원정 개요

High point of 8500m by Nooruddin, Mingmar Gurung, Sukhdev Singh, Chatter Singh, Sukhvir, Krishna Bahadur Kuwar, Tsewang Chosgail.

Ang Furba, who was leading the Sherpa rope-fixing team, fell to his death at around 12 noon. He fell down past the climbing team.

The team waited for about 45 minutes as Jamwal (the leader) was not in communication as he was just descending from Everest. They did not know what to do. However, they turned back as the rope was not fixed all the way to the summit. The Sherpas went down after Ang Phurba's fall. They all descended to C4, collected their things and then continued to C2, where they arrived at 6:30 pm.

The route was in condition, but the rope fixing was bad. A lot of rope from the previous year was used. 3 Sherpas from Arun Treks helped fix the rope.

Oxygen:
Used from C3 to high point to C3 by members.
Used from C4 to high point to C4 by members.

Note from Russell Brice:

What happened on Lhotse?

Like for Everest there were various meetings at BC concerning Lhotse. It was quite apparent that the largest team for Lhotse was the Indian Army team with Arun Treks, so it was mutually agreed that they would deal with the logistics. Many of the other Lhotse climbers were climbing Everest first and then going to attempt Lhotse, so there was very little enthusiasm from many teams. The rope, oxygen and equipment was already at C2 so part of the logistics were already in place. But for some reason it appears that there was constantly a lack of co-ordination with load carrying. Often Sherpas would turn up to carry loads at 02:00 in the morning to be told that Arun had changed their plan and were not working on that day. From a distance some of us were wondering why the rope and material was being accumulated at the Lhotse C4 but was not going any higher, and there did not seem to be a plan to combine all participating teams together for the summit fixing. As it turned out just a very few rope fixers turned up, and it seems that although these young lads were very keen, fit and strong, and had attended the Khumbu Climbing Centre courses in the past, so were technically good climbers, they however lacked rope fixing experience. So instead of fixing new rope and changing the anchors and associated tat, they just tied new rope onto old rope and climbed on that until it ran out and then tied new rope to fill the gap. As there was a lack of coordinated support it is not surprising that they ran out of rope well below the summit, but being keen and enthusiastic one young Sherpa started to pull old rope out of the snow. Remembering that this rope is now three years old as nobody has been on Lhotse for the past two years and the last rope to be fixed there was in 2013. Apparently, suddenly the old rope suddenly broke free and Ang Furba lost his balance and fell off, and not being clipped to the rope he fell the full length of Lhotse to his death to arrive just 20m away from the crampon point at the bottom of the Lhotse Face. Of course this has a devastating effect on others who witness the falling man and also have the unenviable job of collecting his body, so it is not surprising that there is a sudden lack of interest in summiting Lhotse. Besides now we know that the job has not been done well and so a totally new effort is required. I am sorry, but this is a totally needless death of a young and promising Sherpa lad, and also resulted in no Lhotse summits this year.