icefall one of my companions clipped into the fixed ropes. At that moment a huge block of ice fell off with a roar and a cloud of white ice-smoke. It was no more than two metres from us, it took out a section of ropes and my heart sank: of all days to have to start abseilling down the bloody Icefall! Ten seconds later and it would have killed us.
Anyway, we got down eventually and we started to get proper attention: thank God for the doctors on this expedition and particularly Mark Wilson the medical officer. I'm not going on any more trips like this in the future without at least 40 doctors.
Mark organised a helicopter rescue, paid for by the 大象传媒. Usha was going to come along for free. Her alternative was a horse.
Next day we were loaded into a huge Russian helicopter which was piloted by an interesting character named Sergei. Both he and his chopper look like veterans of the 1980s Russian war in Afghanistan. He dresses in polyester slacks and shirt as if he's ready for a spot of gardening, but he controls a monster of amazing power and violence: the down-draft is enough to send stones spinning in all directions. We took off and in minutes followed the path that had taken us weeks to follow. Ousha slept throughout until we arrived at Jiri, where we were offloaded to wait for an Army helicopter. This pilot was under instruction, so we were treated to aerial versions of a three-point turn and an emergency stop. But the most scary part of the day was being in a siren-waving ambulance in the Kathmandu rush-hour: far riskier than the Icefall.
Lying safely in hospital I contemplated the future: altitude is clearly bad for you, Graham. Maybe you should take up sailing?
On Top of the World
- 31 May 07, 04:15 AM
Dave continues...
Day six was summit day. In the afternoon we pack for the summit, rest, eat and drink (and drink and drink some more) and breathe from our oxygen bottles. To spend the day at the Col you do not need to be on oxygen. Everything you do up there makes you breathless, but you do just fine during the day without supplemental oxygen. Before you try to summit however, it is good to "suck O's".
By 8:00 PM we are all gathered outside our tents. The wind is howling and we are putting on crampons, filling water bottles with hot water, zipping up our down suits, putting on mittens and adjusting our oxygen regulators to between two and two and one half liters per minute flow. By 9:00 we start walking away from our tents. This is for real now: we will try to climb to the top of the world.
There is a bench to climb right out of Camp Four. Once on that bench, the angle steepens and you climb at a fairly high angle up a snow chute with the goal of reaching the "balcony". The balcony is nearly halfway from Camp Four to the summit and is a good workout. Interestingly, the South Col is often very windy, but once up on the climb the wind dies down. I was very careful to dress properly to avoid frostbite, which take the toes and fingers of so many climbers. I was very warm throughout the climb! I lead our climbing party to the balcony, climbing in front and comfortable with my own pace. There are six team members and 10 Sherpas, five of whom were first time summiteers. There are fixed ropes that you use to assist you in climbing. It is dark and we are climbing by the light of our headlamps, but I never had to route-find because I simply followed the ropes.
At the balcony we take a short rest. I have over half a bottle of oxygen left but had been told we would change here. I wait for the Sherpa carrying my oxygen and change cylinders. In the meantime others do not change oxygen and move out ahead of me. My desire was to stay out front for filming purposes. Now I find myself in the middle of a long line of climbers and for the next four hours I can take two to six steps and wait....wait....wait with my face twelve inches away from the backpack of the guy in front of me! This was very frustrating because I climb in a different way. I pick a pace that is just slow enough that I rarely stop. Others go a little too fast and have to stop and rest all the time. It is very difficult to pass. If something holds someone up toward the front of the line, everyone has to stop and wait. Not long after we had left the balcony we were on a narrow ridge when someone at the front of the line discovered they had a problem of some kind. They stopped. We all stopped. They had difficulty resolving the problem and we all stood motionless, in the wind, on a steep ridge for 25 minutes! The Sherpas were beginning to yell and I can only imagine what they were saying!
I kept watching for the first signs of the rising sun on the eastern horizon. Light would help break the monotony of seeing only my feet in the small pool of light from my headlamp. The first light I did see was at 4:09. (I checked my watch.) There may have been some before that but the east was over my right shoulder and my vision was obscured by the narrow tunnel of the hood of my down suit. To see anything other than the small spot directly in front of me took an unusual amount of craning the neck.
The second feature to reach after the balcony is the South Summit. The climbing is similar: steep snow with occasional rock following the fixed ropes. By the time we got to the South Summit we could see by the early morning light, and the world -- now all below us -- is too incredibly beautiful to describe. Seriously! One encouraging thing is that we can now look directly at the summit ridge and the Hillary Step and it is close. We can see now that it will not be long before we stand on the summit. We can see now that we can do it! This put an "encouragement" in our blood! (Perhaps it put air in our lungs!)
At the South Summit I got a chance to move to the front of the line. I want to go just behind the expedition leader so I can film him going to the summit, since after all, he is the focus of my filming. At this point I also begin to experience difficulty with my oxygen mask. I could not quite figure it out at the time and as our expedition leader left for the summit, and others began to follow him, I jumped up and started moving. The going got tough. I could not quite figure out why all of a sudden I was so tired, I was, as I think we all were, tired just from climbing. But now I felt MORE tired. As it turns out I was getting very little, if any, oxygen. I staggered to the top, arriving about in the middle of our group and mustered what energy I could to do a little filming.
