Currently browsing tag

mount-everest

Soul-searching over quake ends Everest climbing season

By Frank Jack Daniel and Andrew R.C. Marshall LUKLA, Nepal/KATHMANDU (Reuters) – As rescuers lose hope of finding more survivors in Nepal's earthquake disaster zone, a separate drama has unfolded high above them on Mount Everest where the hopes of a few rich climbers and some of their sherpas have also vanished. After six days of high emotion and harsh words at Everest Base Camp, climbing firm Himalayan Experience finally decided on Friday to abandon its ascent of the world's highest peak, becoming the last big team to do so. For one of its clients, millionaire Texas realtor David McGrain, it should never have taken that long to call off the climb, given thousands of people had been killed in the valleys below as well as 18 in an avalanche at base camp itself. “All they could think about was their goddamn climb, when hours before we were holding crushed skulls in our hands.” McGrain, a former weightlifter and self-styled “adrenaline philanthropist” who has a tattooed chest and wears a gold nose-ring, was in a minority of one when he quit his party of at least 10 climbers, all clients of Himalayan Experience.

All climbers at camps high up Everest airlifted to safety

By Douglas Busvine NEW DELHI (Reuters) – All of the climbers who had been stranded at camps high up Mount Everest by a huge earthquake and avalanches have been helicoptered to safety, mountaineers reported from base camp on Tuesday. Around half of the tents at Everest base camp were destroyed by an avalanche unleashed by Saturday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake, killing between 17 and 22 climbers, according to separate accounts. Canadian Nick Cienski said many of the returning climbers’ tent camps had been wiped out by the avalanche which, surging at speeds estimated at up to 300 km per hour, cut a swath through base camp, hurling gear, people and tents hundreds of feet. Danish climber Carsten Lillelund Pedersen said his team had been trekking on Saturday down from camp 2, which is at an altitude of 6,400 meters, when it was caught in a whiteout and had to turn back.