In the next few days Mandy Ramsden may be South Africa’s first women to summit the big Seven. Climbing with the New Zealand outfit, Adventure Consultants, she’s currently at Camp 2 and getting ready for a summit bid between 21 and 24 May.
I have a particular interest in the changing nature of the Khumbu Icefall (and the ropes and ladders rigged by the Khumbu Ice Doctors) and in today’s dispatch Mike, from Adventure Consultants, says, “The lower icefall had changed a lot in the past two weeks and predictably, there were more melt pools and lots of zig zagging around newly formed glacial pressure ridges. Even Mandy avoided wet feet. Also predictable was the melting out of fixed rope anchors. Just to make things interesting a couple of ladders were semi suspended in space. In a volatile section of the upper icefall a large crash/whoomph caused hearts to skip a few beats. Fortunately, the ice behaved and stayed in place.”
Ascending the stifling hot Upper Western Cym to C2 they passed groups returning from their successful summits. He notes that “The approximately 100 successful summit climbers from yesterday were mostly descending from C4 to C2 today”. That’s a lot of summiters!
Mike also mentions that there is a “mass movement” of climbers and sherpas – about 150 of them! – from base camp to C2 in preparation for a summit bid in the next few days, which is when the next window of favourable weather is expected to open.