Friday, March 29, 2024
Everest 2021

Everest 2021 Update – ‘Ascent for a Cure’ – 6th May

An epic Everest update from Adam, ‘Ascent for a Cure’ – 6th May.

“Back down to base camp after completing the 1st rotation. Didn’t take a single photo which speaks to the complexity of what this entailed. The Khumbu Ice Fall was the first section going in and the last section coming out today. My first experience with this four days ago was Holy Cow! It took me and my friend Super Hero Sherpa over six hours to go through.

“We encountered and thus circumnavigated fixed ropes winding throughout the route, horizontal ladders across crevasses, vertical ladders going up areas that weren’t better suited for just chopping ice steps and dropping in a fixed rope for hand climbing or jumaring. There were plenty of those too. Back to the ladders…. I was strangely comfortable on them. I guess it was the one thing in all this that was familiar.

“There were steps across crevasses, leaps across the larger ones. And lots of downclimbing which can be performed in various ways. If extremely steep and icy, the best option is to tie in your figure eight and repel down, otherwise it’s your call on climbing down facing into the mountain and looking for existing steps. The fastest and perhaps easiest way is to just face down wrap the rope around your forearm and go.

“The Ice fall is like a series of deep valleys. When you down climb into one you can bet there will be some steep climbing up the other side. Today, when we returned back through, I had a great deal more confidence and we seemed to literally float through it at times.

“Sherpa Nima let me get out front and gave me a lot more leeway in my decisions. He is a young Sherpa but has already summited, I think, 7 times. Feels like I’m making a friend for life. There was a point today when I was downclimbing a really hard ice area (using the facing in and looking for steps technique) when my foothold slipped and I was momentarily hanging from just my hand holds. I looked up at Nima and told him I was okay and had this. In that instant, there was a bird that lit just behind him and fluttered it’s wings. I smiled and regrouped and went on down the ice wall. Not sure which Saint in my life that has gone on before me, but do know it was one of them.”