Helicopter rescue flights to the Everest region resume

Helicopter flying in the Khumbu region
Helicopter in the Khumbu region near Pangboche

There has been movement in the dispute over the large number of helicopter flights in the region around Mount Everest. Following a crisis meeting between the conflicting parties at the headquarters of the Solukhumbu district administration at the end of last week, the Airlines Operators Association of Nepal (AOAN) announced that it would resume helicopter rescue flights in the Khumbu region.

At the beginning of January, the AOAN had suspended all helicopter flights to the Everest region. The association was responding to protests by local organizations that had erected poles with prayer flags at helicopter landing sites in the Khumbu. The locals wanted to support the move by the Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality. The regional administration had banned commercial helicopter flights in the Sagarmatha National Park from 1 January and only allowed rescue flights by appointment.

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Winter expedition on Makalu also abandoned

Makalu
Makalu, the fifth highest mountain on earth

Four attempts, four times without summit success – Nepal’s eight-thousanders have once again shown their teeth this winter. After the winter expeditions on Mount Everest, Manaslu and Annapurna I had already come to an early end, the team from the commercial operator Makalu Adventure has now also abandoned its attempts to reach the summit of Makalu at 8,485 meters. The climbers are on their way back to Kathmandu, the company confirmed to me.

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Nepal tightens price screw for Mount Everest – from fall 2025

Mount Everest at sunrise
Mount Everest (l.)

The news comes as no surprise. A year and a half ago, the Nepalese government announced that it would be raising the price of a permit to climb Mount Everest by a good 36 percent from 2025: from 11,000 to 15,000 US dollars per climber from abroad. It is now official.

However, the new prices will not yet apply for the upcoming spring season on Mount Everest, but only from 1 September. The permit price for an Everest ascent in the fall will then rise from the previous 5,500 to 7,500 dollars per person, and in winter and during the monsoon season (June to August) from the previous 2,750 to 3,750 dollars, both of which also represent an increase of a good 36 percent.

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Helicopter dispute in the Everest region: “The whole Khumbu is united”

Blockade of a helipad in the Everest Valley
Blockade of a helipad in the Everest Valley

“Enough is enough,” Mingma Sherpa, chairman of the Namche Youth Group, tells me. “We locals have never spoken out against helicopter companies in general. But we are against the unnecessary helicopter flights. Last year alone, there were about 6,000 flights from Lukla (the gateway to the Everest region) to the Khumbu Valley. That’s too many for Sagarmatha National Park.”

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Jost Kobusch ends winter expedition on Mount Everest

Jost Kobusch in the Khumbu region
Jost Kobusch in the Khumbu, the Region in Nepal around Mount Everest

The premature end to his winter expedition on the highest mountain on earth does not come as a complete surprise to me. Even after Jost Kobusch‘s first push of the season on his route – he reached an altitude of around 7,500 meters on the West Ridge on 27 December and thus already achieved the goal he had set himself for his third Everest winter expedition – the 32-year-old German mountaineer reacted rather cautiously to my question as to whether he would climb up again.

Survived earthquake physically unscathed

Jost finally set off again at the beginning of last week and was surprised by the effects of the strong earthquake in Tibet while climbing to Lho La, a pass that connects the Nepalese Everest Valley with the Tibetan side, in his tent at 5,700 meters. He survived the tremors physically unscathed. But after his return to his “base camp” in the “Pyramid”, an Italian research station and lodge located at around 5,000 meters, Kobusch seemed even more indecisive.

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Jost Kobusch experienced earthquake in tent on Everest: “Everything shook”

Jost Kobusch - on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest on 27 December
Jost Kobusch – on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest on 27 December

Jost Kobusch was surprised on Mount Everest by the effects of today’s strong earthquake in Tibet in his tent at an altitude of around 5,700 meters. “At first I thought a serac (block of glacial ice) had gone off next to me,” the 32-year-old German mountaineer tells me on the phone. “Then I realized that everything was shaking.”

