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.
“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.
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).
Queue on the Everest summit ridge (on 22 May 2019)
What a clumsy attempt! The government of Nepal is trying to prevent unwanted pictures and videos of Mount Everest. In a list of rules for expeditions to the world’s highest mountain – typically enough only published in Nepali so far – climbers are forbidden to use their video cameras or smartphones to record other climbers and then distribute the pictures and films via social networks.
Anyone can photograph or film themselves or their group and share it, Mira Acharya, director at Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism, specified to the Kathmandu Post newspaper, “but they will face action if they take, make and share photos of other climbers without the department’s consent.” This, Acharya said, has long been prohibited by law, but no one has complied.
A countdown is running on his homepage. With around three weeks to go, former American football player Mark Pattison will fly to Nepal to climb Mount Everest and Lhotse – with bottled oxygen. If he succeeds in reaching the highest peak on earth, the 59-year-old would be the second ex-professional of the National Football League (NFL) to complete the Seven Summits, the collection of the highest mountains on all continents. The first was Craig Hanneman in 2019, who made his living as a professional in the NFL in the 1970s.
Pattison played as a wide receiver with the NFL’s Los Angeles Raiders and New Orleans Saints in the 1980s. After his career ended, Mark became a successful businessman. Today, he is an executive of Sports Illustrated magazine and a motivational speaker. He produces his own podcast called “Finding your summit”.
Six of the Seven Summits
On Denali
Pattison found his way to mountaineering ten years ago during a personal crisis: he separated from his wife of many years, and his father died after a severe stroke. Mark set himself a new goal: to climb the Seven Summits. He started in 2013 with Kilimanjaro (Mark scaled Africa’s highest mountain a second time in 2017). This was followed by Mount Elbrus (Europe’s highest mountain) in 2014, Mount Kosciuszko (Australia) in 2015, Aconcagua (South America) in 2016, Denali (North America) in 2018 and Mount Vinson (Antarctica) in 2019. So now he wants to climb the 8,849-meter-high Mount Everest and then, as the icing on the cake, within 24 hours also the neighboring 8,516-meter-high Lhotse.
Mark, you have already scaled six of the Seven Summits, and now you are going to attempt the highest of all mountains. How do you feel about this expedition?
The starting signal for the spring climbing season on Mount Everest has been given: A total of nine members of the so-called “Icefall Doctors” team set off this week from Namche Bazaar, the main town in the Everest region, to the base camp on the Nepalese south side of the highest mountain on earth. Six Sherpas specializing in this will prepare the route through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall, over which the members of the commercial expeditions will then ascend from April.
The eight-thousander Manaslu in western Nepal remains an almost impregnable winter fortress. With the Spaniards Alex Txikon and Inaki Alvarez and their Sherpa team, the last climbers on the eighth highest mountain on earth also threw in the towel at the weekend.
“We were very close, but in the end it was not possible,” said Alex Txikon. “The weather forecasts don’t show any improvement for at least 10 days and after that we don’t know what will happen. So it’s very risky to extend the permit.” The permit from the Nepalese government was only valid until 28 February, the end of the meteorological winter. Twice, Txikon and Co. had ascended to an altitude of around 7,000 meters before bad weather and deep snow had forced them to turn back.
Again nothing. For the second time in five days, the team around the Spaniard Alex Txikon had to end their summit attempt on the eight-thousander Manaslu in western Nepal at an altitude of about 7,000 meters. Just like last Sunday, the weather put a spoke in their wheel today. Txikon, his Spanish compatriot Inaki Alvarez and the Sherpas Chhepal, Gelum and Namja turned around and descended to the base camp. “Sanity has made us turn around at 7.050m, when we were facing the ramp towards the C4,” says Alex. “The safety of the team is above all and if we continued with that wind we surely would not have counted it.”
It will be a race against time. For Saturday, on the 8,163-meter-high Manaslu in western Nepal, strong winds in high altitude are expected again. Nevertheless, the Spaniards Alex Txikon and Inaki Alvarez, the Italian Simone Moro and the three Sherpas Chhepal, Gelum and Namja set off yesterday for another summit attempt. Moro, however, turned back in Camp 1 at about 5,700 meters after talking to Austrian meteorologist Karl Gabl.
“Pakistan has lost a great mountaineer, my father and two other climbers are no more with us.” Sajid Ali Sadpara said today at a press conference in Skardu in northern Pakistan what had actually been in the air for days, but no one wanted to announce publicly. But as difficult as it is to admit it, 13 days without any sign of life and without any trace of the three climbers missing on K2 can only mean one thing: Pakistani Muhammad Ali Sadpara, Icelander John Snorri Sigurjonsson and Chilean Juan Pablo Mohr paid for their summit attempt on the second highest mountain on earth with their lives.
The good news first: all climbers on the eight-thousander Manaslu in western Nepal have returned safely to base camp from their summit attempt. The not-so-good news: the hard work done by Alex Txikon’s team over the past few days was in the end in vain. According to Txikon, the end of the line was at above 7,000 meters on Sunday, the originally planned summit day. “The wind made us turn around,” the 39-year-old Spaniard let it be known yesterday after returning to base camp.
The climbers had fought their way up through partly waist-deep snow. “We made a huge effort but it was rewarding,” Alex added today. “We have suffered cold, hunger and fear. Now, from base camp, is the time when we are truly aware of what we have done. We only missed one day, now we look forward to good chances! Go, go, goooo!”
This week, however, more snowfall is expected on the eighth-highest mountain on Earth. In a new summit attempt, the climbers would probably have to fight their way through deep snow again, avalanche danger included.
“My tin whistle is an essential part of my climbing equipment,” says Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll. “When I’m dangling high up a vertical cliff, stuck in a storm in a small portaledge for days in a row, my tin whistle is there to make sure that I’m not waiting. I’m being. I play music.” The climber with the flute has now succeeded in making quite an extraordinary melody on the granite rocks of Patagonia: The Belgian professional mastered the so-called Fitz Traverse – solo.
Conditions on Manaslu are not ideal, but when are they ever in winter? In the past few days it has been snowing on the eighth highest mountain on earth. And so the two Spaniards Alex Txikon and Inaki Alvarez, the Italian Simone Moro and four Sherpas, who support the Europeans, have to work their way up through partly deep fresh snow.
The 8,611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram (in summer 2004)
Bad weather on K2 prevents for the time being the further search for the three missing climbers Muhammad Ali Sadpara, John Snorri Sigurjonsson and Juan Pablo Mohr. The mountain rescuers were standing by, the Pakistani military said. As soon as weather permitted, the search would continue, it said.
Flights by rescue helicopters had been suspended on Tuesday because of adverse conditions – lack of visibility, strong winds. Imtiaz Hussein and Akbar Ali, two climbers related to Muhammad Ali Sadpara, also had to abandon their attempt to search for the missing on the mountain. Metereologists expect a window of good weather from the beginning of next week, with hardly any wind for days.
Cala Cimenti (1975-2021) – he posted this picture yesterday on Facebook
The sad news just don’t stop. Italian ski mountaineer Carlalberto, called “Cala” Cimenti has been buried by an avalanche while freeriding on a mountain near the northern Italian resort of Sestriere. The 45-year-old and a friend with whom he was skiing could only be recovered dead.
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