A few days ago Guy Cotter (Adventure Consultants) wrote a letter complaining about the state of the fixed ropes in the Khumbu Ice-Fall.
He used the word "dire" several times and most of the expedition leaders including this one agreed with him. To understand what the fuss is all about it is worth looking a little at the history of this part of the route.

The Everest Horse Shoe begins with the West Shoulder, runs over the summit of Everest down to the South Col, over Lhotse and continues over the ridge and various summits of Nuptse. It encloses the Western Cwm. The Glacier of the Western Cwm falls down towards base camp via the Khumbu Ice Fall. This is a complex flow of ice, parts of which look like someone has emptied a carton of giant, office size sugar cubes down a stairwell. It comprises loose blocks, ice cliffs and deep crevasses. All these have to be crossed in the least dangerous possible way. A route that passes under an ice cliff that is evidently about to collapse, for example, should be unacceptable. The route is fixed with rope and aluminium ladders are used to bridge crevasses and surmount ice cliffs.

During the period from the first ascent in 1953 to the late 80s the few expeditions that came this way fixed the Ice Fall themselves, collaborating with any other expeditions that happened to be around.
The first commercial trips (with clients and mountain guides) probably started with Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants (NZ) in the early 90s.
AAI (USA) joined the fun in 1993. By 1994 these two were joined by Himalayan Guides, though there were still several strong amateurs such as Alison Hargreaves and and Erhart Loretan on the South side that year. In that year the Nepalese firm of Thamserku fixed the route through the Ice Fall. The expeditions continued to fix the Ice Fall (sometimes in collaboration with the others) the leaders arriving weeks early to do the work.

Fixing the route was cooperation tinged with anarchy. This did not go unnoticed by Mal Duff (UK) who, together with Henry Todd (UK) of Himalayan Guides, began the fixing of the Ice Fall by just one organisation. They used the experienced Sherpas Nima (Dingboche) and Gylazin (Pangboche). These two were their "Ice Fall Doctors".

In 1997 Mal Duff died of unknown causes at base camp, leaving the organising to Himalayan Guides, who continued "managing" the Ice Fall until 1999. In 2000 the Nepalese Government gave the job of fixing the Ice Fall to the NGO, the SPCC (Sagarmartha pollution Control Committee), who have fixed the route to date. The main Ice Fall Doctors were now Nima and another Gyalzin from Namche. By 2004 they were joined by Ang Kami and Nawang Nuru. The SPCC raised a charge of around 3k USD per expedition for the fixing of the Ice Fall, and the fee is quite separate from the climbing permit cost of 10k USD per expedition member. Over the last 7 years the number of expeditions has steadily risen and there are around 20 expeditions here this year. So the total cash raised by the Ice Fall Fee is around 60k USD. This is significant because that is quite a lot more than is evidently being spent on making the Ice Fall route a safe one.

The job of the Ice Fall Doctor is not only to establish a safe route through the Ice Fall, but also to maintain the route which changes on a daily basis (remember this is a moving glacier, the blocks shift continually, new crevasses open up and ice cliffs collapse). They also need to replace the 10 or so ladders lost every year. (About 60 or 70 are needed in any one year).

This is not to blame the Ice Fall Doctors in person, but to point out the lack of funding for their job. Nevertheless there has been increasing criticism of the route choice over the last two years. Our names for the parts speak for themselves... part of the route this year passes unnecessarily under London Bridge (an unstable block of ice the size of a sea container), the Boulder of Damacles (a barely attached block the size of a garage) and Darwin Award Corner (you guess why!).

When the expeditions themselves fixed the Ice Fall there was an element of control and management by the users, and this is what seems to be missing now. We appear to have no say in the safety of our route.

The gist of Guy's letter then is the SPCC should be able to easily afford to employ more Ice Fall Doctors to safely maintain and revise the route. It would be hard to disagree.

Posted by Victor Saunders at 12:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I am back in Kathmandu for the start of the 2007 Everest season. We will be the same team as for Cho Oyu last autumn, with the addition of James. Sam, Dave, Doug and Wim arrive tomorrow and the next day. We will be six in all, plus of course, our especially wonderful sherpas.