Kobusch had spent the night about halfway up on the way to Lho La. The pass connects the Everest Valley on the Nepalese south side with Tibet. This is where the West Ridge begins, over which Jost wants to climb Mount Everest in winter. After reaching an altitude of around 7,500 meters on his planned route on 27 December, this time he climbed “without any expectations”, says Kobusch. “I just wanted to feel what was possible. I had everything I needed to possibly climb higher.”

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Strong earthquake in Tibet near Mount Everest

Approach to Mount Everest (center) through the Tibetan region of Tingri (in 2005)
Approach to Mount Everest (center) through the Tibetan region of Tingri (in 2005)

The border region between Tibet and Nepal not far from Mount Everest was shaken by a strong earthquake today. According to Chinese reports, it reached a magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale, while the US earthquake observatory measured a magnitude of 7.1.

Chinese state media reported at least around 120 dead and hundreds injured on the Tibetan side. The epicenter was in the county of Tingri, around 80 kilometers north of Everest.

Tingri is the gateway for many mountaineers and trekking tourists making their way to the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest – or to the north side of the eight-thousander Cho Oyu.

In the Khumbu, the region on the Nepalese south side of Everest, the earth also shook. No major damage has been reported from there so far. The earth tremors were also felt in the capital Kathmandu, as well as in the neighboring countries of Bhutan and India.

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Jost Kobusch after Everest attempt: “It would have been too dangerous to climb any higher”

Jost Kobusch on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest
Jost Kobusch on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest

Jost Kobusch kept a cool head on Mount Everest. On his first push this winter, the 32-year-old German climber reached an altitude of 7,537 meters on the West Ridge. The altimeter on his watch showed this value on 27 December. His GPS tracker measured the highest altitude at 7,488 meters. On another model, the figure was 7,553 meters. Such differences are not unusual for altimeters.

In any case, Jost climbed around 200 meters higher than during his most successful attempt to date in the winter of 2019/2020, when he turned back on the West Shoulder. This time, he sniffed into the upper part of the West Ridge. I asked Jost via WhatsApp if he hadn’t been tempted to pitch his tent there and climb further up.

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Jost Kobusch on Mount Everest at around 7,500 meters

Jost Kobusch on ascent on Mount Everest
Jost Kobusch on ascent on Mount Everest

If his GPS tracker sends correct information, Jost Kobusch has almost reached the goal of his winter expedition to Mount Everest this year. According to the data sent by the GPS tracker, the 32-year-old German mountaineer climbed over the West Shoulder onto Everest’s West Ridge today and reached an altitude of 7,488 meters. Jost, who is climbing solo and without bottled oxygen, then set off on his descent again. His last signal today, Friday, was sent from an altitude of just below 7,000 meters.

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Mount Everest, Manaslu, Annapurna: Starting signal for eight-thousander winter expeditions in Nepal

Jost Kobusch
Jost Kobusch

Winter solstice. This Saturday, at 10.19 am Central European Time (9.19 am Universal Time), the calendar winter began. And that was also the official starting signal for three winter expeditions on eight-thousanders in Nepal. “My expedition will start right the next day on 22nd of December so that I‘m certain I start my climb fully in winter,” writes Jost Kobusch on Instagram.

In the past, there have always been discussions among mountaineers about what exactly is meant by a winter expedition. On the one hand, there were those who took the meteorological winter (1 December to 28/29 February) as a basis and insisted that the summit success had to be achieved by the end of February at the latest. On the other side were those for whom the calendar winter was the measure of all things: with the start on the winter solstice and the beginning of spring (in 2025 on 20 March) as deadline.

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Discussion again about ban on commercial helicopter flights in the Everest region

Helicopter takes off above Namche Bazaar
Helicopter takes off above Namche Bazaar

Same old, same old – it’s like in the Hollywood movie “Groundhog Day”. Once again, the regional administration of the Everest region has launched an attempt to restrict helicopter traffic. The Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality has announced that commercial helicopter flights will be prohibited in Sagarmatha National Park from 1 January 2025. Only rescue flights will then be permitted, and these must be coordinated with the national park authority.

