Down safe, but no summit

The last five days have been a roller coaster of emotions as we have battled with heavy snows and high winds on our summit bid. Ultimately being defeated at ~7200m just below C4.

After leaving BC we were marooned in C1 for 24hrs as unexpectedly heavy snows (about 1m) fell throughout the mountain making movement upwards to C2 through the icefall exceptionally hazardous.  The Sherpas were marooned at C2 and were very lucky when an avalanche sweeping down the main face of Manaslu missed their tents by only 5m. 

After waiting 24hrs for the mountain to settle, we teamed up with another group to try and open the route to C2.  After a long and rather frightening day (MID for Rob for an epic  traverse through the seracs, breaking trail through waist deep snow in places) we eventually met with the sherpas at C2 and spent a night.  Unfortunately the route to C3 was under heavy snow and a collapsed serac barred the original route.  With 200m of fixed rope the route around the serac was found and the route cleared to C3 where the team spent a very windy night.

On the morning of the 9th the team were hanging on the weather forecast hoping the winds would lessen to allow movement on the mountain.  Marc the weather man came up trumps again, predicting decreasing winds throughout the day.  Armed with this we set out at 1000 in strong winds and almost immediately a number of individuals from another team had to turn around due to the extreme cold and windchill.  Whilst movement was difficult we made steady progress until at ~7200m the route entered the icefall of the upper seracs and the fixed line was buried under ice and despite our best efforts was unable to be dug out.  Proceeding into the icefall without a rope for protection in the high winds was not a safe option and the extremely hard decision to abandon our attempt was made.



We spent a few minutes gazing across the panorama of peaks N into Tibet and East to Everest and taking photographs before heading down to the relative calm of C3.  After packing tents and oxygen we headed down to C2, the Sherpas making a heroic carry down to BC to enable us to clear the mountain the following day.

We are all at BC now, and with no frostbite or other ailments except extreme tiredness.  With the mountain stripped we are packing up and heading for Sama Goan later today.

We're back and we're off up

Apologies for the absence on the blog.

With a four day block of bad weather forecast the team headed down to Samagoan for two nights rest at a lower altitude. This by coincidence was the same day the development team arrived at Samagoan, they are in great sprits and are all very well. That evening a small number of continental lagers where had as we joined in with the Altitude Junkies Sherpa’s who celebrated a job well done on the Manaslu.

 The following day (3^rd) both teams made the journey up to Base Camp. This being the highest the Development team had been on the trek so far, they all arrived feeling good and with high sprits.

Both teams at a snowy Base Camp

With the conditions not the best at Base Camp the Development team decided to spend only one  night before carrying on with their trek around to the Larkya Base Camp. We wish them the best of luck with their summits and look forward to seeing them again in Kathmandu.

Summit Attempt

The weather forecast is predicting a stable period between the 8^th – 12^th, with the jet stream arriving over Nepal around the 13^th. The arrival of the jet stream will cause high winds across the summit and most likely end our summit attempt on the mountain.  With this in mind the team have decided to head up the mountain and get into a position to summit early morning on the 9^th with the option to delay at a camp and summit on the 10^th. Chris is keen to point out that the planned summit on the 9th has no correlation with his birthday!

All being well we will be hopefully blogging our success on the 10^th or 11^th.

Wish us luck.

Base Camp Tour 30 Sep 13

Not much to report from Base Camp today, apart from the weather is still crap and the group are beginning to climb the walls with boredom! We thought it would be good to give you all a guided tour of the facilities.

The change in weather can be clearly seen from these two panoramas of Base Camp.

We have had about 15cm’s of snow down at Base Camp which has defiantly made the place a slightly wet and colder affair.

The Cook Tent

This is Phurba the main cook in his workplace. He manages to produce better food than is served back in your normal cookhouse in the UK, with dry stone walls for worktops, Kerosene stoves and water piped in from a nearby stream. Last night we had guests from Adventure Peaks group over for dinner, with Phurba producing an excellent steak and chips dinner. A good night was had by all, Amblesides finest said their goodbyes before heading up the hill back to their own camp! Let’s hope they perform better on the hill than on their route back to the tents..... They got slightly lost.

The cook tent is where the Sherpa’s hang out when not up on the hill. Ours must be quite popular as there are quite often numerous other Sherpa’s from other teams popping in for a quick brew. This is defiantly an advantage as it means we get to find out all of the gossip, like when other teams plan to make their summit attempts.

The Mess Tent

When not up the mountain or sleeping the mess tent is where most of the time is spent. Above Brad and Rob are enjoying one of many books that have found there way up to Base Camp in the ‘Entertainment Barrel’ along with Jim and Chris these four also get involved in some quite lengthy games of Gin Rummy, at the last count Rob was the champion (although he did the count).

Most afternoons we all cram into the tent, Sherpa’s and cook staff included to crowd around our 13” computer screen to watch a film. Today we watch Ironman 3 with the Sherpa’s loving the action and drama of a modern film.

Sleeping tents

We are lucky enough to each have a two man tent which doubles as a private store room.  On top of a foam mattress provided by our trekking agency we have a 2” thick Multimat, just the job for a comfy night sleep when you are camped on a rock moraine.  With all of the recent snow we have awoken each morning to a thick covering of snow on the tents which is removed by a violent shake. Each person has added there own personal comforts to their tents; Jon has a nice little chair and sound system and can be seen getting a tan when the sun is out.