So here I am, beginning the expedition in the time honoured way, with the apparently compulsory visit to Tom and Jerry's pub. On the table before me are three large bottles of Tuborg. I am with a couple of old friends, the music too loud as usual. Can't even hear my friends nless they shout, and in a corner above the bar hangs a television with cricket, where the commentary also struggles hopelessly against the ambient cacophony.My neighbour leans across to yell into my ear, I can only hear half of what she says

"...blah...blah ...going up to Khumbu again...blah ... blah...you must have one of the best jobs in the world!"

"Yes, I suppose I have..." I shouted back.

Glancing up at the television, I was just in time to see a superb catch being taken by the slip fielder. It may have been the alcohol, it may equally have been the noise; but I think it was the cricket. I just could not concentrate. I kept thinking back to my student days, huddled over a drawing board. It was high summer. Windows open, doors banging in the wind. A leaf or maybe stray blade of grass blowing into the room. The radio purring away in the back ground, .I used to listen to TMS (Test Match Special) on long-wave. In those days the voice of summer was John Arlott. A west country poet who brought out the beauty of cricket with his language. He loved it. I don't know what Arlott would have made of the modern game. The betting, the corruption, and now the suspicion of murder.

Where was I ? Oh yes, back in Tom and Jery's... Yes, like Arlott, I love my work too. What could be a better office than the high mountains? And it is wonderful to see the climbing, the trekking and the travelling through the eyes of others. My brother Adam has come from San Francisco to trek up the Khumbu valley with us. Earlier in the day we were sipping coffe in the Java coffee house, looking down on the world. He has never been in Asia before, he saw the same things as me here in Kathmandu but observed a different world to the one I saw. I saw a bustling city. I saw heat dust and the danger from motor bikes to microbes everywhere. Amid all this confusion and distraction I have to pack for the expedition, sort out kit, find out where the less than helpful banks have wired the money to, and worry about the hotel bookings. Meanwhile this is what Adam saw; in his own words;

"The most overwhelming thing here is the traffic and the polution. The streets are crouded and full of tiny little cars, motorbikes, rikshaws and bicyclists who all compete to run over pedestrians. I heard someone mention that breathing Kathmandu air is worse for you than smoking. So many wonderful sights and sounds.

I woke this morning to the sounds of two crows fighting over a dead rat. Along with these crows there were more crows, starlings whistling and dogs barking, and of course, cars honking. This afternoon I stood at the balcony of a resturant watching the street below in which I saw an itinerant cobler sitting on the ground repairing shoes, a bhudist mong talking on a cell phone going by in a rickshaw, and two orange-turbaned and bearded old men playing strange pipes to several baskets of semi-comatosed snakes which occasionally tried to make a half-hearted strike at a passing tourist or a child.

This evening, as we walked past the royal palace, we stopped to ask directions of a Nepali soldier armed with a sten gun. He was small - no more than the size of a child, but in full battle uniform with a helmet and fatigues. He turned out to be very friendly and it was 5 minutes until we could tear ourselves away from his strange pleading questions and observations about England - mostly about what a beautiful and cultured place it was. The conversation was a little slow because of frequent repetition and the fact that the person wanting to do all the talking could not speak English (and we speak almost no Nepali). In short, I am having an absolutely wonderful time."

That was so different from what I had seen in the same time that I resolved there and then to look on the world with fresh eyes; to step back and really look. Even with the best job in the world you sometimes get too wrapped up to see the other, more interesting picture. Step back. It is wonderfully refreshing.

I clutched my beer to my chest, and looked up at the screen again. A near run out, hands going up to appeal.. Ah yes, I remember now, the tiny little trigger for all this rambling. John Arlott, sometime poet, cricket commentator and wine writer for the Guardian newspaper. He also said, and no one could disagree with him, that he had the best job in the world; being paid to watch cricket and drink wine. Not bad eh?

Posted by Victor Saunders at 10:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)