Survivor tells of ominous crack in the darkness as the search continues after at least 13 people are kill. Tents at Everest Base Camp, from where Sherpa guides were carrying
climbing equipment when they were struck by falling ice.
Chechhee Sherpa was cooking dinner when her husband called from
Everest. Just 23, Abiral Rai was working for the first time on the
mountain, carrying loads for his New Zealand client in preparation for
an attempt on the summit in May. He told Chechhee that he would be up at
2am on Friday to climb from Base Camp through the notorious Icefall to
Camp 2 in the Western Cwm, the last major staging post before a summit
attempt.
When she woke next morning to clear blue skies in Kathmandu, her day
suddenly darkened. A friend in the Sherpa village of Namche Bazaar
called to say there had been an accident in the Icefall and many Sherpas
were dead. Chechhee's blood ran cold.
As news spread, it quickly became clear that this would be among the
worst tragedies since climbing on the mountain began in 1921. According
to Ishwori Paudel, owner of Himalayan Guides, 12 climbers were confirmed
dead by Friday evening and four were still missing. At least four
Sherpas were injured, one of them critically. According to a Sherpa at
Base Camp, search and rescue efforts would resume at first light. Six of
Paudel's Sherpas were among the dead and missing.
A 13th body was found on Saturday. Officials said that they did not expect to find any survivors. Nepal tourism ministry official Dipendra Paudel said search teams were trying to locate bodies buried under snow.
Chechhee knew that Abiral could be among the casualties. Newly pregnant, she suddenly faced the prospect of being a widow.
She immediately called the office of Himalayan Ecstasy, the agency in
Kathmandu working with Abiral. He was safe, they said, but another in
his team had not been so lucky. Later that morning Abiral, using the 3G
network that covers the mountain, called home on his mobile phone to
reassure Chechhee he was alive.
The details of what happened on Everest at around 6.45am are still
unclear, and according to agents in Kathmandu, expedition organisers
were busy with the ongoing rescue effort. But the account of the
accident Abiral gives is harrowing. He says he left Base Camp at 3.30am,
later than he told Chechhee, carrying a kitchen table on his back for
the mess tent at Camp 2. "None of the clients had been on the mountain
yet."
Less than 200m from Camp 1, he and four other Sherpas he was climbing
with discovered that three aluminium ladders that had been tied
together to bridge an obstacle had been damaged. They stopped for an
hour to reset the fixed ropes. "There was a traffic jam at the ladders.
If we hadn't been held up then maybe no one would have been killed."
Behind him, Abiral says, he could see up to 60 other Sherpas climbing
towards him.
Out of the darkness, 400m above his head, Abiral heard an ominous
crack and the sound of falling ice. A vast serac – or ice cliff – split
from the mountainside and toppled towards them. Trapped in a bowl in the
glacier they had nowhere to run to for safety.
There were five Sherpas on the rope with Abiral. Two of them were hit
by the ice and swept away, including his friend Akash Tamang, one of
the expedition's cooks. "It all happened in front of my eyes. I just
happened to be in a safe place. I didn't even get hit by the wind of the
avalanche." Behind him, a large group of Sherpas weren't so lucky.
Twelve bodies were discovered in the same location attached to the same
rope, in the same depression in the glacier.
Jiban Ghimire, owner of Shangri-La Nepal, lost four of his team with
one still missing, some of them working for an NBC crew filming the
attempt by wing-suit flier Joby Ogwyn to base jump from the top of the
mountain.
Civilian rescue helicopters removed the bodies using lines to lift
them from the glacier, although Abiral Rai says there were fears among
the Sherpas that the operation might dislodge more ice. The dead were
flown to Pheriche, where the Himalayan Rescue Association runs a health
post, before the Nepalese army flew the bodies to Namche Bazaar and
Lukla. Base camp is currently crowded as the peak climbing season on Everest
approaches. A weather window in May allows the greatest chance of
success.
Last year more than 500 climbers reached the summit of Everest. On 19
May about 150 climbed the last 915m to the peak within hours of each
other, causing lengthy delays as mountaineers queued to descend or
ascend harder sections.
Officials have cut mountaineering fees for many other peaks while
requiring each climber scaling Everest to bring back 8kg of rubbish in
an attempt to clean up the "roof of the world".
Last year officials floated the idea of installing a ladder on the
famous Hillary Step, a crucial stretch of technical climbing at nearly
8,840m (29,000ft) on Everest, named after its first climber, Sir Edmund
Hillary.
Though such innovations are anathema to many purist climbers, some
Sherpas welcome them. The impact Everest's worst ever accident will have
on the Sherpa community is audible in Jiban Ghimire's cracked voice as
he lists the villages in the Sherpa homeland that lost sons. "Two from
Thamo, one from Phurte, one from Taksindu."
Families were gathering last night in Namche and Kathmandu for the
Buddhist funeral rites. Monks pray over the dead and choose an
auspicious time for the bodies to be cremated. After 49 days, another
ceremony is held for the souls of the dead to escape Bardo, or
purgatory, and move on to their next life.
Those few weeks will be a testing time for the Sherpa community and
for climbing on Everest. The death of so many Sherpas in one accident
has dealt a huge blow to this tight-knit community. They now face a
dilemma. While the mountains are sacred to Sherpas, Everest is also
their workplace. Climbing and trekking has transformed Khumbu, the
region closest to Everest. According to UN figures, levels of poverty in
the district around Namche are the lowest in Nepal.
Yet the price being paid for this prosperity is much too high for
some. Jemima Sherpa, daughter of the first Sherpa to get a PhD, tweeted:
"There are the tragedies, and there are the tragic vanities that lead
to them." Ang Tsering, president of the Nepal Mountaineering
Association and a community leader, said no decision had yet been
reached on whether the climbing season would continue. "This is such a
sad day. I can't really explain."
Ang Tsering added that he had attended an emergency meeting at the
home affairs ministry that included the deputy prime minister. "The
government will be looking at ways to minimise this kind of accident in
the future. They also immediately released funds for the families of the
dead." Officials, rescue workers and expedition organisers met at Base
Camp on Friday afternoon to co-ordinate the rescue effort and discuss
what will happen next. For Abiral Rai, his expedition is over. "I'm done
with the mountains."
