John Snorri’s home team in Iceland suggests that the climbers should be in Camp 3 and are resting before setting off for the summit. However, they admit that they don’t have any first-hand news either, and Snorri’s tracker currently locates them at 6,800m, still on the Black Pyramid.
K2 at 7,000m last week, where JP Mohr and Sergi Mingote set their “lower” Camp 3.
Wherever they are, Jacek Teler, the winter Himalayan veteran and ExWeb consultant, believes that the numbers are against them. The team needed 16 hours to cover the 1,600 vertical metres from Base Camp to Camp 2. There are another 1,900 vertical metres to the summit, with several technical features, including the Black Pyramid, the Bottleneck, and the traverse under the Great Serac. All this, at a much higher altitude.
Even if their tracker ran out of power and has stopped sending a signal, and the climbers are already in Camp 3, they will have reached it significantly behind schedule, probably too late to launch a final summit push. According to previous plans, this should have started at 6 pm (8 am Eastern time, 1 pm GMT). But one hour and counting after this deadline, Snorri’s tracker shows no movement.
As the Nepalis did, they could rest in Camp 3 or lower, but the weather does not give them any margin: Rising winds are imminent.
Filmmaker to document the climb
Meanwhile, Canadian filmmaker Elia Saikaly is in Advanced Base Camp, assisted by Pasang Kaji Sherpa. Saikaly traveled to Pakistan at the last minute to make a documentary on Snorri’s expedition. While obviously not ready to summit himself, Saikaly might still have much of his acclimatization from November, when he summited Ama Dablam as a member of Garrett Madison’s team — and shared some stunning pictures on his IG. Saikaly filmed Snorri and the Sadparas in K2 Base Camp before their push, then he moved up to ABC today.
