Hi Again, Some of you who are unfamiliar with high altitude mountaineering might wonder why it takes so long to climb Everest, 50-60 days is a long time to live in a tent. There are two reasons why. Firstly, It is imperative that climbers give their bodies time to acclimate to the low air pressure. The best way to do this is to climb slowly and in increments. As you can see from teh chart above, which depicts my climb from 2003, we climbed up and down several times, each time gaining a higher elevation. For example, Max will climb to the North Col camp probably in the next week or so and depending on how he and his teammates feel, they may spend a night there. At that point, however, he will not be ready to climb higher and must descend to ABC (Advanced Base Camp) or base camp to rest and recuperate. The second reason is that the team needs to establish the route and put in place their gear. Each camp must be set up and stocked with supplies so that when the final summit push is made (which lasts about 4 days) they can rely on each camp to have tents, food and oxygen ready. Because of the slow nature of climbing at those altitudes it takes many, many man hours to get all those tents, stoves, fuel, oxygen, etc up the mountain. It also takes a lot of time to get all that stuff off the mountain at the end.
So, you can see from my 2003 climb the duration of the climb and how I went up and down for the reasons mentioned above. Best, Walid
Walid. Allister Taggart here writing from Ireland. My nephew, Stephen Green, is in the same group with Max. I just wanted to say that you are doing a great job for Max. I've found your blogs and photos very informative and interesting. Keep up the good work and good luck to all the guys climbing with Adventure Peaks. Kind regards Allister.
ReplyDeleteThanks Allister. I am very excited for Max and the others. It is a shame that their satallite is down as I would prefer to keep his blog interesting in his own words. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. All the best,
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