First Live TV Pics Beamed From Everest Summit

Well, it had to happen eventually, for the first time live TV pictures have been broadcast from the top of Everest.

The pictures were taken by a Chinese team climbing for the north side and shown live on Chinese television as well as on Sky News. They reportedly show several climbers on the summit, more approaching and, eventually, a deterioration in the weather conditions as they wait for the rest of the team to arrive. Reports say that 11 climbers reached the summit.

You can read the full story and see stills from the film here on the Chinese TV web site.

According to this story on CNN, the Chinese beat an American team hoping to broadcast from the roof of the world. That team was the one based around an American TV game show, Global Extreme Challenge, the winners of which got a crack at climbing Everest.

The Chinese TV pictures - see the CCTV web site - were part of a mammoth effort involving some 83 people and three climbers recruited from the Tibet mountain climbing school as summit cameramen. The team broadcast from the mountain for two hours a day in the ten days leading up to summit day and a further six hour epic today, Wednesday.

So there you go, 50 years on and Everest really is a game show. It all makes the classic BBC broadcast from the Old Man of Hoy look like a modest, straightforward sort of undertaking.

Latest:

Latest updates see everestnews.com which is reporting that a climber with a broken leg high on the mountain is being helped down by other mountaineers and Sherpas. Most, if not all, of the successful climbers seem to have climbed the mountain from Tibet and one report says that over 60 climbers tried for the summit on Tuesday night but were turned around by fierce winds.