The weather seems good. We feel the nervousness of the other alpinists. Most of them have been up here for weeks at 6400 meters and they are waiting for good weather. We just arrived and take it quite easy. I don’t make any stress, since I do not know how my body has recovered from the past two 8000 meter peaks. Maybe I am already too exhausted, but I will go for a try. That’s for sure. Read More
“Miss Hawley told me: ‘If you can’t see Everest, you are not on the Summit!’,” Ueli Steck wrote in an email sent over the weekend from Tibet. “Funny, I just kept thinking of that sentence up there, the words of an old woman…”
News of Steck’s successful ascent, with Don Bowie, of the normal route of Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world, came just 18 days after he made a solo ascent of nearby Tibetan 8,000er Shisha Pangma. “I’m happy,” the thirty-four year old alpinist writes. “Cho Oyu was a beautiful mountain.” Read More
Don arrives with the latest weather forecast. Today is unpredictable. The forecast calls for wind and snow. Sun is not predicted. The weather window is clear for the 4th and 5th of May, but from May 6th on, there may be more moisture moving in. Today’s forecast called for clouds, which ended up being true. There were thick clouds over the summit, but somehow I could not believe the weather report, which is a bad sign, and was surprised that it had come true. Despite what the forecast calls for, the weather will still take place outside and not in an office in Bern. But the office in Bern is a great help! Without those meteorology reports I would not have attempted Shisha Pangma. Read More
On May 5th, Ueli Steck and Don Bowie reached the summit of the sixth highest peak in the world, Cho Oyu (8,201 meters). (Source: Don Bowie) Success on Cho Oyu comes just 18 days after Ueli solo-climbed Shisha Pangma (8027m) reaching that summit in a mere 10.5 hour push. Unstable weather conditions over the high […] Read More
The nice thing about trekking and acclimatizing is that there’s plenty of time to talk. Ueli, Rob, Jim, Ongchhu and I left Namche and headed up-valley; it took another two days of trail time to reach Lobouche, a small cluster of sheet-metal and stone buildings tucked behind the lateral moraine of the Khumbu glacier. We rested there for a day, then scrambled to the summit ridge of Lobouche East, at around 6000 meters, to sleep for the night. Along the way, I learned three things about Ueli Steck: Read More
Ueli checked in over the weekend from Cho Oyu – the sixth highest mountain in the world and the next objective for him on the Tibet portion of Project: Himalaya. “The weather looks great for the 4th, 5th, and 6th, so maybe it will happen over the next few days,” he wrote. “We are waiting now. Everything is ready.” Read More
In this installment of Project Himalaya’s Behind the Scenes video series, the team preps for Lobouche. Read More
Full Episode: Part 3 Ueli Tackles Shishapangma
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