Teams on all 8,000’ers have safely abandoned the mountains on the last day of the winter season. No one has reached a summit.
In a remarkable effort, Gelje Sherpa climbed all the way down to Base Camp after a valiant last push which ended near the East Ridge of Cho Oyu. Conditions were tough, and he reached Base Camp by midnight.
Other than this, there are no details from any climber in either team on the mountain.
Nor do we know much about the last summit push on K2. But Dolma Outdoor in Kathmandu has at least confirmed that everyone is safe (and apparently, on their way back to Skardu).
Jost Kobusch is also back in the Khumbu and off Everest. He had waited for two days in Camp 3 at 6,460m for a last-minute chance to beat his own altitude record on the West Ridge today. But conditions didn’t allow him to move any higher.
Jost Kobusch on a lonely, iced-up Everest West Ridge. Photo: @terragraphy
“At the last minute, the weather forecast predicted higher [wind] speeds, which would have made climbing too much of an unnecessary risk,” he wrote. “After all, the route remains technical. And believe me, it was definitely exciting enough to climb down the hard ice backward and in the dark at high wind speeds. I did what was possible.”
Kobusch admitted that he had expected rough weather but it was even “a touch worse than I had hoped,” he said.
Summing up, the 2021-22 winter season ends with zero 8,000m summits out of six attempts — or five, if we assume that Kobusch was not really intending to summit Everest this year.
