Icefall Woes

The Khumbu Icefall is quite the busy place these days. Teams are starting as early as 3:00AM to avoid the heat of the day and thus the melting and instability of the ice. But some reports are showing an extra long time this year. Peak Freaks said the normal 5 hour first trip took some of their members 10.

Tim Rippel commented that there were more ladders and congestion with climbers and Sherpas ferrying gear to the high camps. Adventure Consultants also commented on the speed with their reported 7 hours. AAI came in at 9 hours. Climbing times are not a competition but rather a measure of how your body is adjusting to the altitude. Look for these Icefall climb times to be cut in half when they leave for the summit a month from now.

I wrote yesterday about removing trash from Everest. Well another effort is to prevent the trash from being there in the first place, especially human waste. Denali climbers know about the Clean Mountain Can (CMC). Rainer climbers get familiar with the “blue bag”. All of these are systems to have climbers carry their solid waste down from the mountain.

On Everest there has never been such a system. So climbers have been taking care of business for years by straddling over a crevasse and hoping for good aim. This year, ambulance several expeditions are encouraging the use of blue bags as reported by Tim Rippel of Peak Freaks:

As many of you know or may have guessed, we have been pushing for climbers to stop pooping and dumping on the mountain for quite a few years now. Thanks to Internet and exposure, we are happy to say that the teams have all agreed to follow our lead. Dawa Stevens from the Asian Trekking Eco Expedition clean-up did show up with poo bags this year. But unfortunately for some they didn’t get the biodegradable part that we urged them to research. We are putting them in touch with our supplier of the biodegradable ones. They have to be these!!!

The ones in the foil insulated bags and plastics with chemicals is not environmentally acceptable. We are happy to see that everyone agreed. I might add there were a few that seemed to grumble a bit, but by the end of the meeting they too agreed. There will be policing in this regard, in an effort to put an end to brown snow. Pictures will be taken and teams will be shamed. FINALLY!!! this is the new way to climb in the Himalayas- happy 🙂

The Fins had a more colorful way of putting it:

Everybody agreed to bring down their solid leavings. Acting straight away, we got a bunch of shit packs from Mr. Dawa of Asian Trekking. Awhile we thought how to realize this in practice and decided that in these very warm temperatures the one and only option is to carry fresh shit down by the pack tied and hanging outside the backpack. Quite amusing is also that we will stay at camp two 4-5 days and when coming down we’ll look like Christmas trees full of hanging shit packs everywhere.

No matter how you describe it, this is a good change given the crowds on the world’s highest mountain. Unfortunately, there is no such effort on the north side.

Speaking of the north, 7 Summits Club arrived and made this post about the tone at EBC-North:

So what is base camp like to live in? Well, currently there are 100 people waiting and acclimatising. There is a LOT of gossip going around. The big talk this year is of the boy who wants to climb Everest. Some think it is a publicity stunt, some who know the family think it is pressure from the parents to pick up where they left off, and some really dont give a damn. In any case this is the story on the north side.

Clearly, Jordan is the main media story for Everest 2010 and evokes emotional extremes. They are there so here is to safe climbing for everyone.

Once again, Tim Rippel keeps us informed on the route. Thanks Tim and Becky for your excellent dispatches. In addition to his Icefall comments, he notes that they expect the route to the summit to be in by May 10th. No doubt this will spur talk of an “early summit”.

Last year the first summits were on May 5 by the Sherpa team (and David Tait) then May 18th climbers finally summited after weather delays.

As before the route seems to be sticking together pretty good. Thankfully the serac that was hanging off the west shoulder last year which claimed a life when it came down is not a problem this year as it is cleaned off now. This year Nuptse is causing some visual problems. Tim said a big chunk came off Nuptse today sending dust down covering the icefall and base camp. The good thing is the debris field from this aspect of the mountain is far from the route, so this is good. It will just continue to make noise and cold smoke when things start to move. Good reminders to everyone to stay on their toes.

Finally, the Blog of the Day is from Alison Levine who tells us her balls hurt as she walks across the Icefall ladders. I’ll let you read this without further comment!

More teams are climbing to camp 2, some are returning to base camp. The highway is now open for business!

Climb On!

Alan