SummitClimb Ama Dablam 2007: Ama Dablam Expedition Update from Jay

Dear Everestnews Readers, This is Jay Reilly writing to you from Kathmandu. When you last heard from me, we had just returned to Basecamp from 6000m Camp 2. The route to Camp 3 was not yet in and we had nowhere to go but down.

The plan was to remain in BC until our climbing sherpas could fix the route to Camp 3. Sadly, when they returned to Camp 2, they found collapsed tents, broken under the weight of approximately 1.5 meters of new snow. It also meant that there was no way they could safely climb the route to Camp 3 and fix the new rope. In fact they tried, but they soon discovered crampons don't work when there is half a metre of new snow covering blue ice, and they were slipping dangerously. A Korean team had been on the mountain some 2 weeks before and had fixed new line, but due to the extreme thaw/freeze cycle, their rope was encased underneath 6-8 inches of blue ice and could not be climbed on.

Due to the fact that the rope could not be fixed, and the upper mountain conditions were not at all safe, we, along with a Spanish and Italian team - each led by UIAGM Guides, decided to rest a few days in Basecamp, then return to Kathmandu.

Summitclimb's policy is :- Safety. Fun. Summit.

We certainly achieved 2 of the 3! Everyone was safe and certainly everyone had a lot of fun! Thanks to Harius, Simon, Magnus, Harry and Hugh for making this expedition a great one!

Thank you very much for following our expedition.

From Jay Reilly on behalf of Summitclimb.com

Earlier: Jay reports in live: calling to update the Ama Dablam Spring Expedition for SummitClimb. We’ve actually had to descend to Base Camp from Camp 2. We were in Camp 2 for a night. The weather here is particularly bad. We’re getting fresh snow everyday and we’re encountering quite an unusual problem in that every time we fix rope, 24 hours later the ropes are encased under 4-6 inches of ice. We’re just going to hang down here in Base Camp for a couple of days and wait and see what the weather does and we’re going to try to go back up to Camp 2 maybe in two days’ time. So we’ll just have to see how it goes. Other than that we’re all well, and more news shortly. Bye.

Ama Dablam

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