It's Everest summit fever according to leading UK guiding outfit
Jagged Globe. The company says that approximately 70-80 climbers are
now at the South Col poised to go for the summit tonight.
According to Jagged Globe's Tom Briggs: 'The first weather window
of the season has been forecast for this weekend. Over the last three
days, climbers have been making their way up the mountain from base
camp to camp 4, which is located at 8000m in the "death zone". At
these altitudes, the body is slowly dying and it is now a race
against time to get to the summit (at 8,850m) and back down
again.
The huge number of climbers on the mountain will raise the spectre
of the 1996 Everest disaster and, despite staggered start times, it's
inevitable that bottlenecks will develops, particularly on the summit
ridge and, in particular, at the Hillary Step.
Climbers will start leaving their tents at around 9 pm and most
will take around 12 hours to reach the top before descending, those
moving too slowly will have to turn around for their own safety,
though with some clients paying up to $65,000 for the climb, it's a
hard decision to make particularly after two months of hard effort
and acclimatisation.
Jagged Globe has a small team of three western climbers supported
by three Sherpas who are now at the South Col. Remarkably, the team
led by top climber Kenton Cool, are able to send back text messages
charting their progress on the mountains. You can read
dispatches from the team here,
at the Jagged Globe web site. Good luck to everybody up there.
The company is one of the few British outfits guiding on Everest and
has a good success record on the mountain. Check below for an
interesting
interview with Jagged Globe's
Steve Bell
where he explains just what he's looking for from a potential Everest
client.
For more general Everest updates, see everestnews.com
Drew
