원정 개요

BC at Chago glacier higher than most BCs
C1 at Chago glacier
C2 at Chago glacier bottom of steepest part
C3 at Makalu La
C4 well to west of NW Ridge (same others).

12 May from C4 at 4:00 am were Cotter, Ozaki, Lhakpa Dorje, Hasler, Stevens, Williams and Tenzing (no 8000ers); last 4 people turned around 7800m (Hasler and Tenzing), Stevens at 7:00 am at 7900m and Williams 11:00 am at 8090m. Williams saw difficulty above; others down because cold. Ozaki slid down with slab avalanche while climbing alone and stopped himself 50m down with no injury and continued up. Ozaki, Cotter and Lhakpa Dorje together at 1:50 pm (Chileans joined them on top after 2 minutes and met 1 more on way down). 12 May slept in C3; arrived 5:30 pm by Cotter and stayed one day C3 while others down to BC.

This team broke trails for all others, doing the hard work they benefited by. Iranians were in New Zealand C2 tent and had to be kicked out and moved into Austrian empty tent.


Guy Cotter - May 12, 2001

The AC team left C4 (7700m) for the summit at 4 am this morning in moderately windy conditions and reached the summit at 1:50 pm time. The climbers reported conditions on the summit to be windy with cloud covering their views of Everest, Ama Dablam and Baruntse. Their plan was to spend 10 minutes on the summit then return to C3. Other AC team members Bruce Hasler, Mark Williams and Robert Stevens, turned around yesterday before C4. It has taken the team 6 weeks since leaving home to get to this stage of the climb, slowly letting their bodies adjust to the altitude and moving their camps and equipment into position to make their summit attempt.

The expedition followed the first ascent route, the "Classic" Route, which was first climbed on the 15th of May 1955 by a French team lead by Jean Franco. Makalu has had fewer than 190 ascents and has never had a repeat summit (two successful summits by the same person). Rob Hall climbed Makalu in 1995 and is the only other New Zealander to have summited. Makalu at 8463m is the fifth highest mountain in the world standing close to the Everest group at the head of the Barun valley. The summit ridge is the demarcation point indicating the border between Nepal on the Southern side and Tibet to the North.

Update 11th May: The latest news in from Base Camp is that the AC team have all arrived safely at C4. They will rest up and review the weather at 1 am. Conditions permitting they will leave for the summit at 2:30 am.

Update Thursday 10th May: The AC team is heading up to Makalu La today, the weather is good, clear blue skies and not much wind. We have just had the weather forecast in for the next five days which shows good summit conditions, around 18 knots on the summit for Saturday. Guy and Bryan arrived at C2 to find there tent full of water from the pre-season melt.

Takashi opened up his tent to find two sleeping Iranian team members, he kicked them out and moved in with Rob and Guy, and Bryan took over Takashi's tent. Everyone slet well last night and started to head up to C3 around C3 around 8:30 am. It should take them about 6 hours, but due to the other teams there may be quite a few people on the ropes.

Guy, Rob and Takashi will be using oxygen, Bruce, Mark and Bryan will not. They will sleep with oxygen at C4 and leave around 4am for the summit and should be on top around 10'ish. We will lose radio contact after C3 until they reach the summit ridge. Other teams on the move up to C3 today are the Chilean and Iranian teams. The two Austrian members going for the summit yesterday had to turn around due to bad weather.