Among the many summit success stories from Mount Everest today is the news of the first death of a foreign climber on the world’s highest mountain this spring season. The Nepalese expedition operator Snowy Horizon Treks announced that a 45-year-old client from the Philippines died last night on the South Col. The mountaineer had been preparing for his summit attempt when he passed away, it said. He was probably suffering from high altitude sickness.
Tashi Gyalzen Sherpa has set himself the goal of scaling the highest peak on earth four times this spring (with bottled oxygen). Last year, Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, Climbing Sherpa of the operator Seven Summit Treks, summited Everest three times in eight days. Nepalese journalist Purnima Shrestha also reached the summit three times during the season as a client of a commercial team – with breathing mask and Sherpa support.
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.
She has done it again. Today, Anja Blacha – along with the rope-fixing team of the Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) led by Lakpa “Makalu” Sherpa – reached the 8,167-meter-high summit of Dhaulagiri in western Nepal.
According to SST, the 34-year-old German mountaineer was one of a total of 13 people to achieve the first summit success this spring on the seventh highest mountain on earth. Anja once again did without bottled oxygen during the ascent – as did Pakistani Sajid Ali Sadpara and Taiwanese Lu Chung-Han.
There are silent heroes on Mount Everest who are often forgotten. Like the Icefall Doctors, responsible for the route through the dangerous Khumbu Glacier. The rope-fixing team of Nepalese climbers who secure the route to the summit. The numerous Climbing Sherpas, without whose help most of the clients of the commercial expeditions would never reach the highest point at 8,849 meters. And then there are the rescue teams: the helicopter pilots who fly up to altitudes of 7,000 meters to bring climbers down to the valley on a long rescue line.
And the medical staff in the Everest ER at the base camp. ER stands for Emergency Room. An emergency room at 5,364 meters, where sick or injured mountaineers have been treated during the spring season since 2003. The infirmary at Everest Base Camp is organized and financed by the Himalayan Rescue Organization Nepal, a non-governmental organization founded more than 50 years ago.
The intensive care physician and anaesthetist Ashish Lohani is one of three doctors – alongside his Nepalese compatriot Suraz Shrestha and the South African Roy Harris, who lives in Scotland – who have been working in the Everest ER this spring season. All three are proven experts in high-altitude medicine. Since the beginning of April, Lohani and Co. have already treated more than 550 patients in their arched tent.
Mount Everest (before sunrise, seen from Gokyo Ri)
The job is done. Today at around 5 p.m. local time, the seven-member fixed rope team of the operator 8K Expeditions reached the summit of Mount Everest at 8,849 meters. Tsering Pemba Sherpa, Ashok Lama, Pem Nurbu Sherpa, Tashi Sherpa, Karma Gyaljen Sherpa, Tashi Gyalzen Sherpa and Pas Tenzi Sherpa secured the route to the highest point with ropes, the company announced. The route is now officially open on Everest.
Sunrise over Mount Everest and Lhotse (r.) – in fall 2019
The first summit success of the spring season on Lhotse, the fourth highest peak in the world, is perfect. “Lhotse summit route is officially open,” announced Nepalese operator 8K Expeditions in its Instagram story. The five-member rope-fixing team – consisting of Pasang Tenje Sherpa, Migma Dorjee Sherpa, Lakpa Sherpa, Ming Dawa Sherpa and Pas Rinzi Sherpa – reached the highest point at 8,516 meters today at 5.40 pm, the company announced.
For this season, 8K Expeditions had been commissioned to secure the normal routes on Mount Everest and the neighboring Lhotse from Camp 2 (6,400 m) in the Western Cwm, the “Valley of Silence”, to the summits with ropes for all commercial teams. The Icefall Doctors are responsible for the route from base camp through the Khumbu Icefall up to Camp 2.
The veterans are still rocking it at over 60. Italian couple Nives Meroi and Romano Benet, both aged 63, and 60-year-old Slovakian Peter Hamor opened a new route through the virgin West Face of the 7,412-meter-high Kabru on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim.