I need to back up a little to the subject of the fixed ropes. Each year a group of Sherpas, usually supported by the bigger expeditions, fix ropes along the route to the top of the mountain. These ropes provide both a climbing aid and protection for all who climb. The problem is that the old ropes from years past are never removed. New ropes are simply added to the route each year. There has become a huge tangle of old fixed ropes. Many times you do not know which rope to clip into. You may be depending on a rope, hanging on it with your life totally committed to it, only to find near the top of that rope that it is old and nearly frayed in two. There are places where many old ropes come together: new ropes tied into old ones, broken ropes tied together to make a continuous line, ropes looped in a such way as to inevitably get caught in your crampons. It is a mess. The Hillary Step is the worst of all. The hazard there is not the climb but the ropes that impede the climb.
Unfortunately the top is similar. There are prayer flags strung everywhere. They create a terrible trip hazard, and climbers had to be careful not to get them caught in their crampons. For some reason, people have a habit of carrying some memento to the top of Everest and leaving it there. Do they really think that when I get there I want to see a picture of their wife or baby? There is all kinds of junk up there, and when one person leaves a picture (yes, in an 8x10 frame with glass) it becomes a broken bit of trash that litters the summit. From this perspective, the summit was a real disappointment. Nothing pristine and beautiful about it. Something so beautiful and special tarnished by inconsiderate man in a way that is no different than industry polluting a stream or lake or ocean. Think about the climbers 25 years ago who reached the summit of Everest to find nothing but a snowy top! (Well, and the Chinese tripod.)
But there is the bright side. The beauty I mentioned that I cannot describe. I will not try except to say that when in Nepal you spend all your time looking up at the mountains. When at Everest Base Camp you spend all your time looking up at the mountains that surround you. When in the Western Cwm, from Camp One to Camp Two, you spend all your time looking up at the mountains that are closing in all around you. Even at Camp Four you look up at the mountain you desire to climb. UP, UP, UP, and they are soooo high! But now, on the top of Everest, you look down, way far away down. And all those big towering mountains are but small bumps and hills and ridges that creep and flow and poke way down below you and that is what is so incredible about being on top of Mount Everest.
I think I will leave it at that for now. We got to the top and we had to get down. We did. Rather than to talk about going back down I would like to leave you with the thought of being on the top with the world stretching out far in every direction, with everything down below. It was wonderful.
The Summit Attempt
- 31 May 07, 04:13 AM
Dave Rasmussen our high altitude cameraman managed to summit Mount Everest a few days ago, he has written an account of the climb:
Hello from Everest Base Camp,
There is something special about the greeting above. When I was at K2 Base Camp in 1999, I interviewed a very experienced mountaineer from Poland. He told me the mountaineers in Poland have a saying, "The summit is in base camp," meaning of course that a climber shouldn't be overly excited on reaching the summit. There's still a descent to make. Many mountaineers have reached the top of a mountain only to die on the way down. Once back in base camp, the summit can be celebrated. Now that I am back in base camp, I can share with you that I have summitted Everest.
To summit Everest from the South side, in Nepal, you launch off from Camp Four at the South Col, the highest pass in the world at 26,000 feet. To get to Camp Four takes weeks of climbing and acclimatizing but once that is done, the basic program is to leave Base Camp, climb throught the Khumbu Icefall, pass by Camp One and go directly to Camp Two. This is day one. Camp Two is located at the base of the massive rock pyramid that forms Everest. Camp Two is also at the base of the Lhotse Face. Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world, rises up to the southeast of Everest and forms the right hand ridge of the South Col.
So, on the first day of our summit trip, we arrive at Camp Two. Day two is a rest and filming day. On day three we climb the steep ice/snow Lhotse face for several thousand feet to Camp Three, located on some snow and ice "bulges" on the steep face. At Camp Three there is nothing to do but sit in your tent and get used to the thin air. The tents are cut into the slope so that the only space you have to "walk around" is a very narrow space behind your tent and about three feet on either end. You are literally confined to an area about as big as a midsized car. With clear skies and no wind the temperature in our tent rose to 108 degrees (44C?). Nobody thinks about it being that hot at nearly 24,000 feet, but it does happen and it is not comfortable. I slept on oxygen at Camp Three. We left early the next morning.
On day four we climb higher up the steep Lhotse Face until we cut to the left and traverse across the face to a rock feature called the Yellow Band. We climb up over the Yellow Band and continue an upward traverse to the base of a large rock outcropping called the Geneva Spur. I always thought the route went up behind the Geneva Spur, but found out that the climb goes up the back side of the Spur and then cuts across the front top. From here it is a fairly easy quarter mile walk that puts you into the South Col, home of Camp Four.
Many people carry on to the summit on the evening of the day they reach the Col. But we have science to do. Our day five is a rest/filming/science day. I have told people in the past that I had no real desire to climb Mount Everest but I that I would really like to go to the South Col. In mountaineering history it is a unique place. I always thought it would be cool to go there (literally!). So now I am finally there, 26,000 feet with a lot of wind, blowing snow (it is not snowing but the snow is always driven like sand in the desert), rocks and spent oxygen bottles. The South Col is not really a special place in any way other than it leads to the top of the world. The climb from here is laid out right before our eyes. We can see quite clearly what we have to do to get to the top. We can see it, but as of yet we cannot perceive what it will mean to our bodies to actually do it.
