Today has been a day of tragedy in the climbing World.  As mentioned in a previous post (found just below this one) Lara Kellogg has reportedly died on Mt. Wake and now more tragedy coming in from the world of Alpine Climbing as being reported from The Alpinist.

Andi Orgler, from Austria, has apparently been killed in a hang-gliding accident in a competition in Australia after his equipment Malfunctioned.

Andi Orgler was famous in the world of Alpine Climbing for putting up many first ascents, as well as many first ski descents.  His popularity grew throughout the climbing world during the 1980’s and 90’s as he converged on an amazing series of ascents in The Ruth Gorge in Alaska with differing partners.  For his amazing climbs in The Ruth Gorge, Orgler was awarded  the Piolet de’Or in 1995.

It is also being noted that another famed Alpinist, Kasper Ochsner has dissappeared while attempting a solo, winter climb of the Engelhorner.  Ochsner was a Swiss Mountain Guide, Ski Instructor, as well as part owner of a well known Swiss climbing shop.

Oschner was well known in Switzerland as a pioneer in Alpine Rock Climbing, having put up many of the toughest routes in Switzerland.   Oschner also put up a new route on The Eiger as well.

One Day, Three Tragic Deaths.  Kellogg, Orgler, and Ochsner will be dearly missed, but fondly remembered for their individual contributions to the world of mountain climbing.

As always with a death in the climbing community, The Adventurist will go to “black” mode as a symbol of mourning and respect for our fallen brothers and sister.

Our thoughts and Prayers are with the climbers’ family and friends as they try to cope with today’ tragedies.  They will be missed dearly.

The news is just breaking about this very tragic incident occuring on Mt. Wake and comes to us from The Adventure Blog.

Lara-Karena Kellogg has died while descending Mt. Wake.  This tragic accident took place Monday, April 23, 2007.  The news is just breaking as authorities had held up the information pending the notification to her husband who was climbing in China at the time of the accident.

Lara was climbing with partner Jed Brown.  Mr. Brown has subsequently released what happened during this fateful day and I urge all of you to head on over and check out this heart wrenching report.

The Second Dhauligiri Summiter this season, Jorge Egocheaga, has been medically evacuated from Dhauligiri Basecamp.  His evacuation came about after he was hit by an avalanche and subsequently fell into a crevasse while descending.

The Avalanche and the fall into the crevasse wasn’t the reason for the Medic Evac though.  It seems that during his journey down Dhauligiri, Egocheaga recieved a pretty bad case of frostbite.

His partner and the First summiter of Dhauligiri this season, Inaki Ochoa, is also suffering from a much lesser case of frostbite as well.

For more on this story, head on over to ExplorersWeb.  Ochoa talks about their conditions and the subsequent medical Evacuation of his partner Jorge Egocheaga.

This news is coming in from all over the place right now…ExplorersWeb, Alan Arnette, The Adventure Blog and EverestNews is all reporting on the first Everest summits of the 2007 season today.

First reports were that the two man team of Vassily Pivtsov and Maxud Zumaev had reached The summit of Everest at 6 pm Chinese Time today, at which time the two contacted Alex Abramov from the summit.  The reports coming in say Vassily and Maxud left at around 10 pm lastnight to begin their long journey up Everest.  The two reached the summit without using O2 or Sherpa support and both can now claim their 11th 8,000 meter peak.

Just a couple of days ago Vassily and Maxud made a push for the summit of Everest, but had to turn back as bad weather started to descend upon them.  The two are now trying to race back down Everest as fast as possible to make camp at a lower altitude.

After this news was released, another report came down.

It is rumored, as no “official” word has came in yet, that 5 Sherpas from the Himex team had reached the summit as well today…30 minutes prior to Vassily and Maxud. 

It seems the Sherpas after finishing the arduous task of laying lines to the upper reaches of Everest, decided to have a go themselves.

This is great news.  These seven summitters reached this plateau on the exact same date as last years first summits.

I am sure this will definately ignite some of these other teams to persue their summit bids as well in the coming days.  The Chinese Team will definately be on the watch for the right opportunity, as well as an Indian team that is supposedly making it’s way up as we speak.

As far as some of the other teams led by Expedition companies, most will probably stay right on track.  Their acclimitazation is their main concern right now and much care will be taken before making their summit bids.  Right now, the date floating around for a couple of the teams is May 5.  In the coming week we will definately be looking for some great action over on Everest.

The Adventurist Congratulates The 5 Himex Sherpas as well as Vissily and Maxud upon their successful Summit Bids.  Now, come on back down–and keep safety in mind..

