원정 개요

Terry Sylvestor, Kristin Bennett, Agnieszka Olkowicz and Alex Pancoe were from Madison Mountaineering.

The other members were clients of other agencies on the Himalayan Guides permit:
Eric Murphy and Luke Timmerman were Clients of Shangrila Nepal Treks.
Iryna Karagan and Pavlo Sydorenko were clients of 8K Expeditions.


Terry Sylvestor - 28 May 2025

Approach: By heli

ABC: We flew from Pangboche to Advance Base Camp (we used it as our primary base camp) on April 27. This is the camp at about 5700m.

C1: We used C1 at 6400m during our rotation. Climbed there on May 1. We did not use C1 during our summit push.

C2: We used C2 at 6600m during our rotation, climbed there on May 3. During summit push we climbed directly from ABC to C2 on May 9.

C3: Climbed there May 10.

Smt: May 11. Our team arrived on the summit together at 6:05 am. Other than Alex Pancoe, our whole team summited: Agnieszka Olkowicz (Poland), Kristin Bennett (USA), Pemba Nuru Sherpa (Nepal), Chhiring Bhote (Nepal), Lhakpa Wongchu Sherpa (Nepal), Ang Tendi Sherpa (Nepal), Hira Bhote (Nepal), Terray Sylvester (USA).

We summited from C3. We left C3 at 10:30 pm on May 10.

Climbing conditions were good throughout our summit push. An ideal amount of snow on the route meant we encountered very little ice or loose rock, with minimal avalanche danger. The weather was ideal, too. We experienced almost no wind, and no precipitation, while on the mountain above ABC.

We spent about 30 minutes on the summit. After summiting we descended back to ABC, arrived there at about 5:30 pm on May 11. Our entire summit push lasted about 54 hours.

We flew out of ABC on May 13. Our Nepali team trekked out of ABC later in May.

Agnieszka and Kristin used oxygen from C2 at 6600m. I used oxygen from 6900m, as did our Nepali team. We all stayed on oxygen until returning to approximately C2.

Agnieszka and I returned to Kathmandu on May 24, after we summited Lhotse on May 22. Kristin Bennett arrived in Kathmandu around May 16.

Alex Pancoe’s death:

Alex Pancoe abruptly lost conscious at about 7:30 pm on May 4, on the fourth and final evening of our acclimatization rotation. I was sharing a tent with him. We had just finished dinner and we were settling into our sleeping bags to go to sleep. Alex had been one of the strongest members of our team up until that point. He had a good appetite for dinner that evening, and he appeared to be healthy and in good spirits until he suddenly became unresponsive. We attempted to resuscitate him for approximately 3 hours. Alex’s doctors have reviewed his autopsy results and think Alex suffered cardiac arrest.