At 8,201 metres, Cho Oyu is the sixth highest mountain in the world. Our Expedition approached from the Tingri County in Tibet to climb the north side route on this Himalayan giant. Below is an archive of the updates received from Sebastien during the expedition.
Sebastien has left Vancouver on his way to Cho Oyu (8201m), the 6th highest mountain in the world.
Sebastien arrived in Nepal late on Sept. 5th. He met up with his teammates, and then with a somewhat chaotic transfer at the border, continued onto Tibet the following day. Because of several landslides in Nepal, they had to rent extra jeeps and carry some equipment by hand. He is currently acclimatizing in Zhangmu (approx. 2100m), climbing today up to 4000m and returning back down. Tomorrow they will continue toward the Base Camp.
The team has now climbed to Tingri at 4300m. They are continuing to acclimatize by hiking and resting. Tingri offers incredible views of Mount Everest, Mount Lhotse, and Mount Makalu. The photo here shows the view of Cho Oyu.
At the end of the previous day, the team made a special trip to the Everest Base Camp on the Chinese side. It was a three hour drive, and along the way they were able to stop at a monastery. They were blessed by the monks, and sat in with them during a prayer session. As seen in the photo, the North Base Camp has a spectacular view of Everest, only made better by the clear skies that day.
They will be hiking to the Cho Oyu Base Camp today, where they will stay for about three days to acclimatize.
Yesterday the team took the five hour hike from the Base Camp to the intermediate camp, which is at 5370m. They will be leaving for the Advanced Base Camp later today, which will effectively be the real base of their expedition, and they will be acclimatizing there for two days.
Diabetes wise, so far so good. Sebastien describes his Animas pump as a phenomenal tool that has been working very well. His OneTouch blood glucose monitor has also done a spectacular job.
To give an idea of how big this expedition is, the team's 1400kg of equipment -- including gas, gear, food, and tents -- is carried by over 30 yaks. The huge amount of supplies are needed to safely support the team for both the next 10-13 days on the way to the summit, as well as the way back.
The team arrived at ABC, elevation 5650m, yesterday around mid-afternoon. They are resting and organizing gear, as they prepare for the next camp. Tomorrow they will carry some equipment to Camp 1, which is at 6400m, but then descend to ABC again to sleep.
Since ABC will act as the true base camp, they will be at or above this altitude for the next three weeks; comparable to the highest point in Africa, Kilimanjaro, at 5895m.
Overall, Sebastien says that the team is doing well and feeling strong.
The plan to carry equipment to the next camp failed because of miscommunication. The tent was not set up at the deposit camp, so the team had to build a rock bed and dump the gear there.
On top of this, one member of the team is now sick. Two others decided to rest, leaving Sebastien and one team-member to carry gear to the tent with the Sherpas, once the deposit camp was set up. The other team-member did not make it, so Sebastien and one Sherpa had to carry the equipment to 6000m; this also left Sebastien carrying a Sherpa load, with a large pack on his back as well as one on his front.
The mountain did not make things any easier for the team, as a major avalanche hit around noon. Luckily no one on the team was hurt, but Sebastien did jump behind a cornice with his bags above his head. For the second time in his life, Sebastien thought this may be it and started praying. The avalanche was much bigger than even the one he experienced on Lenin last year.
Despite the shock from the avalanche so early on in the expedition, the team is trying to stay focused. Today is a rest day, and since they have not made it to Camp 1, with three camps still remaining, they have pushed their predicted summit attempt back by five days, meaning late September now.
Today they will hang prayer flags over the tents, and have a ceremony with the lama. The morale is still good, not at the best, but they are holding up and setting their sights high.
The team is now back at Advanced Base Camp, and Sebastien has time to tell us a little more about his experience. When he saw the avalanche coming, he made a small hole and put his head down waiting to get hit. Luckily, it stopped just before him, though he did still get a light dusting of snow to show how close it was. Despite the rough trip, Sebastien and his equipment did make it to deposit camp at 6000m.
Right now the snow is blowing above them, so they are spending the night at ABC. The plan is to make Camp 1 tomorrow, stay two nights there, then establish Camp 2, and come back down. If this goes to plan, they will be back down in four days and we will hear back then. Hopefully their third attempt is more successful.
As the last entry stated, hearing back from them this early means something went wrong. In fact, several things did go wrong.
On the evening of the 17th, after the last contact, the night got very cold. Combined with human error, this lead to a two month supply of backup insulin being frozen, which makes insulin unusable. In preparing for this trip, Sebastien brought several times the amount of insulin he would need, just in case something like this happened. In the remote area he is in, he has to bring all the supplies and backups he might need during his entire expedition, since acquiring replacement insulin there is near impossible. Because of his careful preparation, he still has a sufficient supply of insulin, but he cannot afford any more mistakes.
The next day they made another attempt to reach Camp 1. The team was nearly hit by a bad rock fall along the way, but no one was hurt. The trek was very slow going, and their mountain guide/expedition leader became very sick. He was unable to make Camp 1, so they were forced to stay at 6000m, unsure if he could make it through the night. After only two hours, he developed pulmonary edema, which is very dangerous and can kill within hours.