Toilet and Shower

The most important part of Base Camp (After the kitchen) the toilet and shower facilities!! For the toilet (solids only) we have what can only be described as a table with a hole cut in it, on which goes the most uncomfortable toilet seat.  The waste is collected in a 60L barrel and when it is nearing full some poor sole carries it down 1500m to Samagoan where it is disposed, all for 150 Rupees (about £1).

The shower is state of the art gas powered shower.... sort of! The water is heated in the cook tent and transferred into a hand pump object which is probably more likely to be seen in a garden spraying weed killer on a lawn. The drainage is simply a hole cut in the canvass floor and the water drains away down the hill... Flip flops are a must!

However simple the facilities are more than up to the job and a nice warm shower can be quite pleasant if the smell from the next door toilet can be bared for long enough.

Tour Over

We have now spent 5 long days in Base Camp since are last foray up the mountain. People are becoming rather bored and are itching to get on a summit! Please pray, wish & think of a good weather window to alleviate our boredom and give us the best chance of summiting Manaslu.

Thank you.  

A game of patience

The weather continues its fickle game with our summit plans.  Following some heavy snows over the last 36 hours we have decided not to venture onto the mountain until it stabilises further.  This means we cannot make the good weather window of 2nd Oct.  The decision making conference was punctuated by the roar of avalanches of Niake the peak next to base camp, which added an extra poigncy to the discussions.  Even as I type this some 16 hours later the roaring of avalanches continues although they are so common now we dont even pause in our card games.

For folk in the UK, have a think how often the BBC gets the forecast wrong at 24hrs out, so predicting mountain weather at 8000m 7days out is incredibly difficult. We have included a meteogram so folk can gain an insight to our decisions.  Marc (our weather guru - weather4expeditions) has been brilliant so far and his forecast below delayed our summit bid from the 4th Oct, as we would have been on the summit plateau above 7500m in poor weather.  We are looking now at the 6th or 9th but will await further forecasts.




A few folk have emailed some questions about why we did not make a summit bid earlier with some other teams.  The answer is simply that we were not all acclimatised.  We lost a day on the walk in due to a porter shortage in Sama Goan and then had to evacuate two team members.  This put us just behind where we needed to be.  Some local operators made their clients rush the acclimatisation to make the weather window which resulted in a very low success rate and some runs down the mountain with sick clients.  Some operators only quote the success rate as the prcentage of climbers who left Camp 4 and made the summit, ignoring the many that could not acclimatise rapidly, so check carefully any statistics pushed out!

Another commonly asked question, is what is the summit plan.  Ideally this is to move through the camps with a night at each, (C1,C2,C3,C4) and return to C2 from the summit if our legs allow.  This however may change with the weather.  From BC - C1 is a short day, but from C1-C2 is a long day through an active icefall which makes it more of a challenge to make C2 from BC in one day and then head on to C3 the following day. C2-C3 is relatively short, but C3-C4 is a monster.  Reports say that the summit day is reasonably short (especially as we will be on oxygen at 4L/hr).

Tomorrow we will give an overview of BC so folks can see how we are whiling away time waiting for good weather.  For EMRT it's like perpetually goalhanging at base, but a lot colder and without Bart to take the mick out of.

The team is happy to answer any questions especially as we are now bored out of our skulls and looking for anything different to do.  Patience is indeed a virtue when high altitude mountaineering is concerned. 

Ready to go – 27 Sep 13

Ready to go – 27 Sep 13

We have been in Base Camp for the last few days and our plan is to start out for the summit on Sunday 29th Sep. All being well we will summit on Thursday 3rd Oct.

Our friends from both Himex and Altitude Junkies were successful and are already packing up and heading back to Kathmandu. We enjoyed celebrating with them last night.

The weather forecasts have been inconsistent recently and this has proved to be quite frustrating, however, we are keen to get started on Sunday and have been repacking our equipment to make sure that we have everything we need.

We will be sharing the mountain with a Japanese team who are filming their journey for a children's programme and a few other teams.

 

Mt Manaslu from Base Camp captured this evening

Mummy's little soldier (he knows who he is) is in fine fettle as are the rest of us.  Have a great weekend everyone.

Acclimatised – 25 September 2013

Acclimatised – 25 September 2013

We are now back in base camp having successfully completed our planned acclimatisation rotation. Everyone is well if a little tired.

Our two nights in camp 2 and walk to camp 3, to drop off high altitude clothing and equipment, will serve us well when the time comes for us to go for the summit. We will now rest in base camp for three or four days and watch the weather which is forecast to bring snow!

If we get a lot of snow then we will need to assess the stability of the snow pack, as we go higher, regarding avalanches. If the snow pack is unstable it could be a long wait, however, we have time.

Our friends in the HIMEX and Altitude Junkies are summiting today and all is going well for them at the moment.

Some pictures from our latest trip follow.

Climbers on the route from Camp 2 to Camp 3. The summit looking ever closer.

Camp 3

Climbers on the route from Camp 3 to Camp 4

Jon, Brad and Chris on the way to Camp 2 (6700 metres)

 

Chris and Brad with Jon in the background at Camp 2