The Next Everest Summits Today?

There is a summit bid currently underway in what could be difficult conditions.

But first a small surprise on yesterday’s summits. Previous reports emphatically said no western climbers were to be allowed to join the Sherpa rope fixing team, capsule however, it seems that western guides were exempted.

Himex guide, Adrian Ballinger joined Himex Sherpas Dorje Sherpa and Ang Rita Sherpa on the rope fixing team. The team included Sherpas named yesterday from IMG and three from AAI, who’s names have not been posted. So we have 10 summits this far for 2010.

Now that the route is fixed on the south side, we can expect to see various climbers go for the top. A few climbers were anxious to to start their summit bids immediately. Domnhall O’Doughartaigh, an independent climber, and Lucille de Beaudrap from Tim Rippel’s Peak Freaks team have declared their intentions for summits on May 7th and are currently at the South Col.

They are looking at threading the weather window before high winds are forecasted to hit at week’s end. This is an incredibly dangerous gamble in that any issue that results in a delay or potential rescue could mean life or death for both climbers and potential rescuers.

Direct from Tim yesterday on his site:

If all goes well for her she would summit the morning of May 7 and needs to get back down quickly as there are high winds starting to pick up on the 8th.The strongest winds are expected to hit on the 10th thru till the 13th. We are still looking at a window around the 15th to 18th for the rest of the team.” – Tim

And from Lucille de Beaudrap herself a few hours ago:

Namaste everybody from the South Col. or Camp 4. We’ve been here for a few hours. We are hydrating, eating and resting on some oxygen. You hear a little bit of coughing and stuff. Hopefully we’ll be leaving in a couple of hours, which would make it 7:00 our time, and heading up for the summit. We had a good time, coming here. Everything went well. I was on oxygen the whole way, so was Domhnall, and our two sherpas are here with us as well taking good care of us. So hopefully the next call will be from the summit if everything goes well. The forecast is still for some pretty nasty weather, but hopefully it’s going to hold off until after we are down past Camp 3. So we’ll talk to you in a little bit and follow the SPOT and thanks to everyone for listening. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

You can follow their summit bid via SPOT on the Peak Freaks site. It can also be found on the SPOT page, but it loads very slowly.

On the north, the situation is quite different. The weather continues to play havoc with plans. The 7 Summits Club and Jordan Romero and others are back at the Chinese Base Camp. Alex Abramov reports:

In recent days, there was a peak of bad weather. In the morning, on May 5, as was predicted by forecast, there was heavy snowfall. We, four guides, Alexander Abramov, Nikolay Cherny, Sergey Larin, Noel Hanna, after consultation, decided to turn the whole team down from ABC to the Base Camp. Moreover, the forecast for today and tomorrow promises to bad weather and the forecast is justified.

Snow falls in the base camp too. We must wait till end of this attack of monsoon. Thus, the process of acclimatization is complete. We decided to organize rest for the team until May 9 holiday, and then plan the assault on Mount Everest.

We have had no recent updates from Bill Burke who was leaving the low camps for his summit push. Bill is attempting a double summit so he was pushing hard to summit from the north early then move to the south. By the way, Bill is 68.

For a good overview of climbing on the north, Geordie Stewart gets the Blog of the Day with his report. Oh, by the way, happy birthday Geordie! He just turned 21! I guess he feels old compared to 13 year-old Jordan Romero! From Geordie’s post:

Very little occupies more air time amongst expedition members than that of food. At Camp 1 we were onto freeze dried rations – I am unsure if that was a step up from the Spam we had at BC & ABC or not – and the lifestyle was challenging. At that altitude (7000m+), even the most menial task is lung bursting – one comes back from going to the loo completely exhausted for example – and one’s appetite is shot. It is necessary to boil snow to make water and when one’s freeze dried meal is ready, the thought of actually consuming it is the last thing on ones mind.

As I have previously mentioned the search for Sandy Irvine and the infamous 1924 camera might be underway again this season. This has become an annual event with most searches conducted under a tight veil of secrecy. The question everyone is trying to answer is did Mallory and Irvine summit Everest in 1924?

Well, Jake Norton is writing a multi-part series on his site about the mystery. Jake is strongly qualified to postulate his views – he was on several searches and part of the team that found George Mallory’s body in 1999. This is a must read series for anyone interested in Everest. Jake’s writing is captivating and he tells us today his opinion on if they made the summit and he said that they … well visit his blog to find out!

Climb On!

Alan