The Worlds Highest Photography and Videography Workshop

by Kraig Becker on

A unique trek is about to get underway in Kathmandu, Nepal. It is a combination of adventure travel and photography/videography workshop that will see ten lucky people spending the next three weeks exploring the Himalaya, while receiving expert instruction in how to shoot better photographs and video.

Everest Base Camp Trek 2009 is the brainchild of professional photographer Chris Marquardt, who hosts the Tips from the Top Floor photography podcast, and professional videographer Jon Miller, who hosts The Rest of Everest, a video podcast that is the most comprehensive look at climbing in the Himalaya you’ll find anywhere. Each day, Chris and Jon will provide lessons, tips, and inside information to those joining them on the trek, all the while hiking up to Everest Base Camp, located at 17,500 feet.

Right now, Chris, Jon, and the rest of their team are gathering in Kathmandu, and the trek/workshop will get underway in the next few days. They’ll spend a little time siteseeing in Kathmandu, before flying off to Lukla and begin the actual trek up the Khumbu Valley. Most days will be spent on well marked trails which lead to Himalayan villages, and like most visitors to the region, they’ll spend the night in traditional tea houses.

But the aspect that sets this trek apart from all the others, is the workshop. Several hours each day will be set aside for photography and videography instruction. The students will then have the chance to immeditely put what they’ve learned into action in one of the most scenic settings in the world.

The team will be posting regular updates to their website over the next few weeks, sharing their experiences along the way. Hopefully they’ll be sharing some of those amazing photos as well.

The Highest Cricket Match in the World

by Kraig Becker on

The sport of Cricket can trace its origins back to England in the 16th century. Over the course of the next 200 years, it rose in popularity to the point of becoming a national obsession in that country, and when the British Empire expanded around the globe, the game went international with it. Today, Cricket is played in more than 100 countries, one of the most popular sports in the world.

That popularity has inspired two teams to go to Nepal in an attempt to play the highest Cricket match in history. Over the past few weeks, the players have assembled in Kathmandu, flown to Lukla, and have been trekking up to Gorak Shep, a remote Himalayan village, where they intend to play an official match at 5165 meters or roughly 16,945 feet.

The teams are named Tenzing and Hillary, in honor of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first two men to summit Everest, the mountain that looms over the field they will be playing on. Traditionally a team is made up of 11 players, but these have 15 in order to ensure that altitude sickness doesn’t prevent them from fielding a full roster. That doesn’t seem likely however, as even though a few of the players have had to remain behind, they are expected to rejoin their squads over the next few days.

The trek to Gorak Shep was completed on Sunday, and the athletes will now take a few days to acclimatize and prepare for their match, which will include officially sanctioned umpires. You can read all about the teams, their quest to play the highest match in the world, and their adventures in Nepal at their webiste TheEverestTest.com.

Everest Ice Doctors Operate on the Khumbu Icefalls

by Kraig Becker on

Many people operate under the assumption that the most dangerous part of climbing Everest is the so called “Death Zone”, above 26,000 feet, or the summit itself. But on the South Side of the mountain, at least statistically speaking, that just isn’t true. There have been more deaths in the Khumbu Icefall than any other area on Everest, and the Icefall is located just above base camp at about 18,000 feet.

The Khumbu Icefall is found at the southern most end of the Khumbu Glacier, and due to the shifting nature of the ice, large crevasses and giant ice towers are formed in the region. These large cracks make it extremely difficult to cross through this portion of the mountain, and since it changes so rapidly, a new path must be created each year. Enter the Khumbu Ice Doctors.

The Ice Doctors are a team of highly skilled Sherpas who are integral to the success of climbing on Everest on the Nepali side of the mountain. Each year they lay down a series of ladders across the crevasses, and use a thin nylon line, held in place by ice screws and anchors, as a guide rope across the open spaces. Climbers than walk across these openings, usually in their mountaineering boots and with crampons on, stepping on the rungs of the ladder for support, and using the thin ropes to help stabalize themselves. For many, it can be a very terrifying and intimidating proposition.

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It can take dozens of ladders to complete the course through the Icefall, and the climbers will pass through the area several times in the course of establishing their higher camps on the mountain and going through the acclimatization process.

Because the ice can move as much as three to four feet per day, the Ice Doctors stay on the mountain through the end of May maintaining the route and making sure that the ladders and ropes remain in place. Once they pack up their gear and head home, the climbing season is considered over on the South Side for another year, and access to the upper reaches of the mountain is closed once again.

Reports from Everest this year say that the ice docs have used more than 20 ladders in completing the route, and it was expected to open today, giving the teams their first real access to the mountain itself. Many of the teams have already been making practice runs through the Icefall, but now the real work begins, and they’ll soon move through it for the first time, and set-up Camp 1 just on the otherside of this dangerous landmark.

The Indomitable Miss Hawley

by Kraig Becker on

There are a number of legendary men who cast large shadows over the world of mountaineering. Men like George Mallory, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Reinhold Messener, whose exploits in the mountains are told around campfires from the Karakorum to the Andes. But there is a woman who stands with these legends and casts a large shadow of her own. Her name is Elizabeth Hawley, and even the most accomplished mountaineers must pay homage to this Himalayan Queen.

