원정 개요

While acclimatizing, Moro climbed alone to 7750m on 24 April, and in early May (probably the 5th or 6th) the team's Sherpa reached the South Col at 7900m to deposit 12 bottles of oxygen and two tents. These turned out to be the team's high points.

The two clients, Helmut and Hans Peter Karbon, who were brothers, did not go with Moro on 24th April because they were not feeling well. He did not push them to go with him to 7750m because they expected to use oxygen later in their summit bid. All three retreated to BC.

No rope had yet been fixed to the South Col, so the team could not yet go higher. Moro, a helicopter pilot as well as mountaineer, took advantage of this situation to spend a week flying: he went up to 8200m for the American climber, photographer and writer David Breashears to take high-altitude pictures, and he flew various other passengers in the Everest area. The American climber, Dave Hahn, commented, "anytime there was a helicopter going, it was being flown by Simone. He was everywhere at once."

On 22 May Moro and his two members left BC on their summit push. They went to C2 that day and to C3 on the 23rd. On the 24th, Helmut Karmon retreated to BC with a lung problem while Hans Peter Karbon and Moro, who were not using oxygen, went to 7500m, but then turned around. The weather was "lovely" but they saw more than 200 people going for the summit in single file in a queue who were using the one fixed rope, so he was climbing without fixed rope as well as without oxygen. (Han Peter also tried to pass people a little later). Moro saw a person in the queue who couldn't open his jumar and who had to call his Sherpa to open and close it for him. When Moro saw this, he gave up.

Another consideration, he said, was his calculation of the load that was being put on the fixed rope and concluded that so many people pulling on it at the same time, taking two steps per minute, could pull it out and send them tumbling down the mountain.

Moro and Hans Peter went down to BC and Moro decided their climb was finished.

Vittorio Brumotti wanted to ride his mountain bicycle to the summit, but permission was denied by the Nepalese government. He returned to Italy without going to the mountain.