After eleven Chinese climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest from the north side, which is closed to foreign expeditions, at the end of April, things are now getting serious at Everest Base Camp on the Nepalese side. The “Icefall Doctors” have long since “supplied” the Khumbu Glacier with ropes and ladders, and the fixed ropes are already hanging almost up to the so-called “death zone”.
More than 300 “entrance tickets” for the Everest summit (8849 meters) were issued by the Nepalese authorities to mountaineers from abroad in the spring – a “permit” costs 11,000 dollars (10,400 euros). If in the next few days the various Sherpa teams and their clients use the predicted good weather window for a first summit attack, there will once again be a risk of traffic jams on the highest mountain on earth. That’s not good for Sabrina Filzmoser. The former world-class judo fighter from Thalheim near Wels wants to be one of the few alpinists to climb Everest without oxygen and cannot afford to queue for too long behind slower “Everest tourists” in the thin air. That’s why she won’t swim with the first wave at the summit, but rather try her luck in mid-May.
The downside of Everest
“The weather forecast for mid-May looks promising, no matter how many streams of oxygen bottles will reach the summit before then, I need a lot of patience otherwise I don’t have a chance,” says Filzmoser. The 41-year-old has probably had the most arduous journey of all adventurers currently staying at the base camp. She rode her mountain bike from Digha on the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas, collecting donations with her social project “Forevereverest2022” on the way. The journey was the goal, not necessarily the “Everest summit”.
Filzmoser has been in base camp for six weeks. She came back from a multi-day acclimatization tour with an overnight stay in camp 3 (7060 meters) very impressed. “Cannot describe the view over Khumbu Glacier and Western Cwm,” she posted on Instagram. She is now also getting to know the other side of the highest mountain in the world up close. Filzmoser: “The commercial trappings have their pitfalls, there are challenges of all imaginable and unimaginable kinds. I try not to be too impressed by it, so that I can also respect the impressive natural forces of the landscape, every day anew.”
Helicopter Mission
The marketing of the eight-thousanders is actually blossoming again this season. In the meantime, a race has started among summit collectors who want to climb as many eight-thousanders as possible in a short time (of course with extensive Sherpa help) and have themselves flown from base camp to base camp by helicopter. The Norwegian Kristin Harila, for example, wants to climb all 14 eight-thousanders in six months. She has meanwhile “done” Annapurna (8091 m), she is currently on her way to Dhalaurgiri (8167 m), then she continues to Kangchenjunga (8586 m). Two weeks ago, an Indian mountaineer died of exhaustion after his Sherpas refused to persuade him to turn around. The 52-year-old wasn’t the first to die in this year’s agate thousand meter season, and he won’t be the last either.
Last week, two alpinists from Sweden and Italy were lucky on Annapurna to be rescued from certain death by a helicopter at 7,300 meters. They ended up in Kathmandu hospital with severe frostbite. The Carinthian construction foreman Hans Wenzl (51) came to the summit without oxygen – and down again without a helicopter. In addition to Filzmoser, around ten mountaineers from Austria are currently aiming high at Everest Base Camp.
Source: Nachrichten