We do science at the South Col on days five and six. Science that has never before been done at this altitude. Science that will hopefully someday help sick people at low elevations.
The Final Push
- 15 May 07, 09:26 AM
Well, we start heading up the mountain for the last time tomorrow. We have a good weather report so we have to grasp the moment.
There is the usual sick feeling of knowing what is in store for us: the scary climb through the collapsing Icefall, the exhausting plod up the Western Cwm to Camp 2, the long steep icy slopes of the Lhotse Face where the Sherpa was killed a few days ago. Then the uncertainty of summit day: how will it go? In 1993 I had a good day of weather- can we hope for this again?
Unfortunately I have a throat infection after weeks of good health so I may go up a day later. The good thing is that we have filmed some really ground-breaking science and if we can just get those vital last shots I think we have a cracking story to tell.
Wish us luck, any of you out there who read this.
Vanity Publishing
- 13 May 07, 09:22 AM
Dave Rasmussen-the-cameraman and I went down to the valley to build up our strength for the summit attempt by eating Yak steaks for a week. We stayed in Sonam’s Friendship Lodge in Dingboche, and it was indeed friendly. We got to know all the family and were even allowed to take their Lhasa terrier out for walks.
Sonam himself is a fascinating man: he remembers the day big bearded Western men came through his home village of Namche Bazaar. He was eight years old and hid in a bush to watch these strange beings. This was the British expedition of 1953, the one on which Hillary and Tenzing first climbed Everest, and the event which changed the Sherpas’ world for ever.
The floodgates of tourism opened and the Khumbu valley is now filled with lodges (guest houses) and shops as a result. Don’t get the idea of luxury, though: Sonam’s lavatory wore a virulent green fleecy fabric on its seat, a fabric which also featured suspicious brown stains. Anyone with any sense hovered a few inches above while performing. And the cooking, while filling, is done in a kitchen that looks like a medieval forge.
These lodges have large communal rooms where trekkers and climbers eye each other with suspicion at first. If you get talking, though, you’ll find a cosmopolitan bunch of walkers who usually have good stories to tell. And on the walls you’ll find something which I’ve never seen elsewhere: the vanity posters.
These posters are quite simply boasts from the climbers who pass through. They don’t appear to advertise anything except the egos of those who have commissioned them back in their hometowns. For example: the Canadian climber who lists his accomplishments as: “International Adventurer. Tour Guide. Speaker. Filmmaker. Writer. Humanitarian.” We all liked that last one. No surprise he is now a politician.
Then there’s the funny ones: an 81 year-old Japanese man whose photograph features him swimming in an ice-encrusted glacier pool- two years running! Then the mysteries: a photograph of a Russian nuclear submarine. Presumably the crew all came climbing for a spot of fresh air.
The Battle of Wounded Knee
- 5 May 07, 07:51 AM
It's a strange thing, how your own memory can mislead you into doing some fairly stupid things. This happened to me over the last few days, as I have come down from Everest Base Camp to Lukla, with the intention of joining a trek on the way back up.
The plan was to get from Base Camp to Lukla in two days. It's a walk of about 30 miles, up and down hills on quite rough paths, so I suppose I should have known I was asking for trouble.
Setting off from Base Camp, though, I felt a degree of invincibility. I'd been acclimatising for a month and felt good; and after all, the journey was mostly downhill. My pack was also fairly light, because my camera and much of the other gear was being carried by Pasang, one of our Sherpas.
We reached Pheriche for lunch, a journey on which we had taken three days on the way up. Already, I was noticing my legs were beginning to hurt, my knees and thighs in particular, from the incessant stomping down steep slopes.
By 4.30 we had stopped for the night at Deboche; we were both tired and didn't think it sensible to go any further that day. My invincibility was slipping away rather, but I was confident we wouldn't have any problems getting to Lukla the next day. Hmmm.
The following day we set off at 8.30 and, three hours later, made it to Namche Bazaar. Although it was only 11.30 we stopped there for lunch, not least to chat to the Namche lab team, whom I hadn't seen for a few weeks. Also, the remaining distance to Lukla had been a mere two days' trek on the way in. In my super-acclimatised form I was sure it was only a hop and a skip that afternoon, and we would be in Lukla by early evening. That was where my memory sadly let me down.
I completely misjudged how far we still had to go, and how hard it would be. My knees were really giving me trouble, and even Pasang's leg was hurting. We had to stop periodically to sit down.
By about 6pm we had still only reached the bottom of Lukla hill. Coming down it on the very first trekking day it had seemed simple enough. Now Pasang estimated we were still two hours from our destination.
Climbing the hill I began to notice that my left knee didn't really hurt any more, but my right knee was really playing up. I reasoned it was unlikely my left leg had suddenly got better, and more likely that my right had got worse and was hogging all the attention. That didn't seem good.
It also got darker as we climbed, until we had to put on head torches. The distance to Lukla began to seem unfeasibly long to me. I couldn't believe it had been this far on the way out. I even began to wonder whether Pasang had mistakenly gone the wrong way, and were were fruitlessly climbing some unknown Himalayan peak in the darkness.
Of course, I should have had more faith, and we ultimately arrived in Lukla just before 8pm. We found a nice guest house and ordered beers.
