Hinkes Reaches Kangchenjunga Base Camp
Alan Hinkes has arrived at Kangchenjunga base camp in time for his birthday. The Maoist insurgency though, has made travel problematic, with Russian climbers attacked on the road.
Posted: 28 April 2005
by Jon
The latest news from Alan Hinkes in Nepal is that he's now reached
Kangchenjunga base camp on the day before his 51st birthday, so happy
birthday Alan. Soberingly that means that Hinkesy was just one year
old when the mountain was first climbed by Joe Brown and George Band
back in the 1950s.
 As
most OM users will know, if Alan succeeds in climbing the mountain,
it'll be the first Briton to summit all 14 of the world's 8000 metre
plus peaks. Just reaching base camp presented problems of its own
thanks to the Maoist insurgency.
As you may have heard, a bus carrying a Russian team to Everest
was attacked, with an explosion leading to one of the Russian
climbers being hospitalised with serious injuries. In addition, the
Maoists are blocking roads out of Kathmandu making road travel to and
from the capital problematic.
As a result, Alan's sponsors, Berghaus, paid for a helicopter to
transport him to the roadhead from where he trekked into
Kangchenjunga's remote base camp. From there, via his satellite
phone, Hinkes said, "It's snowing pretty hard but it's not too cold
(about minus 10 Celsius). I'm feeling as well as can be expected in
these early stages of acclimatisation and hopefully 'll start
getting out and about in the next few days.
"I'm also pretty chuffed to have made it up here in time
for my birthday and cook has promised to knock me up a cake later.
I'd like to thank for everyone who has sent messages of support to
me via the Berghaus website and I'll call in again soon, I
promise."
Alan hopes to summit some time in the middle of May and be back
home by early June. You can find out more from our previous articles
below and via the Berghaus
web site. More news from Alan as soon as we have it.
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