원정 개요

BC 01/09 4900m
ABC 02/09 5480m
C1 06/09 6000m below the face on the glacier
C2 12/10 7000m on a little arete of snow
C3 14/10 8000m at the base of the Hornbein Couloir
Smt 15/10 by all members 12:42 pm

On 04/09 Puja and on 06/09 up to C1. On 21/09, Morrison and a few others went to C1, stayed the night and continued to C2, not to stay the night, but to acclimatize. Morrison skied down to C1 (this was before the big storm that hit the region on 3/10 and 4/10, so it was not possible to continue to ABC on skis).

Team was contemplating pushing for the summit on 25/09; however, the weather window was too short so they did not go for it. It turned out to be the right decision as the storm hit on 3/10. They sat out the storm and spent all the time at ABC until the right weather window arrived which was very late for the season as usually the jet stream hits the summit of Everest at the beginning of October.

Summit push:

On the summit push, team spent two nights at C2 (12/10 & 13/10) due to the weather. They started their summit push on 14/10 from C3, where everyone left between 5 am (Mena, Morales, Pemba Gelje to fix the rope to the summit), 5:30 am (Perez, Tenjing Gyalzen and Pasang Sona) and 6:15 am (Morrison, Chin, Roepke, Yukta, Pemba Sharwa, Ngima Sherpa). Conditions in the couloir were perfect for climbing, but not so much for skiing. The snow that had fallen during the storm was completely gone with the wind, so it was hard pressed snow and ice in the couloirs. The weather was perfect. There was some wind on the summit, about 25 km/h but calm below the top.

Team spent about an hour on the summit. Before Morrison left, he gave some of his gear to Yukta: “I was very committed. I took off my overboots and my downpants and gave them to Yukta. When I took off my crampons, Yukta asked me what I was going to do with them and after thinking for a minute, I thought “Damn it, I am fully committed” and gave them to him. I think I must have been the first person on this planet to descend Everest without crampons.”

Morrison put his skis on and skied down to the summit rock-band above the Hornbein where he did a very short rappel. He then continued into the Hornbein all the way to the crux of the couloirs at about 8500m. At this point, he took off his skis and rappelled for about 200m (right at the top of the rock crux). After the rappel, he waited for some Sherpas to help him put his skis back on and skied down all the way to C1 with short tea stops at C3 and C2. He reached C1 at about 6 pm.

Once at C1, he screamed and cried and felt elated but was also worried about his teammates, who were still coming down the Hornbein Couloir. Everyone descended the ascent route using the fixed ropes for rappelling and arm wrapping.

Everyone back at C1 at 11 pm without any incidents.

On 16/10, Morrison skied all the way to ABC which was miraculous as this is usually impossible due to a lack of snow. However, thanks to the big dump during the storm, there was sufficient snow to ski all the way. On 17/10 everyone down at EBC.

Morrison’s comment about expedition:

“We were a very able team with everyone knowing what they were doing. Our team of Sherpas was extremely committed, and they had an interest to also climb the Hornbein.”

“Everyone in this expedition played their part!”

“This expedition was completely incident-free!”

“We summited at the 11th hour. We could not have gone a day later as our permit would have run out.”

“This expedition was only possible due to the many years of work and building up trust with the Chinese/Tibetan authorities.”

Team left EBC on 17/10.

Sherpas above BC: 6
Fixed rope: 4000m by Mena, Morales, Yukta, Pemba Gelje

Oxygen: Taken & used from 7000m to top to 7000m by all members & Sherpas.

Organisers:
Alpenglow Expeditions
Beijing Shadow time for filming permit