The next morning I was to meet the trekkers, arriving from Kathmandu at about 7am. I got up and got the camera ready, but walking the short distance from the guest house to the airstrip proved excruciating. My right knee stabbed with pain whenever I walked down hill. It was fairly obvious I wouldn't be able to walk that day.
So now, three days later, I'm still in Lukla, waiting for the next trek and hoping my knee recovers in time. I think that, although I was well acclimatised to low oxygen, my time at Base Camp also wasted some of my muscles, so I wasn't as invincible as I'd thought.
Death on Everest
- 1 May 07, 08:10 AM
Last Thursday a man was killed. One of the Sherpas, he was approaching the foot of the Lhotse Face when he was hit by a block of ice falling from the seracs a mile above.
People are killed here every year- eleven died last season- but it is still a shocking event which affects everyone in camp. Our Sherpas will retrieve the body and stretcher it down to the valley.
I have seen a lot of death in the mountains. My uncle was killed on Mount Blanc and so I know how it devastates families. The woman with whom I stood on the summit of Everest in 1993 was killed a couple of years later, and another friend hung off the ropes of the Hillary Step for 18 months until someone had the kindness to cut his body down. How can we possibly justify these costs? Hemmingway said “There are only three true sports: motor racing, bull-fighting and mountaineering. All the rest are merely games.” He meant that the risk of death validated the activity, but I don’t subscribe to his macho philosophy. I think that we should admit that this is a selfish sport and make life decisions accordingly- such as whether to have children or not.
The pity is that it is usually the Sherpas who are the victims. In the first great accident on Mount Everest in 1922 seven Sherpas died in an avalanche. My relative Howard Somervell who was climbing with them wrote in agony “Why oh why couldn’t some of we Britishers have died?” His question was answered two years later when his friend George Mallory disappeared high up on the North Ridge with climbing companion Sandy Irvine. The consequences were severe. Ruth Mallory was left with three young children and wrote to Winthrop-Young a cry which seems to sum up the contingent nature of climbing: “Why did it happen? It so easily might not have done!”
The Irvine family left a night-light burning in the porch for years after Sandy’s death in the hope that he might come home- a fact I find unutterably sad.
Year after year more Sherpas and more clients die. If this mountain was in Europe it would have been closed down. But still we come, and still we expect to get away with it.
Why do we do it? When I look up from this page and gaze at the mountains surrounding me I see the beauty of this place and feel the joy of climbing so high. That’s why.
But someone’s father has died.
Comments
- 30 Apr 07, 06:30 AM
Dear all
I am sorry that up until now you haven't been able to post comments on this blog, but that has all changed now. I have finally worked out how to enable comments from Mount Everest so please feel free to respond to our blogs, ask questions, etc. We'll do our best to answer.
Rob
Western Cwm Conveniences
- 30 Apr 07, 06:25 AM
To continue the toilet theme, people always ask me “where do you go to the toilet on Mount Everest?” well the answer is simple. If you want to have pee you do it into a crevasse, for anything more solid you have to crouch over a pile of rocks kindly placed there by a Sherpa. As you squat there a little human ant you gaze from your feet right up to the ice heights of Mount Everest and Mount Lhotse, truly from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Base Camp Tour
- 29 Apr 07, 10:26 AM
I thought I’d put together a little tour of the essential side of Base Camp life (yes including how to pooh) so here it goes:
Welcome to Caudwell Extreme Everest’s section of Base Camp. Behind me is the centre of our area, with the 大象传媒 tent (red) in the background and the lab (green) a little further behind. Circling this area we have all the accommodation tents split into nice homely areas like Bolder Alley and ‘The Ghetto’ (where I live). There are normally about 40 of us staying here plus about another 35 Sherpas, so we’re not a small outfit.
This is my tent, my home from home. As I said before I live in the ‘Ghetto’ and am surrounded by many of the climbing team, with Graham and Dave perched at the top of the slope above me. I have a river side pitch which is nice in the afternoon but not so good at night as all of Base Camp seems to trudge up it on the way to the Ice Fall at 4am. Still I get to stay in my nice warm sleeping bag whilst they brave the cold and the dangers of a moving waterfall of ice.
Living for three months in a tent requires an element of routine. So every night after dinner I fill my water bottle with hot water and stick it in my sleeping bag to warm it up. I have stuff stacks for different kinds of clothes, underwear, t-shirts, etc. But there is also the trial of washing – as you will see from other blogs this can be a struggle. I have a new washing line system that finally dries rather than freezes my clothes – the secret is hanging it inside the tent!
Now the question you have all been asking – how do you go to the loo on Everest? Well the answer is separately. To have a Pee the boys have a little latrine with a lovely view of the Ice Fall. The girls have a tent to hide their modesty.
But poohs have to be done separately – no peeing and poohing at the same time. For this task we have a delightful barrel, complete with toilet seat. Not the most pleasant place in the world but spare a thought for the guy that has to carry this lot down the hill. At the end of the expedition our excrement is weighted to make sure teams don’t dump it and pollute the area. Nasty.
Finally we get to the place we spend most of our time (well when we’re not all working). The Mess tent. Here we eat, drink and watch movies. It’s big enough to seat 40, just, and get freezing at night. We all sit in here, dress in all the warm clothes we have and watch movies when the sun goes down. In the morning it rains inside as the frozen condensation melts off the ceiling – a novel breakfast experience. This prompted the invention of the 大象传媒 Breakfast Terrace, situated just outside it is a lovely spot to have breakfast in the sun free from precipitation.
