A Winter Wonderland in EBC

Guides Kumar and Ming Dorchi on the summit of Island Peak

The featured photo (above) is guides Kumar and Ming Dorchi on the summit of Island Peak with climber Rich D. earlier in the week.  Congrats Rich!!  For the recap of the snowy day at EBC, here’s Everest guide Terray Sylvester:

Hello, this Terray calling in again for the 2021 Madison Mountaineering Mount Everest expedition.  It’s Wednesday, April 21st.

Today the forecast dictated that we spend a rest day in camp and defer, for at least one day, our ascent to Camp I.  So we spent the morning going over some descending techniques down in the ice pyramids just below base camp.  We practiced arm-wrap descending and repelling with a belay device, just to make sure that everyone’s efficient with those techniques when it comes time to actually descend the Lhotse face or descent through the Khumbu Icefall.

Just as we were arriving back at camp it started to snow.  It’s about 7:30 now and it’s not actively snowing, but we got anywhere from four to six inches on the ground.  And certainly more where it’s drifted up against the tents.  Base camp has transformed from the rocky glacial landscape that it has been to a sort of snowly winter wonderland — it’s actually beautiful.

We just wrapped up dinner.  Tonight it was pasta, green beans, and filet mignon.  Then a desert of canned peaches.  Now we’ll settle in with a movie.

Before dinner we also did a weather forecast presentation.  We recieve detailed daily forecasts, so we put those up on the projector and work through that in detail.  Just so everyone knows what’s in store for the next few days.

Right now it looks like we’ll probably see more snow coming in on the 22nd, which means that may yet again delay our ascent to Camp I.  But after that, it looks like we’ll have some high pressure and clear skys and hopefully great conditions for climbing.

Okay, we’ll be in touch!

If climbing Mount Everest is in your future, please contact our office, we would love to have you climb with us!


In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

  • Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear Garrett Madison’s daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions.  Just say, “Alexa, play my Madison Mountaineering flash briefing.

Instagram:

– our Garmin inReach Mini powered real-time tracking map:

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.