EBC to Camp 1 – Through the Khumbu Icefall

We were up at 2am, ready to leave at 3am, although we were going as a large group of about 13 climbers and maybe 7 or 8 sherpas. By the time everyone was ready, it was 3:40am, and we threw rice over the altar to say prayers to the mountain for safe passage.

We started in the dark, and made our way through base camp. We got to the Khumbu icefall, and made our way up the icefall to crampon point. We donned crampons (Gelbu helped me) and we pushed on. I was in the leading group. When they stopped for a rest, I stopped too, but carried on quicker and made my way to the front of the line. I did not want to get stuck.

The Khumbu icefall is steep, up and down, and not fully safe. There are a lot of crevasses and seracs. In the distance we saw a small avalanche on our route. It was about 200m ahead. 1 hour later, we arrived at the avalanche to find a group huddled around a badly injured climber. They had called a helivac and were waiting for the heli to land. The heli was having dreadful trouble landing, as you can imagine on the side of a mountain. It circled at least 5x and finally, after the second or third approach to the landing site, it made it. I was in awe of the bravery of the pilot and those on the ground guiding it in.

We carried on to the ladder section – 5 ladders roped together across a large crevasse. We had a 15 minute wait as it was queueing and some people were very nervous and took a long time to cross. We made it across in good careful speed. From there, we pushed on up the hill towards camp 1. There were a lot of ups and downs and it was tiring work. We finally made it to camp 1 around 10am if I recall.

It turned out we were two hours ahead of the rest of the summitclimb team, as they got badly stuck at the crevasse. They were waiting 1.5 hours to cross! In the meantime I flew the mini drone, got it towards camp 2 and then got some warnings on my controller, so flew back. Landed it, then flew it again in vertical video mode, but the drone would not lift in the air and crashed into the snow in a crevasse about 100m away from camp 1. Gelbu was amazing – he actually went to look for it and retrieved it. It was undamaged, and I put it on charge from the solar panel.

The rest of the day was spent making some videos and lying in my sleeping bag because it was so cold.

Went to bed early, around 7:30pm, and slept badly.