Fierce gusts of wind have caused a forced respite on Mount Everest and the other eight-thousanders in Nepal. This gives me the opportunity to summarise the events of the past three days.
After the rope-fixing team from the Nepalese expedition operator 8K Expeditions – as reported – achieved the first summit success of the spring on Mount Everest last Friday, around a dozen other mountaineers followed in their footsteps on Sunday – with bottled oxygen and Sherpa support – to reach the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters.
“World’s longest triathlon”
Among them was Briton Mitchell Hutchcraft – led by Gelje Sherpa (his tenth Everes summit success) and Yak Phuri (his second time on the roof of the world). Mitch had set off 236 days earlier from his home country. He swam 35 kilometres across the English Channel, cycled almost 12,000 kilometres to India and ran – from sea level – 900 kilometers to Kathmandu and trekked 365 kilometers from there to Everest Base Camp. “The world’s longest triathlon,” as the British newspaper The Guardian headlined.
The undertaking is reminiscent of the project by Swedish mountaineer Göran Kropp (1966-2002), who cycled to Everest from Stockholm in 1996, climbed the highest mountain on earth without Sherpa support and without bottled oxygen and then returned home by bike.
Rope-fixing team on the north side of Everest also reaches the summit
On Sunday, the Chinese-Tibetan rope-fixing team on the north side of Mount Everest also reached the summit. This means that the normal route is now also open there: via the Northeast Ridge.
On Monday, an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale shook parts of Tibet – apparently without causing any major damage. Although the earth tremors were felt on Everest, they had no consequences.
14th eight-thousander for mountaineer from Kosovo
A death has been reported from Kangchenjunga. A 63-year-old French woman died during her summit attempt last Saturday at an altitude of 7,800 meters, reported the newspaper Himalayan Times. The woman was apparently suffering from high altitude sickness.
The 65-year-old Briton Adrian Hayes, who reached the summit with nine other people, also showed symptoms of altitude sickness on the descent and was brought to Camp 4 at around 7,500 meters by Sherpas. The rescue operation is to be continued as soon as the weather permits.
Uta Ibrahimi was also part of the successful summit group. She is the first Kosovan to have scaled all 14 eight-thousanders.
Update 14 May: After Sherpas helped Adrian Hayes, who was suffering from high altitude sickness, further down on Kangchenjunga, the Briton was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu
