Dear Family & Friends:

As I huddled in my tent with my Sherpas on May 24, the snow fell and the wind howled outside. I was sure Camp 3 was going to be my high point for 2014. At 9:30 pm, the Chinese team and my two Indian teammates decided to make a move up in the bad weather. Gayluk asked me what I wanted to do. I told him “let’s move up.  We can always turn around if the weather doesn’t break in our favor.” So, we pulled on our gear and exited the tent into the darkness of the night.

This turned out to be a good decision as the weather was not particularly good, but was tolerable. In fact, for about an hour on the Northeast Ridge, we had sun and clear skies, and the views were absolutely stunning. The clouds moved in and out during the entire ascent, and we encountered high winds and intermittent snowfall. When we reached the summit around 9:45 am on May 25, we were back in the clouds and there was no view. However, just about 30 minutes before we reached the summit, my Indian teammates summitted in perfect weather. Debu filmed from the summit, and his 360-degree video is spectacular. You will see it in my movie, which I will post in a few days.

What we didn’t know was that a weather front was headed directly our way. The storm was supposed to be moving away from Everest, but it made an unexpected and hard left turn and slammed into the mountain after we had descended to Camp 3. The following morning (May 26), we were in a maelstrom of wind, snow and ice. This super storm lasted 3 full days without once letting up. We had to move down the mountain in knee-deep snow and gale force winds.

The move from Camp 2 to Camp 1 on the North Col was particularly harrowing because we were in white-out conditions, which left us with zero visibility. Our tight little group of 3 was huddled together clipped into the fix line leading down to Camp 1. The wind was now hurricane force and was blowing ice and snow crosswise, making it difficult to stay upright. We could not see where we were going, but the fixed line gave us comfort that we would not walk off the face of the mountain.

We spent the night on the North Col in tents that were battered and beaten. But, after the experience of the day before, I felt like I was staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hawaii. The next morning (May 27), the storm had not abated, and we had no choice but to move down the steep and dangerous North Col headwall. The deep snow on the route down made it impossible to find footholds and created a serious risk of avalanche. All the while, we were hammered by heavy snow and wind. It took us several hours, but we made it down safely to Advance Base Camp and spent the night at ABC. The tents at ABC were almost buried in snow.

The next morning (May 28), it continued to snow hard, and we left ABC for Chinese Base Camp. Everything was white from ABC to well below CBC. Mingma, our Sirdar, told me he has never seen this much snow at CBC in ten years of leading expeditions on the North side of Everest.

Here are some photos of our descent from Camp 3 to CBC.

Bill

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Camp 3

line 4

Moving down from Camp 3

C3 down 2

Moving down from Camp 3

C3 down

Moving down from Camp 3

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Camp 2

C1 22

The North Col (Camp 1)

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The North Col (Camp 1)

tent at C2

Battered tent at the North Col

 

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The North Col (Camp 1)

Down

Safely down from the North Col

ABC

Advance Base Camp

ABC 323

Advance Base Camp

ABC 3

Advance Base Camp

ABC 333

Advance Base Camp

IBC

Moving to Chinese Base Camp on the Miracle Highway

CBC

Chinese Base Camp

packing

Packing at CBC to head home