원정 개요

C1 was established on 22 April and then all down to ABC. On the 28th C1 was reoccupied, and an attempt to establish C2 on the 29th was foiled at the top of the first ice cliff (6800m) by strong wind and snowfall, and the climbers retreated to ABC.

By the first of May, four members had left the expedition. McEachern never got above BC because of a digestive problem; he returned to Kathmandu on 19 April and left Nepal the next day. Pelizzoni managed to get to C1, then found the climb was too much for him, and he returned to Kathmandu on 26 April and left Nepal on the 27th. His good friend, Gears, got only to ABC and decided to leave with Pelizzoni. McGahan climbed 150m above C1, decided he was not strong enough for this climb, and he returned to Kathmandu on 1 May, left Nepal on 2 May.

On 3 May the remaining four members went back to C1 hoping to carry on higher. But in the morning of the 4th, the sky looked ominous, and Remza decided they had better return to ABC; they did.

It snowed every day from the 5th to the 8th, creating white-out conditions. The reduced team trekked down to Shegar village to get to a lower altitude. On the 10th they took a long day's drive from Shegar to Everest BC and and on to Tingri village and its hot spring.

They went back to their ABC on the 11th and stayed there until the 14th, when they returned to C1. It was extremely windy that night, and no one got more than two hours sleep. The next day they headed up to C2 but at 6700m, at the base of the first ice cliff, McMartin turned around. She had had enough and went back to ABC. The other three established C2 at about 7000m.

The final dropout was Hedberg, who turned back on the 16th on their way to make C3; he got to about 7000m and was too exhausted to continue. That left only two members, Lane and Remza, out of the original eight, to set up C3 and go for the top the next day.

Lane and Remza, Panuru Sherpa and a Tibetan, Pingtso, left C3 at 2:00 am (NST) in their summit bid. They arrived at the summit at 8:00 am, had a fine view of Everest and Lhotse, and then descended. They stopped to rest at C3 and again at C2 but continued to C1, where they arrived at 5:00 pm.

They were in ABC on the 18th. Lane and Remza drove to Tingri on the 19th and to Kathmandu on the 20th.

Panuru said that in his 12 climbs on the mountain, he had never seen Cho Oyu so dry, and the head of IMG, Eric Simonson, back in the USA said, when he saw pictures of the mountain as the team it, he, too, had never seen it so dry. Panuru pointed out that a snowfield, that was normally an important part of the climb, had completely melted away; Remza said they saw ice screws lying on the dry shale surface. There had been a lot of snowfall in April and May, but the winds had blown it away.

Oxygen was used by Lane and Remza in their summit push from C2 all the way to the top and down to C1. Sherpas and Tibetans used none.

Hired:
Panuru Sherpa, 22/5/68, Phortse, Everest X8, Cho Oyu X3
Pingtso, about 35-36 years old, came from Shegar, summited Cho Oyu X3