Himalaya Spring 2019: Peruvian Climber Perishes on Makalu, Solo Summit on Ama Dablam.

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Kraig Becker

With high winds still buffeting the Himalaya I fully expected today to be a day where there wouldn’t be much news to report. Sadly, that isn’t the case and while there is some good information to share, there is also more tragic news to report as well.

Yesterday, Peru’s most prolific and famous climber Richard Hidalgo was found dead in his tent in Camp 2 at 6600 meters (21,635 ft) on Makalu. The climber had been helping the rope fixing teams on Tuesday and appeared to be in good health and spirits. In fact, he was getting ready to make a summit push on the mountain over the next few days without the use of supplemental oxygen. Hidalgo was discovered by Sherpas working with Seven Summit Treks as they were preparing to head higher. He was 52 years old.

Hidalgo’s goal was to climb all of the 8000-meter peaks without the use of bottled Os. He had already knocked off Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Annapurna, Shishapangma, Gasherbrum II, and Broad Peak. He had also attempted Everest on five separate occasions, but hadn’t quite added that to his list yet. His ambitious plans included getting the other eight mountains before 2021 when Peru celebrates the 200th anniversary of its independence.

As is always the case with these kinds of stories, our thoughts are with his friends and family in these trying times.

Spring Himalaya Season 2019 part 1.

02/05/2019

• The Malaysian climber rescued from Annapurna, Wui Kin Chin, has died in hospital. Was his rescue delayed by red tape?
• High winds and snow predicted on Everest over the weekend as Cyclone Fani hits India
• The rope fixing team on the south side of Everest has reached the South Col and Camp 4, they will now head down as the weather turns

Everest Base Camp and the edge of the Khumbu Icefall. Photo: Aimee Silver

01/05/2019

• The rope fixing team on Everest’s Nepal side has almost reached the Geneva Spur, tomorrow they will push on towards Camp 4 and the South Col
• Commercial teams are studying weather forecasts in an effort to determine when to start their second rotations
• The Himalayan Times is reporting the death of a Nepali Sherpa on Cho Oyu near Camp 2
• Nirmal Purja Magar announces he will try Dhaulagiri without O2 as part of his project to complete all 14 8000ers within seven months

Climber Rupert Jones-Warner approaches the summit of Annapurna. Photo: Don Bowie

Bielecki: Why I’m Going Back to Annapurna.

Polish climbing ace Adam Bielecki is leaving this weekend for another crack at the daunting Northwest Face of Annapurna. He will follow the same route, in the same style and with the same climbing mate, Felix Berg. Although frazzled by juggling last-minute preparations with daily workouts, he found time to discuss his latest project with ExplorersWeb.

In the past months, Bielecki has renounced the winter Himalaya and focused totally on Annapurna. This is why he dropped his original plan to go to Patagonia during the southern summer. “Patagonia is spectacular, but you may spend three months there and only climb three days,” said Bielecki, about the place’s famously vicious weather.

Instead, he and his team looked for conditions roughly equivalent to those on 8,091m Annapurna. They chose to ice climb intensively around Kandersteg, Switzerland, then storm some classic Alpine lines, such as the 1,200m Colton-McIntyre route up the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses, which they climbed in a single push.

Now back home, he hits the gym five times a week, combining the climbing wall, stairs and treadmill with weightlifting and core work. “But if you ask me how I’ve prepared for Annapurna, I can honestly say that I have been training for the last 20 years of my life,” he says.

Oddly, the aesthetic line up Annapurna’s Northwest Face came up as a plan B when, back in 2017, the climbing team was refused a permit to attempt a new route on the North Face of Cho Oyu. Since then, though, Bielecki and Berg have dropped their previous goal and taken up what he describes as a rare privilege in the 21st century: an unclimbed line on a lonely, rarely attempted face. Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander opened the only previous route on the face in 1985, but they eventually traversed to the NW ridge and avoided the summit triangle.

