SummitClimb Pumori 2005: Others happenings

Dear friends and readers of EverestNews. Thanks for your very kind help in telling the world the story of our Pumori expedition.

As you have heard, we lost our dear friends, Alex Chen and Phurba Tamang in a tragic accident a week ago.

We would like to take this chance to inform you of the other happenings on those few days.

9 members of our team reached the summit of Pumori:

Alex Chen

Tunc Findik

Liga Hartmane

Daniel Mazur

Mark Merwin

Jangbu Sherpa

Phuri Sherpa

Tenzing Sherpa

Phurba Tamang

A group consisting of Jay, Elselien, Kirk, Matt, Edwin, John, Reinhold, Karlis, Viesturs and Philip was scheduled to move to Camp 1 on the 22nd of March. Unfortunately, they had bad weather and stayed in ABC and hence lost a day. The following day dawned sunny, but very cold and windy and they moved up the mountain to Camp 1 - hoping the weather would improve, so they could move to Camp 2 the next day and the summit the day after - the 25th.

They experienced very high winds all night in Camp 1 and woke to a very ugly day the next morning. Cloud, ground blizzard, limited visibility and temperatures with wind chill exceeding negative 40 degrees Celsius. It was not possible to go to Camp 2 that day. The date was now the 24th March. Our yaks were coming on the 26th and we were due to leave Base camp on the morning of the 27th. From our position in Camp 1, we still needed 3 full days on the mountain in order to get to the summit and back to Basecamp. The sums didn't add up - we were simply out of time.

The other consideration was the worsening weather. Jay looked out of the tent door and saw a high level flat-bottomed black cloud barrelling up the valley consuming everything in it's path. This was the exact type of cloud that caused a 3 day storm on Ama Dablam in 2003.

With the worsening weather threatening for all the world to dump a lot of snow, We made a decision to descend with to Basecamp.

Our decision was based on 2 main reasons.

A - We were out of time.

B - We felt it safer to descend immediately, rather than wait for the storm to dump it's load and possibly have someone lost in an avalanche.

Of course, Murphy's Law states that when you run away from a storm, the weather will improve - and that's exactly what happened the following day.

Unfortunate, but...that's mountain climbing....

We have been very busy in Kathmandu since our return on the 30th March, and do apologize for the delay in communicating with you.

We send our condolences to the families of Alex Chen and Phurba Tamang.

We understand that many people have been very worried, but assure you the surviving members of the International Pumori Expedition are healthy and well in Kathmandu. In fact, many of them are now on their way home to loved ones.

This has been a challenging expedition. However, we did enjoy some summit success and record breaking by placing the first Turkish person, the first Latvian woman, and although Alex vanished on the way down, he did in his last moments, relish in being the first Panamanian on the summit of Pumori.

Thank you from Jay Reilly and all of us at SummitClimb.com

Previous Update SummitClimb Pumori 2005: Our Sincere Condolences

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