Makalu expedition

Sunday, May 4, 2008 - 21:00

Camp Two at about 6700m established in mild snow storm.

Well, I just posted my update on May 1st and what I feared most happened: the weather turned bad. This did not affect our plan in the beginning. We just climbed up to Camp One to spent another night for acclimatization. In the very morning of May 3rd it mildly started snowing but initially we thought this will not give us much trouble :)

 

At about half way to Camp Two the snowing got much worse and we had to abseil down like fifty meters where we found an abandoned tent. It looked like abandoned at least, a lot of ice inside and the inside and outside covers were broken in many places. We spent a not so bad bivouac and in the next morning we reached Camp Two in a mild snowfall (although it snowed over night more than thirty new cm of snow). In the meantime we found out one fixed rope, supposedly Korean, broke with a Spanish climber abseiling down from Makalu La. It seems not the ice anchor but the rope itself broke. The guy felt about twenty meters luckily just with minor injures.

 

Today we were also happy to know that one Brit and one Sherpa from the British Army Team made the first summit of the season, both using oxygen masks. Unfortunately I do not know yet their names. As a funny thing here, it seems almost all teams rely on Sherpa support, as a kind of a prerequisite to success. For the moment we are resting in the ABC, the next step being establishing our Camp Three on Makalu La, at 7400m and spend two nights there for acclimatization.

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