Sebastien volunteered for the rescue to take him down to Base Camp in the middle of the night. They had to stop along the way, since the guide was unable to make it any farther. Sebastien left him on the trail with sleeping bags and finished the last hour of the trip in the dark. He walked along fields of rocks and ice, and said it was scary to think that if he got lost that not only would he be in serious trouble, so would the sick team-member. He did reach camp and got Sherpas and oxygen to help with the rescue. Once altitude sickness becomes this severe, coming back down is the only solution, so he will be going back to Tingri.
So tonight they will stay at ABC, and take another rest day to work out contingency plans; they have to re-assess what they can and cannot do. The summit window is now shrinking, and things have gone from bad to worse, to near catastrophe.
Today is a rest day. Once again, they are forced to stay at ABC because of the recent onslaught of problems. The condition of the team leader, John Furneaux, has become even worse. He has a doctor looking at him, but he cannot walk, so he is on a cocktail of drugs and will be going into the oxygen tent.
Rob, who is keeping a blog at No Guts? Know Glory!, picked up the flu, which has progressed into his "chest and lungs and is a full-blown bacterial infection that requires antibiotics". He had to make the difficult choice of trying to continue or stopping. In the best interest of the whole team, he decided to go back down.
Despite the setbacks, morale is ok with the remaining three members, and they will continue to push themselves.
Rob has left, and John was evacuated. Of the remaining three members, only Sebastien decided to stay. He is feeling strong, and his oxygen saturation is above 90%, which is extremely good for this altitude. He now has to decide how to continue; he may be able to join another team already on the mountain, or he could attempt the summit with the Sherpas his team has hired. In any event, the team's gear is now all over the mountain and needs to be collected. Sebastien will be spending another night at ABC while he plans out his next move.
After a very difficult week, Sebastien's persistence is finally paying off: he has found a way to make the climb work.
On the 21st, he reached Camp 1 (6400m), which is a great victory in itself, since he has been trying to reach it for a week. The plan from there was to climb to Camp 2 the next day and then return to Camp 1 to sleep. Unfortunately, Sebastien did not make it to Camp 2, and as much as he hates to admit it, this was because of his diabetes. His basal ratios have been very difficult to figure out while at extreme altitude, which lead to a few very low, as well as a few very high, episodes in the same day. So he returned to Advanced Base Camp on the 23rd.
Right now he is taking three days to rest, and working on his insulin ratios to better prepare himself for the next climb. With all of the effort needed to make it through the last week, he does not have the energy to make another up and down trip, so his next push will be for the summit. He will make contact once more before his five day push.
Sebastien has been resting the last few days, as planned. However, the weather has changed, and they are now stormed in. There is a lot of snow on Base Camp and the whole mountain is paralyzed. It sounds like he will have to postpone the summit bid, but the message cuts out there...
Just as things started to look better for Sebastien, he gets more bad news. He is at Base Camp right now, feeling extremely strong and very well acclimatized. His diabetes is under good control and his tools for managing it are working well.
Unfortunately, he has just heard that Camp 1 was destroyed by a wind storm. Two or three dozen tents were shredded or blown away, and he is not sure if his tents were among those.
Tomorrow he will be going up regardless, hoping for a miracle and that their gear tent is one of the very few not ripped apart. He is going to prepare to continue on a push to summit, but they will have to decide if it is still possible to make a summit bid with what they have left. We should hear more in 24 hours.
On the 27th, Sebastien made his way from the Base Camp to Camp 1, nervous about what he would find. He found his tent completely crushed and ripped, however, miraculously almost everything he needed to go up was still in there.
On the 28th, the plan was to continue on with the summit attempt, and he was almost to Camp 2 when the weather turned and the winds became absolutely furious. He was forced back down to spend the whole day in a tent at Camp 1, hoping for the weather to improve.
The weather did not improve by the next day, and the forecast was for increasing winds. Sebastien has never experienced a storm of that magnitude. The whole upper mountain was closed, and so was his summit window. This forced Sebastien back down to base camp, and there will be no further summit attempts this year, for him and for the other teams as well.
Sebastien is understandably disappointed, however, the goal was to learn and prepare, and from that point of view, the expedition was successful. He will be back in Kathmandu, and in email contact, by October 4th, after the long ride back to Nepal through Tibet.
The weather is the only thing that he cannot fight; he did everything he could, and is at peace with all that happened. Sebastien said he feels ready for the big climb next year.
Dear family members, friends and colleagues,
More than a month has passed since I left for unforgettable adventures in Tibet. Cho Oyu is now behind and I'm recovering in beautiful Kathmandu, reflecting on the recent events. I'd like to thank you for all your words of encouragements, thoughts and prayers.
The purpose of the expedition was to get ready for a summit attempt on Mt Everest in the spring of 2008. Although we did not get a chance to summit Cho Oyu, all goals and objectives were reached making the expedition a great success. Gear has been tested, notes were taken and much technical skills were gained. The dream of standing on the top of the world is now more tangible than ever, and I can hardly wait to be back here to give it all I have.
One can not come to Tibet without being transformed a little bit. I have cherished all my time there and I'll keep close to my heart all the words of wisdom this land and its people have left in me.
Special thanks to LifeScan Canada, Novo Nordisk and Animas Canada. Their sponsorship have made this expedition possible, along with a full year of training and gear purchase. I look forward to holding their banner on the top of the world.
Sincerely,
Sebastien