원정 개요

From Bahrain This Month, 3 Nov 2020

The Bahrain Royal Guard team which has been training to climb the highest mountain in the world Everest in 2021 have successfully completed their training in the Himalayan mountains. The team, consisting of 18 people, were given a mission by National Security Advisor, Royal Guard Commander Major-General His Highness Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa to raise the Bahrain and Royal guard flag on the summits of Lobuche (6119m high) and, once training completed, on the summit of Manaslu.

Exhibition leader, Christopher Anthony, tells Bahrain This Month’s Farah Baig about the experience and significant achievements that came with the climb including the renaming of part of the Himalayan mountain range to ‘Royal Bahrain Peaks’.

The Bahrain Everest team had 12 months of training during which we, as a novice climbing team, tried to fill ourselves full of knowledge by speaking to our guides in Nepal, Seven Summit Treks. The initial expedition was to Lobuche, one of the 6000m training mountains in Nepal, which included a 14-day trek from Lukla all the way to Namche Bazaar, followed by the Lobuche base camp. There we prepared, trained and got used to all our equipment before summitting Lobuche, which served as the stepping stone we needed to go on to Manaslu, commonly known as ‘The Killer Mountain’ purely because it’s a dangerous mountain and a very technical climb which people take for granted since it’s lower than Everest.

The training consisted of fitness training, rope work, and abseiling, making sure that we were physically and mentally fit for the task. This was in addition to understanding high altitude medicine so we can identify frostbite and non-freezing injuries within ourselves and the team. We needed to make sure that we understood the signs and symptoms of altitude sickness among other things, so it not only involved fitness but a lot of classroom work too.

The acclimatization of Lobuche and Manaslu is probably the most important aspect of the climbing of Everest. Every single member of the team at some point experienced altitude sickness which comes with severe migraines, loss of appetite and vomiting in some cases. We found ourselves gasping for breath because of the lack of oxygen as you start pushing past 3000 meters, especially on Manaslu as we got higher. I don’t think anyone had a good night’s sleep in those 8 days as it’s very uncomfortable. Through our training and our guides, we were able to understand that, as bad as it is, this is normal and the effect of being at this altitude.

The main challenges were obviously the unknown. We’d seen it, read it and explained it but when you’re actually in the middle of it is when you find that there are gaps, and being a novice team is where the experience is. That’s why we’d done Lobuche and Manaslu to prepare ourselves and iron out those things that were perhaps missing that we can now prepare for Everest.

The most significant achievement was threefold really - the first one was the Bahrain and Nepalese government enabling us to come and complete the mission, in the middle of a pandemic. You know it was never an easy decision by the Bahrain and Nepalese government but in hindsight it was the right decision. That, however, was the first hurdle and first significant achievement when we got the invitation from the Nepalese government. It also included some extremely hard work by the Bahrain government and Bahrain’s embassy in Delhi that were also instrumental in facilitating the mission. The second one would of course be our first summit of Lobuche - seeing the team smile after 14 hours of sweat and tears but standing on the summit and then seeing the hunger on the guys’ faces for Manaslu. Again, seeing the guys individually summiting was just an amazing achievement personally and as a team.

The ongoing pandemic honestly has its challenges. The guys were isolated for seven days as part of the entry procedure after which they had a COVID test to make sure we were all clear before we went to the villages in the Himalayas. The thing we didn’t want to do is infect anybody, so we had to make sure that the COVID protocol set by the Bahrain Defence Force and the Bahrain government was adhered to at all times. So, we all had gloves and masks on, and limited as much contact as we could.

Obviously, this was phase one of the mission, phase two will be the summit of Everest which should be officially announced. Hopefully the whole team will be set on the mission in five months to summit the highest mountain in the world and raise Bahrain’s flag, in line with our mission from HM King Hamad and HH Shaikh Nasser.

Bahrain Everest Team:
Christopher Anthony
Richard Warrent McConnell
Phillip Clough
Mohamed Hamed Mohamed Al Khalifa
Ebrahim Mohamed Abdulla Ebrahim Mohamed
Mohamed Ali Jasim Ahmed Alboainnain
Arafat Hamood Naji Ghurbah
Ebrahim Khalil Ebrahim Zyaed Aljazzaf
Ahmed Saif Ahmed Isa Alkaabi
Arif Feroz Shah Murad Qalunder Ghulam
Mohamed Abdulrahman Yusuf Alkawari
Khaled Ali Hasan Ebrashim Hasan Aldossery
Abdulaziz Rafea Abhar Khalaf Alabed
Khahed Sultan Mohamed Abdulla Alsheerawi
Murad Mohamed Yusuf Abdulsayed
Ebrahim Ali Salem Jaber
Saud Hamad Mubarak Hamed Eid
Mohamed Isa Abdulla Yusuf Alqais