Bielecki and Berg considered adding a third member to the team — as they did in 2017, with Scotland’s Rick Allen — but not for long. “We needed someone we knew well and who was as strong as we are, but we found none,” Bielecki said.

He believes that they’ve learned their lesson from their previous failure. “I feel super- excited, happy to go,” he insisted. On their previous attempt, he explained, bad weather was the final blow that thwarted the expedition, but it was not the only one. “We climbed too heavily loaded, with 23kg backpacks. In the end, they slowed us down too much.”

This time, the two men are paring down their load ounce by ounce and believe that if the weather cooperates, or at least isn’t too perverse, they have an excellent chance of success.

Bielecki admits that their approach isn’t what he’d call pure alpine style. By his definition, that would require a totally on-sight attempt, and both of them know the route up to 6,500m, their highest point reached in 2017.

Everest 2018: Zos, Yaks, Porters and Helicopters.

When planes, trains and automobiles are not available to move your stuff, you do what you have to, to move your stuff. And that’s what we are seeing right now from Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp.

Pause for a moment and think about how much gear it takes to support a team, it can be overwhelming. Even a small team of a handful of climbers will have a couple of cooks, separate tents for dining, cooking and sleeping. Then the large teams add another few tents for storage and toilets. The high-end guides will have communications tent and even a “relaxation” tent.

All of this is at base camp where you live, eat and sleep for the better part of six weeks. Speaking of food, it also must be stored somewhere and there has to be fuel for the stoves, and sometimes heaters. Then there are generators, solar panels and on and on. Oh and don’t forget a few thousand oxygen bottles.

As you go higher, climbers share tents and often eat in the cooking tent.  Then there are the fixed ropes with snow bars, pitons, carabiners, ladders and everything else you need to actually move up the Hill. Regardless, the problem remains of how to get that gear up there.

So how does all the stuff get to base camp? On the Tibet side, it’s straightforward. Huge trucks haul it in on paved roads. However, it’s a different story on the Nepal side. Since Everest is within the Sagarmatha National Park where motorized vehicles are not allowed on the trails, everything is transported on the backs of people or animals or in a heavy duty helicopter. Lets first look at how the expeditions move their group gear to base camp and then how the personal gear is handled.

Base Camp tents

Inside the Himex Dome

Himex White Pod

AirYak

Freight helicopter at Syangboche

It may seem obvious to just use a helicopter to ferry tons of tents, stoves, fuel, etc. from Kathmandu to the foot of the Khumbu Icefall, but they are expensive and risky. If one goes down with all your gear, your season might be lost. Usually a version of a Russian cargo helicopter flies gear to a relatively low landing strip close to Namche Bazaar, at Syangboche, at 12,410’/3782m. Any higher might be impossible given the heavy loads. From there, the gear is shifted to animals and people.

Most expeditions use a combinations of animals – yaks and dzomos aka dzo. This last beast is a cross between a yak and a cow and can haul loads under 14,000 feet. They are smaller than yaks but not as happy! OK, so how do I know? Well all I know is that I get happy seeing a yak, so they must be happy as well. 🙂

All kidding aside, yaks are huge furry beast of burden that can seemingly go forever at glacial speed. They are colossal animals with a full-grown male weighing in at 1,400 pounds and standing 5.5 feet at the shoulders. Yaks have three times more red blood cells than regular cows thus can go higher than their cross-breed siblings. Also their long, thick hair insulates their bodies from winter temperatures that can plummet to -30C (-22F) or colder.

Continuing with “more than you wanted to know about yaks”, they are most comfortable above 14,000 feet probably due to generations of genes nurtured on the high Steppes of Tibet where Nomads constantly moved them between summer and winter pastures at 14,000 to 16,000 feet high. They will forage for food as high as 20,000 feet in the summer but usually don’t go lower than 12,000 feet.  Today, many yak owners in Nepal will not let them go lower than Namche fearing malaria, parasites or other diseases, often carried by cows, sheep and goats. They are treated very well by their owners due to their cash value from expeditions and then their meat at the end of life.