By Gail Dutton
It was the fourth day of the final, five-day push to summit Mount Everest, two seasons ago. Conditions were perfect. “We were above 24,000 feet. It was a blue-sky day with only light winds. As a mountain guide, I saw no reason to worry about the weather,” professional mountain climber Adrian Ballinger, founder of Alpenglow Expeditions, recalls. Rather than push on, however, he and his party turned back.
Ballinger had just received a weather report on his satellite-equipped smartphone indicating that a storm in the Bay of Bengal was pushing extremely high winds toward Everest. “We had about eight hours before it was expected to hit. We made the decision at 3:30 p.m. to flatten our tents with snow and pull off the mountain. Twelve hours later winds were gusting to 75 mph and a lenticular cloud [a cloud mass that resembles a flying saucer or stack of pancakes that brings strong downdrafts] sat on the summit. We waited 10 days at base camp and then summited.”
Other teams weren’t so fortunate. “There were two or three deaths and a dozen cases of frostbite from teams that stayed,” as well as tents shredded by the winds.
Information changes climbs
Having more information about climbing conditions, including accurate weather patterns and shifting ice, makes climbs safer. Expedition leaders are increasingly turning to various technologies, including wireless broadband and even iPads, to gauge climbing conditions and report their climbing progress. They also use the information they receive to determine routes and identify the most promising days to make their summit bids.
According to Ballinger, who has summited Mount Everest six times, as well as many of the other 8,000-meter peaks throughout the world, technology has allowed climbers to go further faster and more safely, while telling their stories in real time.
For example, Ballinger brings Wi-Fi to base camp for his teams, hauling in full Wi-Fi satellite terminals and routers to let his teams access unlimited data plans for full Internet access. Nepalese telecom company Ncell installed 3G service at the base camp of Mount Everest in 2010, and last summer Huawei and
The downside is that communications technology can also divert climbers from the climb. Thanks to laptops and improved communications on the mountains, many sponsors expect daily expedition updates, notes professional climber Ed Viesturs, the only American to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks. “That becomes a distraction. Rather than enjoy the moment, climbers are busy updating their blogs.”
That said, access to information on the mountain’s conditions doesn’t lessen the skills needed, Ballinger stressed, but it does make expeditions safer. “We’ve analyzed the successes and failures, looking at where, when and how accidents happened during the past 10 to 20 years,” he said, to determine the riskiest times to be in certain sections of the mountain.
For example, Ballinger said, “The Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, moves three to six feet per day. Chunks of ice the size of houses tumble.” After analyzing two years of time-lapsed images, Ballinger changed his expeditions’ routes through the icefall; analyzing accident data caused him to change the time of day his teams climb it. “We assumed the icefall was safest to climb during the day, but the most ice movement is in the afternoon. Now we leave base camp around 1:00 a.m. to clear the icefall by mid-morning.”
Before mounting an expedition, Ballinger also downloads all the maps he may need onto an iPad, which performs well in cold, wet conditions. “Everest has fixed lines, so you don’t need maps, but I use the iPad on other mountains to help find routes in whiteouts,” he said. For example, on American peaks, climbers often use the SPOT GPS beacon, with an emergency “OK/not OK” function that transmits a beacon by satellite to an emergency coordination center to initiate rescues. “Professional climbers also use its tracking feature as proof of summits,” Ballinger said.
Tech can’t replace experience
Despite all the tools now available to elite climbers, technology is no replacement for knowledge and technical skills. Viesturs, for example, only uses technology to provide ancillary information. Weather reports may determine a window of opportunity for a climb, “but I check the clouds and my own barometer,” he said. “If things change, I’m willing to turn around and go down.”
Viesturs recommends climbers use a combination of high- and low-tech methods for climbs. “The technology almost makes climbs more dangerous,” Viesturs said. If the technology fails, there are many climbers today who may lack the necessary survival skills, including route finding. For example, climbers who rely on GPS to mark difficult routes are out of luck during their return if the device is damaged or its batteries die. In contrast, those who mark their ascent routes with “willow wands,” which extend well above the snow, can find those routes during their descents.
“Climbers think they can call for help, but [despite some helicopter rescues] they generally can’t get that help on the big mountains,” Viesturs said.
(See photos from the Mount Everest climb.)
Gail Dutton is a freelance writer specializing in the intersection of science and business. She regularly covers enterprise computing, biotechnology, logistics and training for AFCOM publications, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), Life Science Leader, EBD Partnering News, World Trade 100 and Training.