And that is the end of our tour.
Feeding Time
- 29 Apr 07, 05:53 AM
Now the climbers are up the mountain Base Camp has become a noticeably quieter place. Instead of the manic meals with 40 or so people squeezed around a long table in dark tent our group has dropped down to about 20.
The chef does the most amazing job cooking for all these people. The kitchen is set up under, basically some raised tarpaulin, with all the cooking on pressurised butane stoves. So food for 40 people comes out here, plus all the drinking water, and any hot water for clothes or people washing. But the meals we do get are pretty bizarre. All the constituent parts are rather nice but the combination is odd. A usual evening meal is spaghetti with potatoes and rice and peanut sauce. Those on the Atkins diet would do well to avoid coming to the Khumbu!
So it is not that surprising that after being here for about 3 weeks now and the most popular conversations (well the most popular I can write about) is food we’ll have when we get home. My dream – a roast chicken with roast potatoes, peas and ratatouille.
Camp 1 to Camp 2
- 29 Apr 07, 05:48 AM
As you climb Everest so life in each of the camps becomes more unpleasant and extreme. Last night Dave Rasmussen the cameraman just could not sleep at all and tossed and turned and had to listen to me snoring all night.
We left camp one early to miss the incredible heat of the Western Cwm, but perhaps left too early, the temperature was -20 degrees Centigrade. My fingers were slightly damaged by frost bite on the summit in 1993 and I just couldn’t get them warm and indeed I couldn’t feel them for the first two hours of climbing.
As we climb up the snowy valley we use three main devices clipped to our climbing harness. There is an abseiling device, a figure of eight in aluminium, with which we slide down ropes. Then there is a Jumar, a ratchet device which we climb up ropes. Finally there is a snap link Karabiner which we slide along ropes as we jump across crevasses. If the ice fall collapses frankly this would only be useful to find our bodies.
The sun hit us at 8am and the temperature rocketed and we were soon toiling along in immense heat. The Western Cwm is like huge parabolic reflector and the sun just bakes you even though the air temperature might still be below zero. We got to the camp at last and collapsed into the Mess tent. In here the temperature climbed to +35 degrees Centigrade, a range of 55 degrees wearing the same clothing.
Poor Dave suffered another sleepless night, we have to stay here over a week filming the scientific experiments so I hope he settles in soon. After that we climb the steep and icy Lhotse face to the hell of Camp 3, then up to the South Col for 2 nights at Camp 4. At 7900 meters this isn’t the best place to go camping but it is where the science is happening.
Washing
- 27 Apr 07, 11:15 AM
One of the major parts of Base Camp routine is washing. Now this isn’t something that happens every day (you might not be surprised at this). So the game goes like this, daily washing of oneself is of the wet wipe variety. But the full body wash has to be timed carefully. You need to find a warm part of the day when you can get hot water. This is tricky as a poor Sherpa go down to the glacier, break the ice, fill a barrel with water and haul it up to the kitchen where it is heated on a Butane stove. Once water is successfully obtained it is down to a little ‘shower tent’ where you poor jugs of the stuff over you as quickly as possible, scrub with a bit of soap and then dry off before a cloud covers the sun and the temperature drops.
We’re all into recycling up here so the remaining water is ideal for washing clothes. This is another reason to be careful of your timings. Clothes washing is easy enough, clothes drying is the challenge. Although in the sun the temperature raises to over 20 degrees somehow every time I have washed my clothes they have frozen solid. This isn’t too much of a tragedy if they are mostly dry, so getting the washing done early is essential. So as long as my frozen solid pants are mostly dry all I do is each night stick them in my sleeping bag with me at night and then hey presto in the morning you have clean, dry and most importantly warm underwear.
The Ice Fall
- 21 Apr 07, 06:57 AM
In the 21 years I’ve been coming to Mount Everest I’ve never seen the mountain looking so..interesting. The reason is the notorious Icefall. In the 1950 reconnaissance expedition Bill Tilman pronounced this obstacle unjustifiably dangerous, but since then thousands of ascents have been made through it, and this year we continue. It’s the only way up the mountain from the Nepali side. Two days ago the climbing team climbed through the Icefall to spend a night at Camp 1 and so we were able to reacquaint ourselves with this great natural feature.
The fact is that it has changed. The Icefall is a great frozen river pouring over a cliff. In the past it seemed to break off in great slices which were relatively easy to climb. Now, perhaps due to less precipitation, it seems to have collapsed in on itself so that the breakpoint occurs further up the valley and the great slices of ice seem to have fragmented.
As a climb it is full of interest. You start from your tent at Base Camp and put your crampons on as soon as the bare ice starts. Crampons are sharp steel points on a frame which clamp to your boots. Then, puffing hard in the thin air, you start climbing up and down the frozen waves of ice. You skirt round little ponds and haul yourself up icy crests. Soon you are hopping over crevasses in the ice, then you will encounter your first ladders. Balancing over three ladders tied together across a bottomless crevasse is a nerve-wracking experience. Then the fixed ropes start. These are woven up the Icefall by a group of brave Sherpas called the Ice Doctors. They are thin white ropes attached to the ice by stakes and ice screws, and the idea is to clip yourself in as a sort of extreme stair-rail. If you fall off the ladder they might just hold you. After the three ladders there is a collapsed section of ice called Popcorn Alley, because the metre-wide blocks do look like a vast popcorn spillage down some giant staircase. It is very hard to find something solid to stand on in here. After this is The Hammer, a 50-tonne beam of cracked ice bridged across the route. As you try to rush under this you try not to think that one day soon it is going to fall. Unfortunately some joker has put a knot in the fixed rope right under the Hammer so you come to a twanging halt and have to unclip.
