원정 개요

Trek on Line/Acro-Base on Everest, Francois Bon - 21 Oct 2008

Bon arrived at base camp on 24 Sept and spent a week there resting and acclimatizing. Then, when he was ready to move up to C1, he had to wait for the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) to finish making the Icefall route.

He got to C1 on 5 October, slept there one night and returned to BC. On the 13th, he and Pasang Tenzing established C2 at 6400m in the Western Cwm; it was their advance base camp. They spent four nights there waiting for the wind to drop and the route to C3 to be opened, and a fifth night (of the 17th/18th) after having climbing to the site for C3. They did not stay in C3 because the strength of the wind was increasing; they went back to C2.

When they had descended about 100 meters from C3's site, they were hit by an avalanche. It carried them about 500 linear meters down the West Face of Lhotse to the bergschrund at the bottom. A large chunk of ice had struck Bon's right knee; a ligament in his knee was broken, and his chest was battered, preventing him from being able to breathe deeply. Pasang also was no longer able to breathe deeply, and his knees and chest were painful.

In C2 that night Bon got no sleep. He spent the night trying to hold the tent together against the wind that was blowing at 160-170 km/hr. He went onto oxygen that night and stayed on it until he reached Kathmandu by helicopter from Gorak Shep on the 20th (Pasang did not use oxygen).

The winds that night shredded other team's tents in C2: the Koreans tents were completely destroyed. The weather forecast said the fierce winds would continue for three more days.

There was a lot of avalanching from all sides of the Cwm. A cloud of avalanche snow from Nuptse covered base camp one day; on the 13th, the tents at C1 were crushed by ten meters of snow which came off the SW Face of Everest, and their contents were lost.

The Icefall was moving every day. Two minutes after Bon went through it, a huge serac collapsed, and these collapses occured frequently.

On the 20th, Bon left BC to go to Gorak Shep, from where a small helicopter evacuated him to Kathmandu.

Sherpa:
Pasang Tenzing, 21/1/78, Phortse, Everest X8, Cho Oyu X1