Latest news from the Himalaya and Karakoram

Friday 18 May 2018

Everest expeditions update for Spring 2018 by Jo Clark

Photo: north face of Mt Everest from Tibet

It’s an exciting time in the region and Everest Base Camp is a small town, buzzing with the activity of climbers heading up and down the mountain, trekkers visiting and yaks and porters carrying goods up and down the trail. Summits are being rapidly ticked off right now and with good weather, perhaps for the balance of the week.

As every season, along with the climbers who are climbing the mountain for personal challenge, the experience and themselves there are a number who are breaking records or making first attempts at something.

The record for the fastest ascent of the seven 7 summits has just been broken by Australian Steve Plain. He climbed the highest peak on each of the 7 continents in just 117 days - the previous record was 126 days.

Two sherpas have also set new records on Everest this year with Kami Rita Sherpa summiting for the 22nd time this year - creating a new record for the most summits. Lhakpa Sherpa summited for the 9th time breaking her own record for the most ascents by a woman.

When Roland Hunter, The Mountain Company owner and founder summited Everest in 2001 he said ‘I spent half an hour on the summit while enjoying the amazing view, I remember thinking at the time that Makalu in the next valley would be good mountain to climb one day’.

One climb leads to another - just as one trek often leads to more.

Photo: view of Mt Makalu from summit of Everest in 2001 (credit: Roland Hunter)

If you would like to see to the big mountain from up close, we lead a variety of treks into the Everest region from the classic Everest Base Camp trek to Everest Luxury Lodges - which doesn’t go as high but gets some amazing views of Everest whilst using the most luxurious lodges available in the area.

And if you have your heart set on climbing in the himalayas but don’t yet have the experience to climb Everest, why not take a look at our Mera Peak Expedition which will be led this November by Everest summiteer Robert Mads Anderson. From the summit of Mera Peak you can see four 8000m peaks.

We still have spaces on some of our guaranteed to run Autumn 2018 trips and all of our Spring 2019 trips.

If you want to know more about the climbers on Everest this year, currently one of the most informative blogs on the Everest summit season is Alan Arnette

As Alan would say - Climb on!

Jo Clark 
Nepal Operations Manager | The Mountain Company
www.themountaincompany.co.uk

The Mountain Company