Pythom Dispatches
High Adventure Expeditions: Summit Push is on! (Everest)
Saturday was a glorious day! The clear and beautiful weather brought lots of sunshine which means a hot day on the mountain. The High Adventures Expedition team left basecamp at 4:20 AM bound for the summit hoping to make their final trip up the Khumbu glacier. The heat and exertion made for a long day, but they are now eating and drinking in camp 1, perched above the icefall, preparing for tomorrow’s ascent to camp 2.
Dhaulagiri – summit push begins
We plan to leave very early tomorrow morning (15th) for our summit push. We have one shot at this with the resources we have, so fingers crossed everything comes together.
A sizeable avalanche released across the route near base camp on 13th and those nearly caught in it say that they would have experienced some damage had they not been able to move out of the way quickly.
I just happened to get out of the tent milliseconds after the avalanche (release) started – my watch said 6.11am – so I could not see if anyone was caught because of the cloud created by the debris. It was big enough, in my view, that it wouldn’t have been good for anyone in the way.
We went for a walk later in the morning and chatted to some members of the British services team. 2-3 of their team had to make quick dashes left and right to get out of the way. They reported that the size of the pieces of ice were (tennis ball) sizes, give or take, so they were lucky not to get hit.
