원정 개요

From SummitClimb website:

The season began in early April, after a snowy winter. The snow continued to fall lightly through the middle of April and the temperatures remained moderate. Our teams began arriving in Everest's Khumbu Valley at Lukla on 9 April. Our beautiful Himalayan trek arrived in basecamp on 17 April. While acclimatising at basecamp we completed a series of fun training walks, ice climbing practice sessions and forays into the mighty Khumbu icefall near basecamp. On 25 April, after lots of rest and training, we climbed the icefall during the wee hours up to camp 1 at 6100 metres / 20,000 feet.

Upon arriving in Camp 1, we had just retreated inside the tents when, at 12:00 noon, the glacier we were camped upon began violently rolling like the ocean and then a large avalanche let loose from the high above west ridge of Everest sweeping camp 1 with spindrfit snow and winds. We radioed down to basecamp to find out that a huge ice avalanche from Mount Lingtren had destroyed basecamp. Later we found out that that a 7.5 earthquake had hit the entire Nepal and Tibet region with as many as 10,000 people dead or missing. In basecamp around 20 people had been killed or were missing in the aftermath of the 1 minute earthquake. One of those tragically lost was Tom Taplin, a film maker who had chosen to not climb up to camp 1, but rather to stay in his tent in basecamp. He was later found hurled by high winds 300 metres / 500 feet from camp, near his broken camera. Our deepest condolences to the lost climber's family, friends, and colleagues. Needless to say, the route through the icefall was destroyed, with little possibility of safe descent and all 100 plus people in camp 1 were helicopter evacuated down to basecamp. Upon arrival we found basecamp to be leveled flat, a total loss.

All teams spent the next several days digging through the snow for their lost posessions, and then trekking and helicoptering back to Kathmandu.