After this comes Happy Valley, a collapsed section of such terrifying insecurity you only dare whisper to your companion for fear of dislodging the tottering blocks around you. Some are extraordinarily like a block of ice cream, except that they are the size of a detached house. Other parts of the ice are exactly like a Glacier Mint: clear, hard and transparent.
Climbing as hard as we could in air that contained only half the normal amount of oxygen we eventually came up to the Great Slices: the top of the Icefall. Here we relaxed a bit, but Camp 1 was still hours away. Base Camp radioed a warning of bad weather so we pulled extra clothes on and climbed up into a snowstorm.
As we got out of the Icefall the terrain flattened out and we entered the Western Cwm, the huge valley under the peak of Everest. As we trudged along in the whirling snow I thought about the history of this place. It was named by George Mallory, the great pioneer climber of this mountain, whose body my expedition found high on the North face in 1999. Not for the first time I wondered whether he had summitted before he died: a mystery I have been trying to solve for a lifetime. Then I thought about my brother Denys who is sailing around the Isle of Skye this week. I wished I was with him.
Eventually ten tents loomed through the mist and we threw our gear into one of them. We dragged food out of the store tent and started melting ice to drink. One by one the rest of the climbing team came in to camp after us.
After the worst night for years (the mats were hard and my sleeping bag soaked), we descended back to Base Camp. Running as fast as we could we got down in two and a half hours- half the time it took to come up. The Icefall is not a place to linger.
Graham Hoyland was the 15th Briton to climb Mount Everest and is the high altitude director on the 大象传媒 2 Horizon production.
High Tech Everest
- 19 Apr 07, 07:56 AM
It is a marvel of modern technology, I am currently sitting in a tent in Base Camp with two monitors in front of me beaming pictures back from the helmet of Mike Grocott nearly a vertical kilometre above. The images are perfect and offer a rather eerie armchair view of someone climbing a mountain -or in this case coming down.
Yesterday the climbing team set off through the vicious Khumbu Ice Fall to stay their first night at Camp 1. The climb took most of them about 8 hours, some even longer, Pasang one of the Sherpas can do the same journey in just 3 hours! On the way up we sat and watch and as I do now on the way down. The landscape is a bewildering mix of ice boulders the size of houses, deep crevasses crossed by rickety ladders and smooth open snow plains. Amazing scenery, but the most dangerous part of Everest on the south side, 3 were killed here last year.
But our technological advances don’t stop at helmet cameras, yesterday we also successfully tested a live link to London Television Centre, and tomorrow we’ll set up so Mike Grocott can be interviewed live at Everest Base Camp from a nice air conditioned studio in west London. It’s a miracle, if it works that is.
PS. A special mention of Nick Bonner the amazing man who invented our head camera system, nice one mate.
Home from Home
- 8 Apr 07, 05:53 AM
Well, here we are again at Everest base camp: home from home. I’ve now spent nearly two years of my life living on this mountain in the course of 8 expeditions, and I’d like to give a flavour of what it’s like.
For a start it’s a stunning location; we are surrounded by the world’s highest mountains, and just above camp the infamous Icefall tumbles its way down from the upper slopes of Everest. This vast ice-stream pours over a 600 metre cliff and its jumbled maze of tottering ice blocks and yawning crevasses is threatened by avalanches from the mountain slopes either side. When the Icefall reaches the valley bottom it becomes the Khumbu glacier, and that’s where we are camped.
My tent is the size and shape of a VW Beetle, and it is bright orange. It is home for the next two months, and is pitched on pure ice. Inside I have thick mat between me and the glacier, and there is a double down sleeping bag, which I will use up the mountain. Otherwise all I have is some clothes, a few books and some climbing gear in two plastic barrels. I have an ice axe, a harness and a few bits of hardware to attach me to the mountain.
During the night the slowly flowing ice cracks and groans its way downhill. If you’ve ever broken a pane of glass by standing on it you’ll know exactly what this sounds like. Last night the temperature inside the tent dropped to minus 12 degrees C, and both the water bottle and pee bottle froze solid. The pee bottle is vital because you really don’t want to get out of your bag in these temperatures during the night, particularly high up.
In the morning the Sherpas arrive with Bed Tea, a welcome hangover from the British Raj. As I sip my tea I feel rather sorry for our scientific colleagues who aren’t allowed any before their early morning tests. When the sun hits the tent the frozen condensation from my night’s breath melts and it starts to snow. Very soon, though, the temperature shoots up to around 30 degrees C and it is impossible to stay inside. You can see these extremes of temperature on the washing line outside; at one end is a frozen sock in shadow, and at the other end is its companion steaming in the sun. Further up the mountain, above the Icefall, camp life becomes even more extreme. I’ll report from there soon.
