Only Two Interesting Teams On Everest This Spring?

We had an interesting conversation last week with George, the fella who runs the established EverestNews.com web-site and has been running it since the early days back in 1998 or so.

The site is, in our experience, the most reliable source of news about Everest expeditions and summits and it's where we look when we need to check facts or details. George was telling us that this spring, he reckons there are only two expeditions on the mountain that are genuinely interesting, the rest are simply repeats of the standard routes that have put many hundreds of climbers on the summit of the world's highest mountain.

The first, he says, is the small-scale Fantasy Ridge attempt being made by a compact American team in alpine style and being supported by EverestNews itself and led by Dave Watson.

Fantasy Ridge - also known as the East Ridge - is the last major unclimbed ridge route on Everest and that's with good reason, it's simply very, very hard. Situated on the Kangshung side of the mountain, it can take two weeks simply to walk in to base camp, and with only two teams having attempted the route before and not got very far, there's only sketchy knowledge about what awaits.

What does seem clear is that the sun strikes the face early in the morning, potentially creating serious avalanche danger and that the climbing is hard. Neither of the previous teams even managed to climb the intitial buttress and reach the ridge proper.

According to George, the team'd decided to go alpine style because they consider that fixing rope on the route would present unjustifiable risks particularly to Sherpas working with the expedition.

The team will be reporting exclusively to EverestNews.com but we'll try to bring you occasional updates once climbing's underway.

The other expedition George reckons is noteworthy is our very own British Army West Ridge expedition. Again it's an extremely difficult route. First climbed in 1963 by Americans Hornbein and Unsoeld, only 13 climbers have ever summited on the route. To put that in perspective, around 2250 people have stood on the world's highest mountain in total.

No British climber has ever reached the top of the route, so it's a big challenge for the 21 members of the team. They're planning to use a classic expedition pyramid of camps up the mountain partially linked with fixed ropes and it should take approximately six weeks to establish all the required camps and make a summit bid.

We'll tell you more about the bid in due course - the team is at the NEC show if you're heading to Birmingham at the weekend - but you can fill in some of the blanks at the team's web site at www.armyoneverest.com

Finally and very definitely not least, OM member Conan Harrod is back on Everest this year for a second attempt on the mountain after his epic broken leg episode in 2003. 'Survivor', as he's known on the forum, is also raising funds for the Christie Hospital. More here.