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Dawa Yangzum Sherpa: “14 peaks not important as a record”

Dawa Yangzum Sherpa on the summit of Shishapangma
Dawa Yangzum Sherpa on the summit of Shishapangma

Anyone who regularly reads my blog knows that I have a very distanced relationship with supposed “records” in mountaineering. I make an exception for Dawa Yangzum Sherpa, because she is a true pioneer of women’s mountaineering. For more than a decade, she has been campaigning for women in her home country of Nepal to be given the opportunity to climb mountains and earn a living there. On 9 October, Dawa Yangzum summited the 8,027-meter-high Shishapangma in Tibet, becoming the first woman from Nepal to have saled all 14 eight-thousanders.

First Asian woman with an international mountain guide certificate

The Sherpani, who grew up with three brothers and two sisters in a small mountain village in the Rolwaling Valley, had already set milestones before. In 2014, she reached the summit of K2 with her compatriots Maya Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita. They were the first women from Nepal to scale the second highest mountain on earth. In 2017, Dawa Yangzum became the first woman in Asia to receive an international mountain guide certificate and has been working regularly as a mountain guide ever since, among others on Mount Everest.

Since 2020, she has been offering climbing courses for young Nepalese women in the Khumbu region. She herself has lived in Boulder in the USA for years and works for the expedition operator Alpine Ascents International. The 34-year-old Nepalese answered my questions.

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“School up – far west” successfully completed

Lessons in the new school
Lessons in the new school building

Thank you! The most important words belongs at the beginning. “All the construction work has been completed,” Nepalhilfe Beilngries lets me know. The school in the village of Rama in the Humla District in the far west of Nepal has been completed.

Around 350 children from Rama and the surrounding hamlets in the municipality of Tanjakot now have a safe roof over their heads as they study, hopefully giving them a good foundation for their future lives. Nepalhilfe Beilngries had two school buildings built on a mountainside at an altitude of around 2,600 meters – with a total of twelve classrooms, a kitchen block and separate toilets for girls and boys. The construction was made possible by your donations for “School up – far west”!

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Farewell on Putha Hiunchuli: Alix von Melle scatters the ashes of her husband Luis Stitzinger

At the summit of Putha Hiunchuli, Alix von Melle leaves Luis' ashes to the wind
At the summit of Putha Hiunchuli, Alix von Melle leaves Luis’ ashes to the wind

I often think about Luis Stitzinger these days. Now that his widow Alix von Melle has spread his ashes on the 7,246-meter-high Putha Hiunchuli in western Nepal. The same place where I first attempted a seven-thousander in 2011 – in vain, I had to turn back at 7,150 meters. Alix’s expedition leader on Putha Hiunchuli was now the Austrian Herbert Wolf – as he was for me 13 years ago.

And with Eva-Maria Ramsebner, from Austria too, there was also someone en route from the team with whom I was able to celebrate the first ascent of the 7,129-meter-high Kokodak Dome in western China in 2014. Expedition leader at the time: Luis Stitzinger. So many interfaces – no wonder I remember him so often these days.

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Summit attempt of the Russian Cho Oyu expedition abandoned

View from the East Ridge at around 7,300 meters towards the summit of Cho Oyu
View from the East Ridge at around 7,300 meters towards the summit of Cho Oyu

“We have decided to go down. We can’t get to the night camp behind the hollow (on the summit ridge) in one day. We have neither the time nor the strength to make it. Today we’ll collect the equipment. Tomorrow – down.” With these words, the Russian mountaineer Andrej Vasiliev announced to the portal mountain.ru the end of the summit attempt on the Nepalese side of the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu.

Vasiliev and his compatriots Vitaly Shipilov, Kirill Eizeman and Sergei Kondrashin turned back on the summit ridge at an altitude of around 8,000 meters. They had previously reported deep snow on the route. It was their fourth unsuccessful attempt since the start of their expedition at the end of September, which is now likely to be over.

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