Eighth Update from Xtreme Everest

NOTE: In this dispatch, the first of two parts, the climbers of Caudwell Xtreme Everest reach the summit of Everest, but it's a success in spite of obstacles. The expedition is being covered by MacGillivray Freeman Films for their forthcoming "Return to Everest 3D" IMAX release.

Summit Success
Teamwork and a dramatic high-altitude rescue

“We’re on top.” The words came down to Base Camp at half-past six in the morning of May 23 to the waiting researchers at the Caudwell Xtreme Everest communications tent, who had gathered around the radio all night long. Expedition leader Dr. Mike Grocott, and his fellow physicians Sundeep Dhillon, Chris Imray, Dan Martin, and Nigel Hart, had reached the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest, along with Dave Rasmussen of the BBC and ten Sherpas. The next day, four more team members would also reach the top--Roger McMorrow, Jeremy Windsor, Mick O’Dwyer, and Return to Everest co-director and director of mountain photography Michael Brown--as well as five more Sherpas, bringing the total to 25 members of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition to attain the summit.

Photos show that the climbers reached the South Summit of Everest (28,704 feet) just as the sun broke over the horizon, casting a giant shadow far to the west toward Pakistan. Said Mike Grocott, “It was a wonderful moment cresting the South Summit and seeing for the first time the iconic view of the Hillary Step and the Summit Ridge – and feeling for the first time that success was almost ensured.”

Three hundred feet higher, past the technical challenge of the Hillary Step, the team reached the mountaintop. “At last it was possible to climb no higher,” wrote Chris Imray. Colorful prayer flags from the season’s earlier climbers bedecked the icy summit, but the bitterly cold wind kept time on the top to a minimum.

Though the plan had been for high-altitude medical testing to take place on the summit itself, including the taking of arterial blood for analysis, high winds and low temperatures made conditions for this testing too difficult. The first team had to retreat to the shelter of the stone ridge known as the Balcony some 1,300 feet lower to complete their tests.

“It’s the highest altitude that arterial blood has ever been taken, and I believe it’s the only arterial blood ever taken on Everest,” said communications director Kay Mitchell. “One of our Sherpas, Pasang, got the samples down from the Balcony to Camp II in two hours, which is absolutely phenomenal.”

In a statement from the mountain, Mike Grocott said, “Reaching the summit was the culmination of four years of extensive planning and determination to improve the medical world’s understanding of hypoxia.”

Drama on High
The successful ascent was not without its extraordinary circumstances. While the original strategy was for the team to spend a couple of days conducting medical tests at the South Col, then strike out together for the summit, a high-altitude rescue changed their plans. Two days before the summit attempt, a Nepali woman climbing with another team was found unconscious on the ropes just below the Balcony by members of an American commercial climbing company on their way down from the summit.

Usha Bista, the debilitated climber, was not far from the spot where the British climber Dave Sharp died in 2006, after some 40 climbers passed him by on their way to the summit, and again on their way down. The incident caused an uproar in the mountaineering community, who cited it as further evidence of the ethical decay of climbing in the commercialization of Everest.

This time would be different. When American climber Dave Hahn radioed for help, Michael Brown at Camp Four sent a Sherpa with oxygen up to the Balcony, then went up himself to lend a hand, temporarily giving up his summit hopes. There he helped Hahn take the climber down to Camp Four at the Western Cwm, where the medical professionals could attend to her injuries.

That same night Usha was carried still further down the mountain to Camp Three, and the next day she was carried all the way down to Camp Two, where support staff of the Caudwell Xtreme expedition administered further treatment. (Later, she was taken down to Base Camp where a helicopter evacuated her to Kathmandu.)

The possibility of upset in climbing plans had been anticipated by the Caudwell Xtreme expedition from the outset, as they recognized they were uniquely qualified to give medical assistance high on the mountain should it be called for. And, by the code of medical ethics known as the Hippocratic Oath, they were obligated to assist the woman in spite of their own goals and plans.

“The doctors were a huge help in stabilising her,” Hahn was quoted in the London Times. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think she’d survive.”

The satisfaction of the rescue was tempered almost at once by the death of another Nepali woman climber, Pema Doma, who fell to her death on the Lhotse Face just as Usha was reaching the safety of Camp Three. The death underscored the danger of climbing the world’s highest peak, even as Usha’s rescue exemplified the heroism of some members of the mountaineering community.

(Check back soon for the conclusion of the summit story from Caudwell Xtreme Everest.)