I logged in today to check things out here at The Adventurist, and maybe some of my loyal readers noticed it as well, but things just didn’t seem to look right here on the site…

A lot of the things in my sidebar here had 1) dissappeared or 2) been rearranged.  First thought:  Hackers.  I guess that is probably the main worry of having put so much time and effort in to something…that someone would take the time to break in and completely destroy the site, or at least have a little bit of fun.

Needless to say, I am pretty sure my first instinct is wrong.  I think Wordpress, whom I have this blog thru is in the middle of some sort of upgrade, as all of my information is still in tact, thank god, but just had to be put back in to place.

It has still taken a couple of hours of needless work and frustration, but at least I have everything back.  I am sure others are having the same problem here today with Wordpress, and more than likely The Wordpress Engineers had know Idea that this would occur.

In ending, I would like to say that I am sorry for any inconvienence that this has caused–but things are pretty well back to order.  Still have to do a couple of adjustments, but other than that, it is a go here at The Adventurist.

The South Col Route Update 

Over the past couple of days many teams on the South side of Everest have been concentrating on tidying up their tents, preparing their packs for the venture higher, and in a word..resting.

One thing that is being mentioned quite frequently though this weekend is the abundance of avalanches around the area.

First from Dave Hahn climbing with the IMG team:

“Today there were a couple of massive avalanches off the Lo La just here near Base Camp that dusted the upper edges of Base Camp and dusted – I could see a bunch of climbers coming down near the bottom of the Icefall and it covered them in the cloud but not the debris, so everybody was all right. But pretty exciting avalanches to watch. “

This came from April 28. Dave’s comment today mentions yet another avalanche:

“Really fun day, couple of spectacular avalanches off Nuptse, didn’t affect anybody but fun to watch. “

Over on TA Loeffler’s Expedition site, she comments as follows:

“A major avalanche just let go from the West Shoulder-it sent spindrift snow all over basecamp. Amazing to watch from afar. There is a huge line of people coming down the icefall. We think it is the group bringing Dawa Sherpa’s body down.”

Speaking of Dawa Sherpa, the first casualty of Everest this season, it seems that his body is being brought off of Everest. To me, this seems strange. I always thought it was customary that if a Sherpa dies on Everest, that his body stays–this is do to a religious element which brings eternal life. If anyone knows more about this, please feel free to leave a post here. I will ask around and see what I can find out.

Back to Dawa Sherpa. Here is a report from Dan Mazur from SummitClimb which will shed some light on todays events:

“today was a bitersweet day, starting with an early flight to the basecamp helipad by a shiny deep green, precisely flown nepal army helicopter.  we sadly watched as sergio martini and his team loaded the body of the deceased sherpa dawa onto the helicopter. we said our prayers for the fallen sherpa, then sergio came by and we reminisced about old times climbing together on gasherbrum 1 in 1994 with sergio and fausto destefani and jon pratt and andy collins and friends”

I am sure that anyone who witnessed this event was brought to tears. 

A special Kudos goes out to Dan Mazur though for doing the following:

“ended with sergio asking if we would provide a sherpa to his team, as they have now tragically lost theirs. we said of course we would and discussed how best to go about this with our sherpas who are currently restocking camp
2 after a big wind storm destroyed our c2 kitchen tent two nights ago.”

Speaking of the windstorm, I am also hearing that not only SummitClimb’s tents were destroyed, but that a good percentage of the whole camp was leveled.  This is actually the first I have heard of this from reports.

As you can see, even when everyone is on a “rest” day, there can still be quite the excitement taking place around Everest. The elements play a large part in this as no one is for certain how the weather on Everest will be from day to day–or even hour to hour.

Luckily with all of the Avalanche excitement and the collapse of the Khumbu Icefalls, along with windstorms–no one has been seriously injured, as of yet, except for the unfortunate death of Dawa Sherpa–which, by most accounts, could have been avoided.

It has been brought to my attention that this site, “The Adventurist”, is once again being mentioned in a couple of different places around the climbing community.

As always, it is a great honor to be recieving recognition for something that is so enjoyable to do–as well as to know that I do have so many dedicated readers of this site, that not only enjoy the articles, but that are also spreading the word about “The Adventurist”.

The first site, “The MountainWorld Blog“, has been talked about recently on here as well.  This blog is ran by Jake Norton, a two-time Everest Summiter as well as fulltime Mountain Guide, Speaker, and Professional Photographer.

Jake is also giving kudos and recognition to some more of my friends as well, including Alan Arnette, Kraig over at The Adventure Blog, and Everest News. 

Here are a couple of posts I have done about Jake and “The MountainWorld Blog“:

Responsibility and Death on Everest:  A Response Comes In…”

Everest Trash or Treasure:  Climbers Debris Tells of Historical Past

I also suggest checking out Jake’s Blog, not only the front page, but dig into those archives–there is plenty of great Everest stuff to be found, as well as issues delving in to day to day motivation.  A great site and one that I have barely began to break the surface of.

