“Exceptionally quiet and beautiful this time” – that’s how the experienced US expedition leader Garrett Madison described the trekking through the Khumbu region to the 6,814-meter-high Ama Dablam a week ago. And Swiss mountaineer Sophie Lavaud agreed: “Beautiful weather and no one around.” How calm it is currently in the region around Mount Everest can…
Crisis meeting in the Oval Office, one week before the presidential election. “What the f…! I’m still behind in the polls,” shouts Scrooge Tramp and clenches his fist firmly on the desk. “Think of something!” The advisors look trodden on their shoes, no one dares to look Tramp in the bright red face. “We could,”…
When Priti and Jeff Wright later look back on 2020, they will surely agree that it was “an exceptional year” – and not just because of the corona pandemic. At the end of 2019, the software developer and the aerospace engineer from the US city of Seattle took a one-year career break to live out…
The Khumbu Icefall on Mount Everest can become a deadly trap for climbers at any time. For example, when one of the seracs, the huge ice towers, collapses, when new crevasses open or when existing ones suddenly change. In addition, there is the threat of avalanches from the snow- and ice-laden West Shoulder of Everest…
Roll backwards. The Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality has reopened the region around Mount Everest for mountaineers and trekking tourists. These are allowed to enter if they can show a corona test on arrival, which is not older than 72 hours and was negative, the authority informs me on request. In the morning the first plane…
The 6,962-meter-high Aconcagua is not allowed to be climbed for the time being. Due to the corona pandemic, the authorities of the Argentinean province of Mendoza canceled the climbing season on the highest mountain in South America, which normally lasts from mid-November to the end of February. The Aconcagua National Park is only open to…
Nepal has hardly been officially reopened for mountain tourists when the first restrictions are imposed. Today, the Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality banned all flights into the region around Mount Everest until further notice. Mountaineers and trekking tourists are not supposed to arrive for the time being. The reason is a corona case in Namche Bazaar,…
Back and forth and forth and back. The information policy of the Nepalese government in times of Corona is one big hullabaloo. Therefore it is really difficult to distinguish between what is fact and what is rumor. Officially, the country is – despite continued high corona infection rates – open for mountaineers and trekking tourists…
The first summit success of the year on an eight-thousander in Nepal is perfect. The Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks let it be known via Facebook that the team of the Royal Guard from Bahrain reached the 8,163-meter-high summit of Manaslu this morning at 6:10 a.m. local time. Media reports citing the Ministry of…
Also on the fourth day in a row the fire blazes on the southern flank of Kilimanjaro. About 1,000 people – firefighters and volunteers – are still trying to contain the fire. According to the authorities, in the first three days the vegetation in an area of 28 square kilometers was robbed by the flames….
One usually imagines vagabonds something different than a software developer and an aeronautical engineer from the USA. Priti and Jeff Wright, a climbing couple in their early 30s from Seattle, call themselves “Alpine Vagabonds“. They have now realized a real coup in the Karakoram in Pakistan.
He was the spiritual voice of the Khumbu. Generations of mountaineers and trekking tourists have met him at Tengboche Monastery and have received his blessing for their adventures. Ngawang Tenzin Jangpo Rinpoche died at the age of 85 years. Since 1956, for 64 years, he had been abbot of the Buddhist monastery Tengboche in the…
The countdown is running. On 17 October, eight days from now, the first mountain tourists are to be allowed to enter Nepal. The most controversial regulation of the corona protocol for visitors from abroad is now supposed to be dropped: the obligatory one-week quarantine in hotels in Kathmandu. The usually well-informed newspaper “The Himalayan Times”…
Some news of climbers’ deaths spread like wildfire. Others do not. For example, I learned rather by chance – through a Facebook post of his ex-wife Lhakpa Sherpa – that the nine-time Everest summiteer George Dijmarescu died of cancer at the age of 59 in the USA at the end of September. Only some media…
Everything is arranged on the eight-thousander Manaslu for the mountaineers from Bahrain. The base camp is ready for occupancy – and the Sherpa team of the Nepalese operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) has already prepared most of the way up the mountain. According to SST expedition manager Chhang Dawa Sherpa, the route to Camp 3…
