“(The) Mountains are open for this year’s autumn season,” said Mira Acharya, director of the Tourism Department in the Nepalese government. From this Thursday, permits will again be issued for 414 mountains in Nepal, including Mount Everest, with 75 mountains remaining closed, she said. On 13 March, the government had announced that it would no…
It looked like an attempt to cut the Gordian knot. Last week, the government in Kathmandu announced that flights to Nepal and in the country would be resumed from 17 August. Trekking tours and expeditions will then also be permitted again – subject to safety precautions. But many question marks remain. How many flights will…
“I don’t have high hopes for the fall season,” Ang Dorjee Sherpa tells me. “I think only a few trekking tourists will show up. But they are welcome, no problem.” The 51-year-old owns the “AD Friendship Lodge” in Namche Bazaar, the main village of the Khumbu, the region around Mount Everest. “Five days ago, I…
Corona necessity is the mother of invention. “These days, many climbers are free, so we can use good and experienced climbers to find the route,” Maya Sherpa writes to me. The 42-year-old mountaineer means a new route on the Nepalese south side of the eight-thousander Cho Oyu. One that is suitable not only for top…
The adventure gap. This is what the black journalist and author James Edward Mills calls the phenomenon that black mountaineers and climbers are still the exception in the adventure scene. “It’s not a question of whether or not African-Americans can climb high mountains,” Mills wrote in “National Geographic” magazine: “What matters is as group we…
She almost forgot the summit picture. When Sophia Danenberg reached the summit of Mount Everest together with the brothers Panuru and Mingma Chhiring Sherpa at 7 a.m. on 19 May 2006, they were alone on the top at 8,850 meters. It was windy, all the surrounding mountains were peeking up from the clouds, Sophia recently…
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) once wrote in his famous “Tractatus“. To put it simply: how we say or write something is certainly significant, because language creates reality. In my opinion, this should be taken into account in the discussion about discriminatory names…
He’s back to his passion. In the northwest Italian region of Piedmont and in the Dolomites Carlalberto, called “Cala”, Cimenti, rides his mountain bike again, climbs mountains and flies downhill with his paraglider. In March, the 45-year-old – as reported – was tested positive for the coronavirus. The doctors diagnosed Cimenti with pneumonia, but sent…
The corona crisis is widening the gap between what could be and what actually is. In theory, the mountaineering season in the Karakoram would be in full swing right now. Earlier this year, 25 expedition teams had applied for permits for Pakistan’s five eight-thousanders and other mountains in the north of the country. No one…
