Oh, if only all the Everest climbers were Pinocchios! Then it would be very easy to distinguish the liars from those who tell the truth. We’d just have to watch – as with the legendary title character of Carlo Collodi’s children’s book – if their noses had become longer, and we’d have caught the culprits….
Ten mountain rescuers of the Indian-Tibetan border police have recovered seven bodies near the seven-thousander Nanda Devi in the Indian Himalayas. They were buried under a metre and a half of snow, a representative of the Indian authorities said. The search for an eighth climber will continue. As reported, the group led by the experienced…
Nirmal, called “Nims” Purja has not lost his optimism yet. “We are making progress, the project is still on and I will complete it within my seven-month goal,” the 36-year-old Nepalese posted on Twitter these days. In seven months Nims wants to have scaled all 14 eight-thousanders. In the spring season in Nepal everything went…
Little by little the expedition teams arrive in the north of Pakistan in order to tackle the country’s mountain giants this summer. According to US mountain blogger Alan Arnette, the government in Islamabad has issued almost 400 permits so far, including 164 for the Pakistani south side of K2, the second highest mountain in the…
“It’s not my goal to chase the records,” says Ngima Nuru Sherpa. “Mount Everest is my job.” This spring, the 37-year-old from the village of Tesho near Namche Bazaar, the hub of the Khumbu region, reached once more the summit of Everest: “I’m the youngest till date to have been up there for the 22nd…
“If a committee had been set up to create the world, it wouldn’t be ready today.” This realization, attributed to the Irish writer and politician George Bernhard Shaw (1856-1950), I had to think of when I read today that Nepal’s Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has ordered the formation of an Everest committee of…
Elisabeth Revol is not one of those professional climber who constantly informs the public about their plans and then share their adventures in real time. When her sponsor Valandre announced on 23 May that the 39-year-old Frenchwoman had scaled Mount Everest without bottled oxygen, hardly anyone knew that she was on the highest mountain on…
Becoming everybody’s darling is certainly not one of Lukas Furtenbach’s goals in life. The 41-year-old Austrian doesn’t mince his words when he represents his points of view. He does this offensively and is also not afraid to name names when he criticizes someone. It’s obvious that he doesn’t make only friends by this. Furtenbach polarizes….
Secret heroes. There are players on Mount Everest that everyone knows and appreciates, but hardly anyone talks about. Like the “Icefall Doctors”, those highly specialized Sherpas who year after year set up the route through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall and maintain it throughout the season. Or Maurizio Folini and Lakpa Norbu Sherpa, who fly up…
There is almost no hope to find the eight climbers alive who have been missing for days in the Indian Himalayas. Indian authorities announced that five bodies had been discovered by a rescue helicopter at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters. The bodies had been sighted in an area where a “huge avalanche” had…
