Weblog & Podcasts

SUMMIT!
we have been watching the team all morning, here is the first unofficial 7summits update. Mingma Gelu & Sergey K summited quite early as planned and waited for the rest of the clients. Apparently Slate Stern summited soon after and was going down quickly after, in good speed. Henrik Olsen also summited in good time and finished his 7 summits!

Ilya was having problems at the 3rd step and sat there for a long time, but our team is bringing him down now.
Noel summited about 25 minutes ago and is now going down and just a few minutes ago, at the end of our maximum time allowed, Lorenzo arrived at the summit, where our guide Igor Svergun was waiting for him, they will be coming down now and will be taking everybody they meet on the way. More Sherpas have summited as well, names to follow later.
Ronnie Muhl is now at the 2nd step, so we will have to take him down as he is going too slow to go for the summit safely, just as Igor Plushkin. At the moment we are not sure if Kirk summited or not, but so far everybody is safe and in good hands and we will make sure that all members and sherpas come down together. Maybe more later, we will be leaving with team B soon.

All the best, Harry

Hi all you friends and followers, here is a quick morning update, live from my tent at ABC. Sun is just about to hit, so hopefully it will warm up a bit!

To start with the positive side of things: Our first team has arrived at 7700m camp last night and besides some regulator problems (we have spares), all seems ok. It is one of the largest groups on Everest at the same time, today they will head for 8300m and after a short rest go for the summit tomorrow morning! All the best to the 12 clients, 2 western guides and 10 Sherpa guides:

Ilya Rozhkov, Russia
Arkadiy Ryzhenko, Russia
Igor Plyushkin, Russia
Lorenzo Gariano, UK
Kirk Wheatley, UK
David A. Lien, USA
Slate Stern, USA
Ronald Kevin Muhl, South African
Noel Richmond Hanna, UK
Petter Kragset, Norway
Henrik Andre Olsen, Denmark
Johnny Brevik, Norway
with guides Igor Svergun and Sergey Kofanov 

Our 2nd group including the Ozzies, yours truly/Thomas, Ron Morrow and Alex & Luda will wait for the first group to be safe. So today we can rest in ABC and prepare for what is to come   

Hello everybody. I know you are waiting for news about summit attempts, updates on rumours and what have you, but for now here is something to suit the cultural interested friends

We will be leaving Taschi Dzom in a few hours, on our way to BC, ABC, NC & ...... This little village is nothing more than a crossroad with a few mud houses, but I always love it here. If you take the time to just sit somewhere for some time an dlet local life pass you by, you can get some views like this, enjoy (?)...

Hello all your friends and followers, it has been a week, so time for an update, live from Taschi Dzom, Tibet, 4200m above sealevel...

Last week tried to get back to ABC in order to spend a 2nd period at North Col. Though Kevin made it to middle camp after some struggle, he could not follow the pace to ABC next day and Nickolay brought him back to middle. Milan felt stronger and continued slowly and made it to ABC just before it got really cold, the first time for him! On the way I talked to Lorenzo, who had spent 2 nights at NC and even walked to 7600m, so from being behind at acclimatisation, he is now actually ahead of everybody, so it shows how Everest can change things quickly...

Meanwhile I was feeling quite bad myself, some bug had entered my body and I felt weak since leaving BC, getting worse every day...

After a rest day, Thomas and I went for our 2nd acclimatisation trip to North Col, this time the plan was to sleep there for 2 nights. The Australians were coming with us and Milan joined us as far as possible..

The day started out nice, but soon the weather deteriorated..

Hello everybody, here is a quick update about the past events at the 7summits Basecamp, 5200m.

Let's start with a quick (?) tour of our Basecamp. Milan & Kevin filmed me using the Manfrotto Figg Rig, which makes it possible to use strange camera angles, hand the camera over smoothly and much more. This video is a edited version, meaning the slow parts are speeded up a bit, but the entire thing was one (!) long take of 15 minutes originally, no cuts have been made. Mike in turn filmed us doing the filming, so in the larger version/documentary/DVD we can show much more. For now enjoy the Basecamp tour!

After long delays due to the cold Russian winter, finally our oxygen arrived a few days ago and it is now already in ABC, ready to be taken up the mountain by our Sherpa team. Many expeditions had delivery problems and apparently the black market prices of 2nd hand and not so trustworthy bottles had increased a lot. But we will only use Poisk, straight from the factory, all 200 bottles!

NC manager Sergey celebrated his B-day 2 days ago, which was accompanied by some great Russian singing and guitar playing. 'Computerman' Sergey did most of the playing and singing, great to hear and see. And of course the Stllichnaya & Smirnoff toasts were not missing. Sergey's actual B-day was yesterday, but then he already went up with our first big team, that is now on its way to spend at least 2 nights at North Col. It is the mix of cultures that makes the 7summits expeditions so special, the mountain is temporarily forgotten, the mind is cleared, so it can absorb great situations with ditto people.

Our 2nd team will leave today to do the same, so our next update might take a few days. In the meantime you might have noticed the new webcams on our websites. We have 2 cams in BC, one is pointing towards Everest, so you can see the current weather, the other is either showing the overview of BC or is placed inside one of our many tents. If you have some time on your hands, you can check the archive/tests and you might see some strange images

Signing off from cold but happy BC, let's climb!

Harry

Well, we are (almost) all back in Basecamp, having spent a night at NorthCol, 7000m! Unfortunately one more member has to leave the expedition. It took a while as we were all on different places on the mountain, but here is a quick update in words and images about the past week:

28/29 April: BC- ABC. We took it easy today, and started with a long interview of Thomas, with mighty Everest towering in the background. Will be interesting to redo the same interview in about a month’s time! Good to see Kevin and Milan working together in documenting this special expedition.

After the interview Thomas and I went together with the Australians and walked back up to ABC in 2 days, sleeping in our intermediate camp, next to the 'Ice sharks', the amazing natural ice sculptures at Interim Camp, sometimes 20 metres high! The hike up was a bit faster than the first time, but still we can improve there, which will be needed before we are fit enough for a summit attempt.

On our first day we met Bill (Tyler) coming down, who descended because of a serious back pain. Doctor Andrey (who already and again has helped members of different expeditions like) met him at Yak camp and while we were having lunch Bill received a few injections in his behind, open air surgery.. This should help and maybe after a few days of rest Bill can try again to go up.