Tuesday, September 21, 2010

FTA Cho Oyu 2010 – Team in C1 and all is well!

from Stu in the USA office
September 21, 2010



Latest news on Cho Oyu

Our team is up in C1 the night on their second round of acclimatization and looking forward to spending the night in C2 at 7100m tomorrow! They have been enjoying the acclimatization period over the last 4-5 days and are ready to make a more serious push high on the hill. The past days have been filled with a run to C1 for a night, a 42nd birthday party for our cook Ratna, socializing with the many climbers on the hill (Fabrizio estimates more than 450), and surviving the daily snow fall which seems finally to be coming to an end.

During this time a group of TMA (Tibet Mountaineering Association) climbers who were fixing the route above C3, were avalanched and a number of them were severely injured. Thanks to many climbers on the mountain they were helped down or carried down to BC. There is a full report on www.explorersweb.com including some very dramatic images and links to more reports of people involved first hand. Fortunately it sounds like all of the climbers will recover fully and the one climber needing a full evacuation was already out to the road head by early morning after he returned to BC.

The constant snowfall on the mountain has made for avalanche prone slopes and it appears that this spell of snowy weather is coming to an end and will give way to clearer days and high winds. We hope that our team will be able to get acclimatization runs completed in the next 2 days and be ready for a good period of weather. We have still quite a few days as we are not due back into Kathmandu until the 12th of October but a number of teams are beginning to run out of days and are hopeful this upcoming window is a good one for being on the summit slopes!

FTA Audio Dispatches

Fabrizio plans to call in gabcasts daily during this acclimatization run so visit the Field Touring Gabcast page to listen in to all of the past dispatches and check in daily to catch the new ones!




Field Touring Alpine Audio Dispatches #108


Field Touring Alpine Audio Dispatches #109


Upcoming trip news

• We have just added more climbers to our January 5, 2010 Ecuador Volcanoes trip and spots are becoming limited so let us know if you are interested!

• We have also added an Aconcagua Polish Glacier trip starting on Dec 18 so come and celebrate the holidays on the highest peak in the Americas!

• Places still on Ama Dablam Nov 4 start and Aconcagua False Polish Dec 11 start

See our expedition and trek and training pages for all the trips!

FTA cook Ratna celebrating at BC in 2008 © stu remensnyder

Moonlit night at Cho Oyu BC © stu remensnyder

Cho Oyu on a windy day © stu remensnyder

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