원정 개요

The members included in Pauner's Lhotse permit were semi-independent parties: 1) Pauner and Perez; 2) Soria (and his Sherpa Muktu); and 3) Garra, Garcia and Oiarzabal. According to Perez, "We were three teams sharing everything at BC (Nepali staff, kitchen, etc). On the mountain, Soria worked separately from us with his Sherpa Muktu, but on many days we were together (during good weather periods, everybody climbed to upper camps.)"

All the members reached the summit, but some of them developed serious health problems during or after their descent, and one was briefly thought to be dead.

Five members, Garra, Gonzalez, Oiarzabal, Pauner and Perez left C4 on 21 May at 1:00 am. They were confronted by deep fresh snow, but carried on to the top. Soria and Muktu Lhakpa did not leave until 11:30 am, but they are fast climbers. The group summited between 1:10 and 1:30 pm.

Then when they were coming down from the top, disaster struck Gonzalez. He didn't arrive at C4 on the 21st as expected; he was extremely tired and bivouacked at 7900m on a rock buttress called the Turtle. According to a report distributed by leaders of the teams involved in several rescue efforts of Lhotse climbers, when Gonzalez was seen from a distance, he looked to be dead. Damian Benegas of the Argentinian Everest expedition, who was descending from Everest's C4 to C3, saw the inert body and immediately left his Everest party in the hands of his Sherpas. Benegas and a professional guide on his expedition, Matias Erroz, headed towards Lhotse C4, and after giving help to two stranded Spanish climbers there, moved down to Gonzalez, and found that he was actually alive: he had survived the night out at 7900m.

"When they arrived, he (Gonzalez) was conscious but unable to moved from the waist down. Due to his precarious position far from the fixed rope and in grave danger of a fatal fall, it took more than two hours of complex and dangerous rescue techniques to get Manuel Gonzalez to C4. Meanwhile, Phurba Tashi and Nigma Chhiri, two Himex (Russell Brice's team) Sherpas, had begun their ascent from C2 to the scene of the accident with a stretcher. They arrived at C4 in the afternoon and immediately initiated descent with the casualty back down towards C2 (6400m). With the help of at least 20 other people in the final few hundred meters, Manuel Gonzalez arrived at C2 at half past midnight," and the following day he was evacuated from C2 by helicopter.

Oiarzabal started to collapse while descending from C1 through the Icefall to BC because of extreme dehydration and was administered oxygen there. He was a hospital patient in Kathmandu for several days.

Soria, too, was admitted to a Kathmandu hospital. On 26 May he was under treatment for a serious kidney problem.

Pauner did not take oxygen to BC for the team. Soria and his Sherpa used their own oxygen in C4 to the summit to and in C4. Perez bought some from Brice's expedition and used it from C2 to the top to and in C2. Gonzalez was administered oxygen during his rescue, and, as stated above, Oiarzabal was given it during his descent through the Icefall below C1.

Sherpas:
Muktu Lhakpa Sherpa, 21/8/72, Tashigaon, Makalu vdc, Everest X3,
Dhaulagiri I X3, Manaslu X2, K2 X1
Nurbu Sherpa, 10/12/84, Nurbugaon, Makalu, Everest X1, Lhotse X1, Kangch X1