Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Hi Everyone,
I guess the Everest season is just about over although there are still summits being reported. It's not clear to me if these are late reports or if there are still people up there. There were no summits on either side until very late this year but there have been quite a lot in the last week. But it does seem as if the season lasted longer this year - certainly after the May30 deadline that had been usual. The icefall route was maintained until sometime last week. Although I am sure each climber had his/her own big story I guess to me the biggest deal is the apparent helicopter landing on the summit, still somewhat in dispute as to whether they actually landed on the summit (if so they would be credited with the first summit this year). Everest.net has photos but to me they are difficult to interpret. But if the chopper was indeed hovering over the summit, that's good enough for me. It would seem dangerous to actually touch down and I am not sure why that would be such an issue. If the thing could indeed get high enough to hover over the summit, that would seem to be a big technological leap (at least to me).
No real news on the M&I front (although today is the 81st anniversary of their fatal attempt). Only ENews has admitted a search and the wind and weather was so bad all May it doesn't seem as if much searching was done. Of course we will learn what ENews did in their own good time. From Jay we heard that Eric S went over to the North side for at least a time. But there has been no public announcements of the IMG North side activities. Once can get all wound up in speculation but there is just no evidence that IMG did anything on the search. Jake Norton wasn't on Everest this year and Dave Hahn was on the southside. So the usual suspects were missing. And if anyone did make plans, the weather had most people at basecamp for much of time. So it is not clear if everyone's interest has waned or if people are just keeping things quiet until/unless there is real news. Some diehards are convinced that there is still a lot of likely real estate to be searched and artifacts to be found off the standard route. But short of a surprise in the next week or so, there seems to be nothing new this year.
Bruce, sounds like a very special trip. Hope you feel better, Tim.
Best regards,
Rose
I guess the Everest season is just about over although there are still summits being reported. It's not clear to me if these are late reports or if there are still people up there. There were no summits on either side until very late this year but there have been quite a lot in the last week. But it does seem as if the season lasted longer this year - certainly after the May30 deadline that had been usual. The icefall route was maintained until sometime last week. Although I am sure each climber had his/her own big story I guess to me the biggest deal is the apparent helicopter landing on the summit, still somewhat in dispute as to whether they actually landed on the summit (if so they would be credited with the first summit this year). Everest.net has photos but to me they are difficult to interpret. But if the chopper was indeed hovering over the summit, that's good enough for me. It would seem dangerous to actually touch down and I am not sure why that would be such an issue. If the thing could indeed get high enough to hover over the summit, that would seem to be a big technological leap (at least to me).
No real news on the M&I front (although today is the 81st anniversary of their fatal attempt). Only ENews has admitted a search and the wind and weather was so bad all May it doesn't seem as if much searching was done. Of course we will learn what ENews did in their own good time. From Jay we heard that Eric S went over to the North side for at least a time. But there has been no public announcements of the IMG North side activities. Once can get all wound up in speculation but there is just no evidence that IMG did anything on the search. Jake Norton wasn't on Everest this year and Dave Hahn was on the southside. So the usual suspects were missing. And if anyone did make plans, the weather had most people at basecamp for much of time. So it is not clear if everyone's interest has waned or if people are just keeping things quiet until/unless there is real news. Some diehards are convinced that there is still a lot of likely real estate to be searched and artifacts to be found off the standard route. But short of a surprise in the next week or so, there seems to be nothing new this year.
Bruce, sounds like a very special trip. Hope you feel better, Tim.
Best regards,
Rose