The 85 year old Miss Hawley, as she is known amongst the climbers, first traveled to Nepal in 1960, and she hasn’t left since. She became transfixed by the mountains and the culture of the people that live there, and was drawn to the men who climb the big peaks of the Himalaya. Her training as a journalist compelled her to tell their stories, and soon, she was chronciling all of the major climbs.

Today, nearly 50 years later, she is recognized as the utmost authority on Himalayan climbing, and she still meets with each and every expedition that comes through Kathmandu. Miss Hawley is known for her incredible memory, and she will usually quiz climbers about their plans before they set out to the mountains, and then mercilessly debrief them about the climb upon their return. Often times she has the final say on whether or not an expedition is deemed as having successfully reached the summit, and her Himalayan Database is updated yearly to reflect all the latest climbs. Once entered into that database however, a mountaineer is immortalized, and their story is certified by the indomitable Miss Hawley.

To find out more about this amazing woman, checkout her biographay I’ll Call You in Kathmandu.

The Logistics of Everest

by Kraig Becker on

As we mentioned last week, the Himalayan climbing season is in full swing, and the first teams of mountaineers should be arriving in base camp on Mt. Everest this week. BC on Everest falls at approximately 17,500 feet, higher than most mountains in the world, but it is only the beginning of the climb that hundreds of people have paid as much as $65,000 each, and devoted two months of their spring, not to mention countless hours of training, to attempt.

The first of those numbers is the one that usually gets people to raise their eyebrows. $65,000 is the upper end of the spectrum when it comes to climbing Everest, and it is possible to go for as little as half of that, which is still quite a sum of money of course. But when you’re climbing the highest mountain on the planet, do you really want to go on a “bargain” rate? The money goes to cover the cost of supplies, bottled oxygen, guides, Sherpas, and more.

Once non-climbers get over the sticker shock of how much an Everest climb costs, they then focus on the two months that it takes to complete the task, and they often wonder how come it takes so long. The two month time line includes when the mountaineer sets off for Kathmandu and continues up until they depart Nepal for home. Upon arriving in the Napali capital, there is usually a few days spent there acquiring permits and organizing gear, before they fly to Lukla and begin the roughly ten day trek to base camp, or head to Lhasa in Tibet, depending on their chosen climbing route.

There are a number of paths that climbers can take to reach the summit of Everest, and they can vary greatly in difficulty. The two most popular routes are the North and South Col routes. The North Col falls in Tibet, and thanks to the borders of that country being shut down for over a month, there are few teams climbing from that side of the mountain this year. Instead, the vast majority are climbing the South Col route, which is the same one that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay used back in 1953 when the made the first successful ascent.

No matter which side you climb from however, the approach is similar. Teams will establish a series of camps at various altitudes on the mountain. Each time they go up they will build one of these camps, leaving behind supplies that they will need when they make their final summit push. After the camp is created, they will spend the night there to acclimatize to the altitude, before descending back down to base camp to rest, recuperate, and resupply before repeating the process, going higher on the mountain, until all four of the required camps are complete.

On the South Side of the mountain, Camp I is located at 19,900 feet. From there, the climbers go up a bowl shaped valley called the Western Cwm to establish Camp II, also known as Advanced Base Camp, at roughly 21,300 feet. Moving up the Lhotse Face, they will build Camp III at 24,500 feet, before finally creating Camp IV at 26,000 feet, just below the region of the mountain dubbed “the Death Zone”, so named because the air is so thin at that altitude, that the human body actually begins to break down due to the lack of oxygen.

The creation of these camps takes several weeks, thanks to the slow process of moving all the equipment up the mountain, and the equally slow acclimatization process. Once the camps are ready however, the teams will then wait in BC for a weather window to open. They need to have several days of good weather to make a summit attempt, and it can sometimes take awhile for such a window to open. In the meantime, they sit, and wait, and hope that they can finally get underway. Many experienced climbers say that the boredom that stems from sitting, and waiting, is the hardest part of the climb.

When the opportunity does come, the teams will set out from base camp, moving up the mountain, one camp at a time, spending the night at each before continuing upwards the next day. When they reach Camp IV, they’ll rest and prepare for Summit Day, which begins at midnight, with the climbers setting off in the dark for the summit with the hopes of reaching their goal.

If they’re lucky, they’ll get to the highest point on the planet by mid-morning, but slower climbers will straggle up to the summit into the early afternoon. There is a cut off point in which guides will turn their teams around if they are taking too long however, as they don’t want to be caught above 26,000 feet, after dark, when high winds, sudden storms, and low oxygen can be deadly.

Upon reaching the summit, the climbers will spend just 10 or 20 minutes there, before turning back down. The experienced climbers know that the summit is just the halfway point, and you still need to descend safely for it to be a successful climb. Most will end up spending the night back at Camp IV before completing their descent the next day, arriving back in base camp, where it all started.

In a day or two, they’ll begin the long trek back down the Khumbu Valley to Lukla, hop a flight to Kathmandu where they’ll spend another few days, before at long last, they’ll turn for home. By this point it is usually late May or early June, nearly two months since they set out after their dream.