Summit

Kenneth Koh summitted in difficult conditions

Ken summitted; the rest of us did not, due to strong winds and I am still bummed about this.

Sometime I will fill this page out further.

25 May

We climbed from North Col to our Camp 2 at 7650m.

26 May

We climbed from C2 at 7650m up to the 8210m highest camp on oxygen.

27 May 2011 - Ken, Jamling, Phujung and Tawa summit

The team set off a little after midnight and almost immediately Grant ran into a series of problems, in his words:

"It was all character building stuff however. I did recover over the next few days from the tooth abscess, diarrhea and the H.A.P.E.  I eventually managed to get back to 8350m on our summit attempt a few weeks later. I had terrible luck with the weather though and it got very windy on summit night.  I developed really cold hands, after having a bad start from the tent at 11PM.  My oxygen valve on my bottle iced up, my crampon straps froze solid, my goggles exploded, all things which required me to take my hands out of my mitts and fix.  My hands were freezing before I left. I climbed about 50m above the camp to 8350m before I realized I had a serious problem with my hands and I could not get them warm again. I decided to return to the tent to reheat them and I figured I could start again in an hour or two as it was still only 12PM. Back in the tent however, the wind never dropped and the other climbers started turning back also."

The rest of us climbed up but the wind that was supposed to drop around 3am only strengthened, very worryingly. Jamie (climbing with the slower climbers), Jim and Ismail huddled just under the first step waiting for the wind to but there was little shelter. Around 6am with Andrew Lock's assistance we got a brief weather forecast from a friend of his in Australia (Europe was asleep at that time). The forecast had suddenly changed, and the wind wasn't going away. Jamie turned everyone around. However Ken with three sherpas were much higher and so ignored this and continued on to the summit, all four of them, in very windy conditions, summitting when Everest was covered by a UFO-like lenticular cloud. Ken did freeze his corneas and partly lost his vision but Jamling and the others took good care of him. It is an injury you can quickly recover from. He also had minor frostbite on one cheek.

Esther, in the Singapore Navy, was better at following orders, and turned back, much to her regret. However down in ABC it was obvious she had some frostbite on her cheek, and if she had continued, the injury would have been far worse, almost certainly requiring plastic surgery. Luckily her frostbite wasn't so bad and her cheek recovered over a week or so but took around three months to fully recover. A close call. With better weather Esther definitely would have summitted, indeed everyone would have.

It was very windy and I know we definitely made the right decision, the risks were just too high. With the wind it was also very cold, and amazingly Esther's two half litre water bottles in the chest pockets of her down suit froze, while she was wearing them. This is not something I would have believed, but I took the second one out myself. It really was frozen solid.

28 May

We reached ABC.

Debrief

All teams had problems with weather forecasts this season, Russell Brice abandoned their first attempt at the last minute, Scott Woolums' Mountain Trip team spent an extra night at South Col...

However this was also the first time I left the weather forecasting to a professional weather forecaster while we were on the mountain. Usually I have checked the forecasts until the last minute, and I should have this time. The next day was perfect and we could have spent an extra night at Camp 2 on the way up although that would have taken a bold reinterpretation of the forecast and putting a lot on the line. Teh foreccaster prevaricated, didn't want to commit or perhaps admit the forecast had changed so much. It would have also required a gutsy decision on my part, but I have made those sort of calls previously.

Next time I will also double-check the forecasts until I am also satisfied.

Grant dreaming high - Jamie

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