Arrival in Base Camp
- 8 Apr 07, 05:41 AM
This is our third day at Base Camp. With setting up tents and camera gear I’ve only just got round to writing a blog entry. It’s also been extremely difficult to muster much energy in the last couple of days. We’re now at 5300m, and just walking from A to B is a bit of an effort.
I’m starting to acclimatise now, and things are becoming easier, but when we arrived it was about all I could do to make it into camp and have a cup of tea. The night before I hadn’t slept particularly well, which is apparently a normal side effect of altitude. We then walked for about three hours to Base Camp.
We’d been filming the team arriving just outside camp, and I ended up carrying two backpacks the remaining 500m or so. It more or less wiped me out. How the Sherpas, who carry most of the expedition equipment, do it, I have no idea.
We’re now settling in to life at Base Camp, and the Xtreme Everest team has got the science under way. It’s a pretty hostile environment here. It got down to -12C last night, and everything freezes. As you breathe out at night, the water vapour freezes on your sleeping bag and inside your tent. In the morning most of my stuff ends up covered in ice. We’ve got a couple of months living here. Should be fun!
Life on Ice
- 7 Apr 07, 12:58 PM
Everest Base Camp is set on top of a glacier, it is a bizarre landscape of what appear to be gravel hills and valleys. My tent sits on top of a small gravel ridge over looking the Khumbu Ice Fall. Getting from my tent to the mess tent, or the loo, or anywhere for that matter is a dicey obstacle course across loose shale, large boulders and ice – it will be a miracle if I survive the next two months without spraining an ankle.
But it is at night that I am most reminded we’re on a river of ice. Under my tent is a thin layer of gravel and then a thick moving stream of ice. Lying in my sleeping bag (the aforementioned wonderfully warm sleeping bag) I hear the ice creak and crack all night long. Sometimes it is a deep crack in the distance, other times I can feel it right under my back.
But far more disturbing than this is sound of avalanches. It starts with a deep rumble and then the unmistakeable crash of the snow and ice hurtling downwards, the trouble is in the pitch black of my tent there is no way to know if it is miles away or about to engulf the lot of us. The first time I heard it I leapt up, grabbed a torch and rolled into a ball. I felt rather foolish when the rumble stopped and the tent was still intact.
Chortens
- 3 Apr 07, 02:03 PM
Today we’ve left the bleak valley that Pheriche sat in and climbed higher to an even bleaker spot. We are now 4900m above sea level in an outpost called Lobuche. Lobuche is set in a wide valley carved by a glacier that falls of the slopes of Everest itself. This rocky desert does have charm though our trek today took us steeply up to a plateau marked with memorials to Sherpas who’ve lost their lives on Everest.
There are over 60 little towers of rock called Chortens, set on the ridge of a plateau they are a beautiful and somewhat spooky sight. They also stand at one of the most spectacular views we’ve seen yet with the high peak of Ama Dablan raising directly behind them.
Today we’ve been doing our best to capture this environment on camera. It is a frustrating challenge it seems almost impossible to get the scale of the landscape we’re in across for television. There are one or two types of shots that I think really give an idea of what it is really like and today we were after one in particular. It is a shot of the Xtreme Everest team coming over the horizon with a peak looming in the background. It took us all day to find a spot that would work but I think in the end we managed it.
Tomorrow it’s onwards and upwards – Everest is so close now. I can’t wait to get to Base Camp and set up home for the next 2 months.
Singing our way up the mountain
- 28 Mar 07, 10:00 AM
Today was a marvellous day, we got a real bit of filming under our belts. Dave our cameraman and I scrambled up the steep slopes of the hills that surround Namche to find a great vantage point to film some of the Xtreme Everest 
team trekking.
The vistas here are amazing, with the valley just rolling on for miles. Along this valley the main ‘road’ to Everest winds, it consists of a dirt path that clings to the edge of the mountainside often dropping sharply away to the valley floor about 1400 feet below. This thoroughfare is populated by Yak trains and porters carrying loads that make my eyes water and then the odd western trekker complete with ski stick like trekking poles. On Friday we’ll set out along this very road on the next leg of our trek to Everest.
Evening entertainment was provided by the Xtreme Everest song book. This delightful invention, along with a guitar bought in Kathmandu by Nigel Hart, allowed all thirty of us to break out in full chorus. Most popular number was Bohemian Rhapsody of course, but I don’t know if it was the rarefied air or a general lack of talent but we were very untuneful. Just a small slice of life from a large scale expedition.
Namche Bazaar
- 27 Mar 07, 01:52 PM
We’ve now been in Namche Bazaar for a couple of days. We’ve been doing a bit of filming, getting some shots of the incredible scenery. We’ve also been hacking (hiking?) up and down various hillsides in an effort to acclimatise to the altitude.
In between, we’ve had a chance to wander around Namche. It’s a Sherpa trading village, and the last place before Base Camp where we can stock up on vitals such as sun cream and, in Rob’s case, a cowboy hat to protect against the sun.
Every now and then we come across a Stupa, which is a Buddhist shrine. You have to go round these clockwise, which unfortunately in some cases means going quite a long way round.
Yesterday, through the middle of this, a line of about 20 porters came up the hill. In pairs they were carrying huge metal boxes on poles. Inside was Xtreme Everest’s consignment of liquid nitrogen, which will be used to freeze blood samples on Everest. It is too dangerous to fly it into Lukla, so it was carried on foot from a place called Jiri, seven day’s walk away.
