Sunday 28 June 2009

The Undisputed king of the strip!

We all know that Ueli Steck is not just a great climber and fellow alpinist but he is also a leading example for the HAP:s and sherpas on G2 as he expressed up to camp 2 providing the hard working guys with a trail. It is frankly quite unreal to see him in action and to quote his Liaison Officer, "Damn fit man"...

BC and the upper camps are nowhere near what it was a week ago. It’s crowded and some teams are less concerned with human waist management than others. I guess that some teams are betting it will just blow away and hope its not hitting fellow climbers.

The other day we got a Google alert telling us that our team had fixed the route to camp one... That is as far from reality as one can come, but thanks for the recognition for our trail braking. That will be the day when we provide fixed ropes. One is inclined to think this was a Freudian slip from one of the commercial teams, but who knows.

One issue is weather forecasts, or the lack of them or the lack of a general conclusion. The more forecasts we look at the less we learn. The big downside is that when we try to plan our climbing (approach so far) according to the forecasts, it tends to fuck up and be all wrong. Maybe the days where better, when the sky was the forecast and not internet.

I still have no climbing action to report and so far all our hard work at altitude have paid little dividend in terms of real climbing action. There is no doubt that this is a snowy year and so far the whether has been fairly unstable witch is hard if you are trying to accomplish anything in alpine style. I guess at the end of the day there is a breaking point when one have to decide if the summit is the goal or if it is the style.