Stefan Nestler, Autor bei Adventure Mountain

16. April 202116. April 2021

Record summit day on Annapurna – with a bland aftertaste

The first summit day of the spring season on an eight-thousander in Nepal was a very successful one. By his count, 67 climbers from several teams had reached the 8,091-meter summit of Annapurna I in the west of the country today, Chhang Dawa Sherpa of the Nepali expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) let it be known on Instagram. Others reported more than 40 summit successes. Either way, it would be by far the most successful summit day ever on this mountain, which is the most dangerous of all eight-thousanders in terms of fatality rate.

15. April 202115. April 2021

Summit push on Annapurna interrupted

Actually, the first summit successes in this spring season on an eight-thousander in Nepal were expected for today, Thursday. But the push on Annapurna I ended at an altitude of about 7,400 meters. “Back at Camp 4,” Mexican Viridiana Alvarez Chavez let us know via her GPS tracker. “Thirty-five people and no one made the summit.”

The fixed ropes had run out, she added, writing that there will be another attempt to reach the highest point on Friday. This was also confirmed by the Pakistani climbers Sirbaz Khan and Abdul Joshi. They let it be known that additional material (800m rope, bottled oxygen, food and gas) was dropped by helicopter at Camp 4 at 7,300 meters.

14. April 202114. April 2021

Japanese climber abandons Manaslu expedition

For me, it was one of the first mysteries of this spring climbing season in Nepal. Who is the lone climber who has appeared for weeks as the only summit aspirant for Manaslu on the permit lists of the Ministry of Tourism in Kathmandu? The mystery has been solved. At least as far as the identity of the climber is concerned. He is the Japanese Toshihiro Yokoi. In the high-altitude mountaineering scene, he is still a blank sheet. At least there is no entry about him in the mountaineering chronicle Himalayan Database.

Yokoi set out in mid-March with a small team from the Nepalese expedition operator Asian Hiking Team to climb the 8,163-meter-high Manaslu in western Nepal. According to information from the operator, the Japanese wanted to use bottled oxygen to climb the eighth-highest mountain on earth and then – also this spring – climb Mount Everest and Lhotse.

10. April 202110. April 2021

Mount Everest: Sheikh and Sheikha

Sheikha Asma Al Thani in Everest Base Camp (in 2019)

This much is certain: finances will not be the issue for these Everest aspirants. The Gulf’s moneyed aristocracy will meet on Mount Everest this spring. In addition to Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa from the royal family of Bahrain, another member of a filthy rich ruling family from the Middle East is among the almost 250 foreign mountaineers so far with a permit for Mount Everest: Sheikha Asma Al Thani from Qatar. The 31-year-old wants to become the first woman from the Gulf emirate to scale Mount Everest.

8. April 20218. April 2021

Mountaineering and trekking season in Nepal slowly picking up speed

At least a small glimmer of hope for Nepal in times of pandemic: In March, Nepalese authorities counted around 15,000 tourists entering the Himalayan state from abroad. That was almost twice as many as in February. In the first three months of the year, a total of about 33,000 tourists arrived. That’s about a quarter of the number of foreign vacationers who entered Nepal in the first quarter of pre-corona 2019 (about 127,000).

The mountaineering season is also picking up steam following the easing of entry restrictions. The Ministry of Tourism announced yesterday that it had so far issued 343 climbing permits for a total of nine mountains, including 192 alone, distributed among 20 expedition teams, for Mount Everest. By comparison, in the record year of 2019, the ministry had issued 381 permits for the highest mountain on earth.

4. April 20214. April 2021

Happy Easter!

I wish you all and your loved ones Happy Easter – despite corona restrictions. And the “Picasso from the river Rhine” 😉 is confronting you with another easter riddle: Which mountain have I conjured onto the egg?

2. April 20212. April 2021

US singer Mike Posner wants to climb Mount Everest

Mike Posner at Concordia in Pakistan (K2 and Broad Peak in the background)

Will his next hit be called “I took a pill on Everest”? US singer Mike Posner has announced in a video (see below) that he wants to climb Mount Everest this spring. The 33-year-old let it be known that he had been preparing for his project for 18 months. The idea came to him when he crossed the USA on foot in 2019. After the death of his father, he “felt trapped under the weight of my own life,” Mike says. “I wanted to find out who I was when I wasn’t a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter.” His song “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” had made it to number one on the charts in several European countries and was nominated for Best Song of the Year at the 2017 Grammy Awards.

For six months and three days, Posner trekked 2,851 kilometers across the U.S., from the East Coast to the West Coast. Along the way, he was also bitten by a rattlesnake. “When I crossed the Rocky Mountains, I had a good idea what I wanted to do next,” says the singer: to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth. A PR stunt? No, says Jon Kedrowski, who has been training the musician and wants to accompany him to the 8,849-meter-high summit.

1. April 20211. April 2021

Marc Batard: Annapurna as the next stage before Mount Everest

Marc Batard and Pasang Nuru Sherpa — Marc Batard (l.) and Pasang Nuru Sherpa (r.)

More than 20 years after his last summit success on an eight-thousander, Marc Batard is going to give it another try. For this spring, the 69-year-old has set his sights on climbing Annapurna – via the so called “Dutch Rib” in the North Face, without bottled oxygen. Batard and his team reached the village of Tatopani yesterday on their way to the 8,091-meter Annapurna I in western Nepal.