The second site mentioning “The Adventurist” this week was Kraig’s “The Adventure Blog“.  It is basically mentioning my coverage of the recent death of Dawa Sherpa on Everest, you may find this article here:

Everest Claims First Life of the Season

You may also read not only ‘The Adventurist” coverage of this tragic event, but also all of the previous 2007 Everest Coverage by clicking

The Complete Coverage!  Everest 2007! 

A couple of things Kraig’s blog has been covering recently is his magnificent trip and excursion up Mt. Kilimanjaro and The Top 10 Gear of the past 5 years from Gear Junkie.  Both pieces are great and well worth the read.

The third and final mention for today comes from 7Summits.  For those of you not familiar with the 7Summits website, here is a little bit of information.  The 7Summits website, as it would suggest, pertains to the highest peak on each of the seven continents.

Currently 7Summits has a team in place on this years Mount Everest Expedition being ran by Alex Abramov and they are also sending out daily reports via their site.

“The Adventurist” was recently mentioned in the 7Summits Forum.  This forum is a congregation of climbers from all over the world, speaking whatever is on their minds, but particularly pertaining to the seven summits.

This particular 7Summits forum thread is dedicated to Everest: Beyond the Limit, The Discovery Channel’s successful Reality Show taking place in Real-Time on Everest.  You may find the Story they are discussing here:

Unarmed on Everest 2007

Once again, I want to give a big THANK-YOU to all three of these sites and my dedicated readers for bringing me such recognition in public.  Each and every mention of this website on other places around the Web is truly an honor and I am very humbled.  Thank-you.

J. Alan Hendricks, Editor

As most teams are currently in the midst of acclimating and moving between camps, I thought it would be a good time to share a very interesting piece I ran across today..

Jake Norton, two-time Everest summiter and a member of the 2001 Mallory-Irvine Research Expedition has written a very good piece on the historical significance of some Everest “Debris” he ran across while on his 2001 Research Expedition. 

Jake does run his own blog called “The MountainWorld Blog”, filled with some great stories and features not found anywhere else.

This article is very detailed in that it outlines the specific history and what led to this amazing discovery–as well as some history with Everest Expeditions of the past.

I will give you the first paragraph, and if it intrigues you as much as it did me, stop by his blog and read the rest of this great piece!

HERE IT IS:

“Soon, I was scrambling along the crest of the ridge, being constantly wary of the silent killers to my left: huge cornices overhang the great Kangshung (East) Face of Everest… Get too close, and you will pop through their fragile, snowy veneer and take a 10,000 foot sled ride down below. Trying my best to ignore that unpleasant reality to my left, I gazed about looking for more evidence of the climbers of old. Ahead, a familiar object: a long, ribbed oxygen bottle with bright blue paint. I knew this well from 1999 as a 1975 Chinese O2 cylinder. Others lay nearby. I radioed down to Jochen at Basecamp, and he mentioned that I could be near the sight of the 1975 Chinese Camp VII (which was later used by the American Ultima-Thule 1984 Expedition). Sure enough, just on the crest of the ridge in a small snow-and-rock dish lay a tent with thick, old-school aluminum poles and several more blue oxygen cylinders. The Chinese were certainly here in ‘75. I moved along. “

And HERE is the link to the REST of this great article:

Everest Gear Circa. 1933

A word of note:  In a couple of the Everest Expedition Blogs this season, it has been mentioned that people are starting to look around the mountain and see what they find.  Most expeditions from the past had the habit of leaving things such as tents, sleeping bags, Oxygen tanks and items from day to day life on Everest, behind.  Some of these items, if they can genuinely be traced back to an exact expedition could be quite valuable–not only monetarily but very much so in a “historical” perspective as time keeps raging on..Hope you enjoy Jake’s great article and let him know I sent ya–I am sure he will appreciate being acknowledged for the time and effort put in to this article.

As many expeditions and Everest News Sites were reporting earlier today, The Khumbu Icefall become the victim of a very early morning avalanche.

As teams were setting out to cross the Khumbu and make their way to Camp 1, it was quickly noticed that they would have no chance of crossing today.  The avalanche completely wiped out at least one strategic ladder, and possibly others, during its destruction–but no lives were lost.  That was the first good news.

The second good news is coming from Pat Hickey today in his latest expedition report.  He has stated that the “Icefall Doctors” have secured and navigated their way through the Icefall and have replaced the fallen ladder(s). 

The Khumbu Icefall is now able to be crossed but everyone will still use today as a rest day and plan on venturing up to Camp 1 tomorrow.