Berg Adventures 2013 Everest Expedition Dispatch

April 9, 2013 – First Khumbu Icefall Day

Tuesday night! With our first Khumbu Icefall day of the Everest season. Berg Adventures team had great success today. At 3:30 in the morning, Tashi and Tshering and A Rita, three climb Sherpas had a quick breakfast, set into the Khumbu Icefall and did a complete, first carry up into the Western Cwm. We’re beginning to stock it already.

Dawa (Danuru), our lead climb Sherpa, Daniel and Todd and Steve, and Jatha Rai, who’s going to be our cook, met out at our storage where we began all of our climbing to the Khumbu Icefall and beyond and they took off for a “get used to the Icefall day.”

Steve and Todd and Daniel are good climbers who have a lot of experience on mountains around the world, but they’ve never done the Khumbu Icefall. One of the lead climbing Sherpas for one of the Khumbu climbing schools and he has 15 Everest summits to his credit. But he’s also an excellent teacher and guide. So, it’s interesting, the guys went up today and really hit it well. They talked about techniques, equipment and came back about 11:30am tired, from their first day in the Icefall but feeling really good about the team work aspect of things and their ability to move well together in the Khumbu Icefall.

They reached the elevation of 18,200ft just inside the area that we call the “Popcorn” portion of the icefall. (Lost satellite transmission)

Listen to Wally's call

An early start onto the Khumbu Icefall helps keep the ice frozen during the night.

The icefall at the head of the Khumbu Glacier