A new account of a brawl on Mount Everest that emerged yesterday said one of the foreign climbers involved had sworn at a group of Nepalese guides and challenged them to a fight.
Famed climbers Ueli Steck of Switzerland and Simone Moro of Italy, accompanied by British alpine photographer Jonathan Griffith, were involved in a bust-up with the Sherpas on Saturday which has shocked the mountaineering community.
The events have overshadowed the climbing season in a year when Nepal is preparing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of the world’s highest peak.
Eyewitnesses say the European climbers had ignored a request to wait while the Nepalese Sherpas rigged up ropes on the upper reaches of the mountain, sparking an argument between climbers on the Lhotse ice face.
“Simone began to shout, many of the words in Nepali language, and many of the words were inflammatory,” US climber Garrett Madison said in an e-mail sent to Outside Magazine.
After this first clash — when the European climbers say they faced an aggressive Nepalese Sherpa who threatened them with an ice pick — both sides descended to Camp Two at an altitude of 6,500m.
“At one point Simone stated over open radio frequency … that if the Sherpa had a problem he could come down to Camp Two soon and ‘fucking fight,’” Madison said.
Steck and Moro claimed they were then attacked by an “out-of-control mob” of Sherpas who threatened to kill them and threw stones at their tents.
Madison and a witness said another Western climber not involved in the original argument had actually sparked the fight after he “entangled physically with a Sherpa” during efforts to mediate the argument.
“The events at Camp Two can only be described as sad and unacceptable,” said Melissa Arnot, a US mountaineer who told AFP that she had helped separate the two fighting parties.
“I think the foreign climbers made the mistakes and the Sherpas made some mistakes in communication,” she later told US television channel ABC.
Photographer Griffith, in an interview with Britain’s the Guardian newspaper, also said Moro had sworn at the Sherpas. He praised Arnot for helping save them from a potentially life-threatening situation.
Nepal is set to to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first summit of Everest by New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese guide Tenzing Norgay in May 1953.
The event is to be marked with, among other things, a commemorative flight around the peak featuring their sons, Jamling Norgay and Peter Hillary.
Steck and Griffith returned to Kathmandu on a morning flight yesterday after aborting their plans to summit Everest by a new “undisclosed” route.
They are planning to meet Nepalese Prime Minister Khilraj Regmi to work on a joint public statement.
Jake Norton, an American who has climbed Everest three times, said the friction may stem from over-commercialization of the mountain.
“The proliferation of commercial climbs means people are going up Everest for many different reasons and not necessarily with the traditional mountaineering mindset, which changes the game,” he said.
“I hope an incident like this gives the mountaineering community pause to think about what we are doing, who we are working with and how we are treating them -— be they Sherpas in Nepal or Quechuas in Peru,” he said.
While the details of Saturday’s drama remain murky, the increased crowding on the peak, including 150 people reaching the summit in a single weekend last year, has caused widespread concern for the safety of expeditions.
Hundreds of climbers from 32 expeditions and their Sherpa guides and helpers are at the base camp waiting for the window of good weather in May to make their way to the 8,848m summit. Spring is considered the best season to climb.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
‘COST OF DEFECTION’: Duterte’s announcement could be an effort to keep allies in line with the promise of a return to power amid political uncertainty, an analyst said Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte yesterday announced she would run for president of the Southeast Asian nation of 116 million in 2028. Duterte, who is embroiled in a bitter feud with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was impeached last year only to see the country’s Supreme Court throw the case out over procedural issues. Her announcement comes just days before her father, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, begins a pretrial hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands over crimes against humanity allegedly committed as part of a brutal crackdown on drugs. “I offer my life, my strength and my future
FEROCIOUS FISH-EATER Scientists have found a new species of dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period, a ‘hell heron’ that stalked the rivers, deep in the Saharan desert At a remote Sahara desert site in Niger, scientists have unearthed fossils of a new species of Spinosaurus, among the biggest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, notable for its large blade-shaped head crest and jaws bearing interlocking teeth for snaring fish. It prowled a forested inland environment and strode into rivers to catch sizable fish like a modern-day wading bird — a “hell heron,” as one of the researchers put it, considering it was about 12 meters long and weighed 5-7 tons. The dinosaur presented a striking profile on the Cretaceous Period landscape of Africa some 95 million years ago as it hunted
NOT YET THERE: While the show was impressive, it failed to demonstrate their ability to move in unstructured environments, such as a factory floor, an expert said Dancing humanoid robots on Monday took center stage during the annual China Media Group’s Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched official television broadcast. They lunged and backflipped (landing on their knees), they spun around and jumped. Not one fell over. The display was impressive, but if robots can now dance and perform martial arts, what else can they do? Experts have mixed opinions, with some saying the robots had limitations and that the display should be viewed through a lens of state propaganda. Developed by several Chinese robotics firms, the robots performed a range of intricate stunts, including martial arts, comedy sketches and choreographed
RSS