Today, we did some time-lapse filming of the surroundings. Both days so far, cloud has rolled in and engulfed the village at about 4pm. We set up a camera to try to capture it. In the event, this meant standing outside in the middle of a cloud trying to persuade local children not to pull faces into the lens.
Incidentally, I saw a sign on the wall of a police hut the other day, which read: “Lost the time, cannot be resigned.” I’ve no idea what it means, but it sounds good so it has now become our production motto.
Healthy Times in Namche
- 26 Mar 07, 01:39 PM
For all those concerned about my acclimatisation today a miracle has happened. I feel like a million dollars, no fatigue, no slow walking. I seem to be able to charge about town without the limitations of yesterday’s dawdle. The human body is a miraculous thing.
Having said that I haven’t used my new found energy that well today, we were planning a walk but by the time we got around to going at 3pm thick clouds had engulfed the hotel we’re staying in and the surrounding area. Will learn our lesson for tomorrow.
The Namche Hill
- 25 Mar 07, 03:06 PM
Today was our first real experience of trekking at altitude. It started early; well for me it started throughout the night when I was regularly awoken by rats scurrying along the floor boards! At 6am the porters who carry our bags up the trail were waking each other up by banging on the doors very loudly which brought out the whole tea house. So after a number of cups of tea (there are three marvellous kinds of tea in the Himalayas: black tea, which is like black tea at home; milk tea, which is very sweet and very milking and lemon tea, which is very sweet clear tea) we started our trek.
Filming Yaks on the trek:
Today's route looked very short on the map. It involved a short hike down hill into a gorge and then up to Namche Bazaar, but this up-part is 700m vertically in less than a mile. For those like me who don't know what that means I can now tell you a very very steep and long climb. The first part of this trek was breathtaking, we filmed some of the group as they walked deep into the valley, crossing suspension bridge after suspension bridge. The sun was out and gave most of the enormous peaks around us a beautiful hazy look. Our filming meant we were some way behind the group when we reached the 'Namche Hill'.
The big bonus for today was our first view of Everest. Here it is with a plump of snow being blown off summit:
Winding our way up this steep path I became aware for the first time how the lack of oxygen affects my body. The path from bottom to top of the 'hill' is a bit like a giant winding staircase, I started off at a moderate pace but after only a few minutes I realised something was wrong. Although not walking particularly fast I was breathing really hard and I could feel my heart pumping in my ears. My legs felt fine but I was experiencing a more general body fatigue as if I was a long way through a marathon. When I stopped to catch my breath I quickly felt much better and set off again but after only ten steps was shattered. The answer turned out to be simple: I slowed down and effectively dawdled up the hill. There seemed to be a very clear threshold between walking comfortably and really exerting myself. Slow and steady they say; today I know what they mean.
Ben on the other hand seemed totally unaffected. He walked up at a normal pace, stopping to wait for me or take photos. So first signs suggest that at least one of us will cope with the altitude well.
We arrived at Namche Bazaar at about 1.30, the sun was hot and I don't think I'd have liked to walk much further. Namche is an extrodinary place; it is a small town perched on a steep slope. The town unfolds along winding terraces that climb steeply up the hill. Everywhere you look you are greeted with the view across the valley to the most enormous mountain that seems to tower over this place. Clouds rush in and out of the valley sometimes engulfing the town, sometimes swirling on the crests of the surrounding peaks.
A very restorative vegetable chow-mein and sweet tea has put the walk behind me. Now at last I feel we're in a landscape like no other.
Flight to Lukla
- 24 Mar 07, 10:03 AM
The trip begins today. After three wake up calls, bizarre, we were bused back to Kathmandu airport. The security at the terminal was interesting. I was asked if I had a knife or lighter on me and then just let through (incidentally I don't know why they even bothered to ask this as there are axes on all the planes!). There was then a customary wait before we boarded our winged chariot. This twin engine plane was operated by Yeti Airways which gave me a chuckle. The plane was pretty small, holding 18 people but I found it very romantic, sort of like being in a Humphrey Bogart movie.
The flight was 50 mins and traced the Himalayan ridge before turning sharply to fly straight at it. Lukla airstrip is perched on a hill-side with a cliff wall at one end and a cliff drop at the other. Sitting in the front seat I got a pilot's eye view as we came in, the runway growing as we approached but looking perilously short. A text book landing prompted us all into spontaneous applause, not my usual response but well deserved in this case. Stepping off the plane we were finally in the Himalayas.
The Xtreme Everest team gathered over a cup of tea and then we started our trek. From Lukla we went downhill for about two hours stopping for lunch on the way. The landscape is grand in scale but feels like a pine wood you could find in the Rockies. We passed lots of children en route who were all delightful and seemed very pleased to see a bunch of trekkers come along.
After lunch was a shorter and steeper walk until we reached the tea house that would be our bed for the night. A large white building with innumerable rooms separated by paper thin walls. It was a bit of a maze to get to the bedroom. Mostly the group was knackered and we lay about a large communal room drinking tea. Disaster struck though because night fell and my bag failed to make it to the tea house. A very depressing problem as I have been rather excited at the prospect of trying out my new sleeping bag which is now stuck somewhere between here and Lukla. I'm off to drown my sorrows in an odd dice game called Perudo.
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