“No one had previously attempted to reach this peak from the western, Nepali side – the face had remained untouched until now,” Hamor’s home team announced on Facebook. Following their summit success on Sunday, the three climbers are back at base camp safe and sound. Initially, it didn’t look like they would succeed. The trio had to endure two weeks of bad weather with heavy snowfall and strong winds at base camp.
View of Mount Everest (l.) and Lhotse (in fall 2019)
It’s like an annual ritual. It is eagerly awaited how early in the spring season the rope-fixing teams reach the highest point of Mount Everest at 8,849 meters. A few days later, the commercial teams usually begin their run to the summit – always with the proviso that the weather cooperates.
So far this spring, the conditions on the highest mountain on earth have been rather difficult. But from this Saturday onwards, the weather is expected to be comparatively calm for the summit zone of Everest, with hardly any precipitation and relatively little wind.
The Nepalese government wants to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, to silence the critics who have been calling for decades for inexperienced mountaineers to be banned from climbing Mount Everest. On the other hand, to make additional money. The responsible Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has now introduced a draft law to replace the Tourism Act, which has been in force since 1978 and has been amended time and again. It also contains the rules for mountaineering in Nepal.
The most exciting planned innovation: Everest aspirants are only to receive a climbing permit for the highest mountain on earth if they have an official summit certificate issued by the Department of Tourism for a Nepalese mountain at least 7,000 meters high.
I wish you all and your loved ones happy and peaceful Easter days. And the “Picasso of the Rhine” 😉 has once again put you an Easter riddle. Which mountain I have conjured on the egg?
No woman from Germany has stood on as many eight-thousanders as Anja Blacha. The 34-year-old has a good chance of becoming the first German woman to scale all 14 eight-thousanders. After her success on Annapurna I on 7 April, she is now only three short of the 14 highest mountains in the world: Lhotse (8,516 m) and Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) in Nepal and Shishapangma (8,027 m) in Tibet.
Anja climbs in commercial teams via the normal routes. She has summited ten of her eleven eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen. Blacha only used a breathing mask on her two Everest successes – in 2017 on the Tibetan north side and in 2021 on the Nepalese south side of the mountian. In the winter of 2019/2020, she reached the South Pole on skis after pulling her sled almost 1,400 kilometers from the coast of Antarctica – alone and without outside support.
Anja Blacha answered my three questions in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu:
Anja, first of all, congratulations on your eleventh eight-thousander. The conditions on Annapurna were extremely challenging and dangerous this spring. How did you fare on your ascent?
Ngima Tashi Sherpa (l.) and Rima Rinje Sherpa (r.)
It doesn’t help to turn a blind eye. Ngima Tashi Sherpa and Rima Rinje Sherpa almost certainly did not survive the avalanche accident on Monday on the eight-thousander Annapurna I in western Nepal. Four days later, the chances of finding them alive are close to zero.
On Makalu, the fifth highest mountain on earth, the ropes are now fixed up to the highest point at 8,485 meters. According to Nepal’s largest expedition operator Seven Summit Treks, the eight-man rope-fixing team reached the summit today together with a Nepalese client.
The team was led by the experienced Lakpa Sherpa, who is not called Makalu Lakpa for nothing. It was his eighth time on this summit. In 2022, he made headlines when he scaled Makalu three times in 16 days. The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism has issued 40 climbing permits for Makalu this spring so far (as of 9 April).
In the midst of the summit success reports from the eight-thousander Annapurna I, news of an avalanche accident broke. Above Camp 2 (5,600 meters), a “huge avalanche” broke loose, as Chhang Dawa Sherpa, expedition leader of the operator Seven Summit Treks, reported on Instagram. “We suffered a terrible disaster. While ferrying oxygen cylinders for the summit push, two of our Climbing Sherpas, Ngima Tashi and Rima Rinje, were swept away.”
