Himalaya wrap-up: Everest - now go home China! Annapurna summit
Image of Chinese visit at Everest BC with MI 17 helicopter (click to enlarge).
Chinese millitary checking Everest south side late last month (click to enlarge).
Snipers in EBC south are now packing up to go home (click to enlarge).
Climbers are hurrying back to BC. Live image over Contact 4.0 courtesy of Mountaintrip (click to enlarge).
Yesterday Alberto Peruffo, of the global campaign Sad Smoky Mountains, announced Sunday 11th May, at 13 local time as the first simultaneous ignition of red flares. More than 100 summits are now involved, many joining up only in the last few days.
12:18 pm CDT May 08, 2008
(MountEverest.net) "The moment I saw the torch lit on top of Mount Everest I felt very hurt," a Tibetan told Reuters and his feelings were shared by many around the world.
The torch reached Everest summit yesterday, or so it is claimed by China who said they topped out already a few days before in spite of climbers watching live from Kalapattar at the time spotted them aborting above second step.
As expected, Chinese Wang got the headlines with a few Tibetan women thrown in. At this point, none of the real Tibetan ace mountaineers are mentioned and as for the Tibetan women, in other occupied countries they would be called Quislings and have their heads shaved.
Also the "live" coverage turned out "almost live" and there's no word about the success of it being streamed to people's mobile phones as earlier planned by Sohu.
Over on Everest south side, climbers are now running back to BC in order to begin their Everest ascents. The ban has been lifted and the army is packing to go home.
Everest: tight schedule ahead
"Today we traveled from Pheriche all the way to base camp. It took us around 6 hrs to get back up here to base camp," reports Mountaintrip.
"All of us are feeling good and are ready to finally go to the upper mountain.The big news around here is that the other side, namely the Chinese have summited and they have lifted the restrictions on our side. So what that means is we finally get to start fixing ropes on the Lhotse face and higher and we also get to start stocking the higher camps for our own summit push. It is good news around here because things were starting to look a little grim for our chances on this side."
"The fixing started today and we have many teams ready to go up and help out with the work that needs to be done. All the expeditions are helping out so it should go fairly quickly. We are still many days away from having everything done but it is a start."
The biggest danger now is that no climbers have yet been able to achieve full acclimatization, which requires one nights stay in camp 3 (on the Lhotse wall) at around 7000+ meters.
The roundtrip takes about 4-5 days and wears on the body. A minimum of 2-3 days of rest are required in BC after this stage before a summit push can be attempted.
In normal circumstances, this climb is done before mountaineers trek down the valleys to recoup. Now instead, climbers will have to go straight from this stage to a summit attempt, following a brief rest in BC.
Even with this tight schedule, the nearest summit attempts should not be expected until earliest one week from now, or mid May, providing the weather is favorable.
Annapurna(This section edited 1:35 pm)
The Russian team tried to summit Annapurna East 8020 m, and Alexey topped it out, RussianClimb reports. (Edit 1: Korshunov reached the central summit in 2004). The team launched the summit bid yesterday, according to Serguey Bogomolov. The weather worsened into a storm - the wind was 40 km/h and temps dropped to -20C. Only Alexey Bolotov reached the top. He devoted his ascent to President Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration. Now the entire team is back in C5 at 7300.
Yesterday ExWeb wrote that: "Iñaki's home team confirmed the expedition's summit push in an update earlier today. However, they only mention Ochoa and Horia - it is unclear whether Don is still with them or may have turned around. The climbers are meant to reach C3 tomorrow, progress along the summit ridge as far as possible on Friday and, hopefully, reach the top on Saturday."
Readers alerted us that Horia wrote on his website a few days ago (in Romanian) that Don has been removed from the team due to his unwillingness to climb above camp 2, forcing his mates to retreat to BC with him (to be sure that he return safe) in good weather.
In a second alert (edit 2), another reader wrote today that Ochoa has returned to BC with Horia Colibasanu and sites weather conditions for descending.
On Don's own blog, it is confirmed that Horia and Inaki decided to part ways with Don and climb on their own after a dispute about the weather. Don is currently awaiting suitable conditions before he resumes climbing Annapurna 1; the weather looks more promising for climbing early this coming week, Don recons.
Manaslu
Maksut Zhumayev reports the climbers have set Camp 4 at 7250 meters in heavy snowfall.
Makalu
Andrew Lock reports he has set camp 2.
Tibet/China: Red flares for freedom
Yesterday Alberto Peruffo, of the global campaign Sad Smoky Mountains, announced Sunday 11th May, at 13 local time as the first simultaneous ignition of red flares.
More than 100 summits are now involved, many joining up only in the last few days.
Links to teams on Everest and Himalaya:
The "Climbers Without Borders" Everest 2008 hotline allows climbers, their relatives and friends to report anonymously from the mountain as long as the caller is known to ExWeb. Pls call (1) 206-666-2407 (from a sat phone pls dial 001-206-666-2407). State your name and message (your name will be withheld).
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