“I am very happy to be back in an area I know well and to have the chance to present myself in good shape despite my age,” Marc writes me. Twice he tried unsuccessfully to scale Annapurna in the 1980s. Both times bad weather stopped him: in 1986 on the East Ridge at 7,100 meters, in 1989 in the South Face at 5,800 meters.

29. March 202129. March 2021

Mount Everest and Manaslu: By helicopter to high camp?

The video circulating on social networks actually leaves no room for interpretation: A helicopter lands in Camp 1 at 5,700 meters on the eight-thousander Manaslu in western Nepal. On one side of the helicopter, a backpack is unloaded, which someone picks up; on the other side, a climber gets out and is greeted by another mountaineer with a handshake.

It was said, the video was filmed last fall during the Manaslu expedition of Bahrain’s Royal Guard, which was organized by Nepalese operator Seven Summit Treks. If the dating of the video is confirmed, “heli-doping” would have been involved in the summit success of the team from Bahrain and at least one, possibly several climbers would have saved themselves the first stage from Manaslu Base Camp to Camp 1. My inquiry on this to Seven Summit Treks has remained unanswered so far.

26. March 202126. March 2021

Nepal: No quarantine for tourists – after negative test on arrival

Slowly I am dizzy from the constant back and forth of the Nepalese government regarding the quarantine of incoming tourists. Therefore I formulate it cautiously: Apparently the Ministry of Tourism now seems to have agreed on a regulation, which could possibly last for a longer time. According to this regulation, people entering Nepal – provided they have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus or have a negative PCR test that is not older than 72 hours – have to be tested immediately after arriving in Nepal.

24. March 202125. March 2021

Nepal: Still hotel quarantine for all foreign tourists

If there is one thing the Nepalese government knows how to do, it is the backward roll. Apparently, the quarantine regulations for incoming tourists will not be relaxed for the time being. After a cabinet meeting last week, officials of the Ministry of Tourism had told press representatives in Kathmandu that guests from abroad who had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus would no longer have to undergo a mandatory one-week quarantine in a hotel in Kathmandu. A negative Covid-19 test, which is not older than 72 hours, would be sufficient to be able to move freely in Nepal immediately.

23. March 202123. March 2021

Pemba Sharwa Sherpa: “Climbing with passion”

“It has been quite a long time staying home,” Pemba Sharwa Sherpa writes to me. “For a year, I couldn’t work because of the corona pandemic. It’s the same with all my friends here in Phortse. Most of all are getting ready to get back on Everest. Some have already left for Everest Base Camp to start preparing campsites.” This spring, Pemba wants to lead two Brazilians to the summit of Mount Everest.

The 29-year-old is from Phortse, 3,840 meters above sea level, the village in the Khumbu region with the highest density of Mount Everest summiteers: more than 80 of the current inhabitants have already stood on the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters. Pemba was born into an “Everest family”: his father, Lhakpa Dorje, reached the summit in 1987 and worked on a total of more than 30 eight-thousander expeditions. One of Pemba’s grandfathers supplied yaks to the 1953 expedition of Everest first ascenders Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, and the other grandfather hired out on nearly 20 expeditions.

19. March 202119. March 2021

Nepal: No more mandatory quarantine for vaccinated tourists

Visitors from abroad who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and can also present a current negative corona test will no longer have to undergo a one-week hotel quarantine in Nepal. According to the Kathmandu Post newspaper, this was decided by the Nepalese government at yesterday’s cabinet meeting. In other words, even vaccinated climbers who want to climb Mount Everest or another mountain in Nepal this spring will once again be able to decide for themselves when to head to the mountains after arriving in Kathmandu.

16. March 202116. March 2021

When to be a mountain guide in Nepal?

Nepalese south side of Everest — Nepalese south side of Mount Everest

“We feel really bad,” Vinayak Jay Malla writes to me, meaning himself and those about 60 Nepalese who, after a long training, have received an international mountain guide certificate. Despite their qualifications, they now have to apply for a mountain guide license from the Ministry of Tourism in Kathmandu, shortly before the start of the spring season on Mount Everest and the other high mountains of Nepal. Background: The government has decreed that every expedition on a mountain in Nepal must hire a mountain guide. Only those who have one of the new government licenses will be recognized. The international certificate does not automatically count as proof. Unacceptable, complains Ang Norbu Sherpa, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association (NNMGA), which issues the certificates.

11. March 202121. April 2022

Soria, Hamor, Colisabanu, Gane, Troguet: Off to Dhaulagiri!

Actually, one could almost rename Dhaulagiri, the “white mountain”: to Soriagiri, “Soria’s mountain”. For the eleventh time now (as he himself says – according to Himalayan Database it is already the twelfth time since 1998) the Spaniard Carlos Soria is trying to scale the 8,167-meter-high Dhaulagiri in western Nepal. Taken together, Carlos has spent more than a year and a half of his life on the seventh highest mountain on earth. Once, in fall 2017, Soria was almost at the top. At 8,050 meters, he had to turn back because he and his fellow climbers lost their bearings in the summit zone and took the wrong couloir.

What makes his persistence on Dhaulagiri even more unusual is Carlos’ age: he is now 82 years old. The former upholsterer, who lives in the small town of Moralzarzal near Madrid, has already summited twelve eight-thousanders – eleven of them at over 60. Only Dhaulagiri and Shishapangma are still missing from his collection. He holds the age records on K2 (65 years), Makalu (69, at that time he climbed without bottled oxygen), Gasherbrum I (70), Manaslu (71), Lhotse (72), Kangchenjunga (75) and Annapurna (77).