Tag: Everest Base Camp

To Dream of Everest

Posted on by Andrew in Everest

Loosening your grip on your dreams, doesn’t mean letting go of them. At times we simply must submit to the conditions that are outside of our control.

Allowing your dreams to flow and you with them provides peace in the midst of adversity and the unforeseen. Instead of wasting energy fighting the current, believe the coursing current will carry you ever towards your genuine end goal – streaming with it and saving your energy to direct yourself into ever expanding rippling positivity, self realization, and experiential learning.

Singular focus has its place too, but it can also overshadow the fact that dreams aren’t often a single brush stroke on the canvas of our lives, but one of many unique and meaningful ones. All the memories and steps towards your dreams deserve gratitude and doing so will lift you over obstacles as they manifest like mountains with the desire to inhibit your overall progress towards that which you reach for.

On the eve of the expedition team’s final push up Everest to the summit from Camp 2, I awoke with a violent cough. With tears I was forced to embrace and watch as my team ascended the next day leaving me to hopefully heal and seek out a second later summit window. This year though, the earlier cyclone during the season had already forged and factored into creating limited weather windows that we along with everyone else now faced, adding to the already numerous other elements that were exasperating the safety of summit seekers.

After days of medication and sleeping on oxygen we decided to pull back the evening oxygen, which sadly sent my body into havoc – igniting my chest on fire and forcing an emergency helicopter evacuation decision to be made. Before tucking into my tent I watched one last sunset over the flowing Himalayan glacier. That night, I laid in my tent in a codeine induced state to suppress my cough with the summit directly above my tent. I listened over the crackle of the radio as my team & mountain family ascended to the summit one by one and most importantly safely – especially in light of this being one of the deadliest seasons on Everest ever. My heart ascended to hold in joy each friend who found themselves atop the world on that morning.

At dawn, as my team descended from the summit, I was helicoptered off the mountain. Taking in the Khumbu Icefalls below in all their complexity and with their network of gashing crevasses we together had crossed so many times already. In two hours, I was admitted to a hospital in Katmandu where I found out after testing that my right lung had contracted pneumonia from someone before the third and final rotation. It had waited to blossom and root itself within me during our rest days at Camp 2. I remained in the hospital for days being treated and am so grateful the pneumonia didn’t come to fruition a day or two later at higher altitudes as my evacuation would have been quite more questionable and complicated, if possible at all.

This was not the Everest I had dreamed of, but I can’t stop counting the moments, memories and multitude of details for which I am grateful during these past months even in light of just coming short of the highly focused on summit. I know I am beyond blessed for all I have been fortunate to experience and all those I got to meet and share this time with both here and at home. Releasing myself to this reality is not without difficulty after two months placed me within two days of my dream – but I believe it wasn’t my time and that this dream was not yet ready to be realized. I continue to be beyond grateful for all the loving and positive thoughts that have held me from home throughout and helped carry me through this, even when my body stumbled.

Everest is also not a perfect mountain, but neither are any of us that seek to stand upon its summit. The dreams that drive us to ascend it are no more perfect than the dreamers themselves either. Yet the news that wraps up the mountain is but a small snapshot of the mountain and the experience. We focus on the tragic loss of life and the crowds along with the pollution that permeates parts of the mountain. These are unfortunate realities, conditions born from a number of factors – none existing in isolation of the others. However, you need only ask to better determine these complexities playing out on Everest from those who have witnessed them personally and also the desire of so many to change the dangerous dynamics within our control on the mountain.

Mountain dreamers will continue to seek the realm above the clouds on the summit of Everest. Some absolutely will continue to grasp too hard to the summit and forego the humility that sadly ends up hurting them by pushing an impermanent body against a body of rock and ice which is far more lasting and durable. Yet the current of summit dreams is not diminishing – as my own has not been diminished by my own falling short of the summit.

The question is then can we change conditions to improve the safety of summit dreamers and can we the dreamers learn to live with and if need be let go and flow temporarily away from our goal of the summit to change the perspective and identity of Everest…and in doing so, make us humbly worthy again of knowing its heights.

The Ever-Changing Khumbu Icefalls

Posted on by Andrew in Everest

Ever-changing and full of uncertainty and risk, the path we pursue for our most aspired for aims means we must constantly assess and adapt each step, while always continually pursuing progress. Acknowledging that at times progress means pausing or going in a direction seemingly distancing one from where you are trying to arrive.

Embracing the obstacles, new perspectives the path provides, and also remembering to savor the steps and surroundings as you go all will create from the challenges of the course a sense of present value and empowerment – both which can fuel you further through the unforeseen difficulties you surely will encounter.

Our first rotation through the Khumbu Icefalls began by headlamp and several days later we descended in the reflective late morning sunshine and heat down a path seemingly completely different.

From the dark solitary shadows of ice we first met to glacial pools and weeping wet seracs overhead full of uncertainty as to their stability on our way down – we carefully weaved over, up, and down ladders, straddle stepping large crevasses while ever so softly navigating questionable snow bridges. Our gloved and mitted hands continually clipping our carabiner provided protection into the fixed lines should the ice beneath give way. This is the dance between climber and Khumbu.

Our second rotation approaches in the days ahead. Once again we will enter the Icefalls and again the path will be different, but we will carry the lessons and approach already learned to progress onward, as no summit of Everest can be reached absent respectfully entering the Khumbu Icefalls.

*featured image thanks to Rob Smith

The First Rotation Up Everest

Posted on by Andrew in Everest

The dominion we have over the world and nature are narratives often written by us to make us feel empowered and in control, where in truth our scale and stature in this world and time is small. This doesn’t make us weak or insignificant, as the way we connect with the world and all that and those in it with the time we have eternally leaves the touch of our existence within and upon it.

At times, by acting or simply standing in awe we can advance ourselves with the humility needed to near our passion driven dreams and also further connect us to the universal and tie us to everything we witness and even that which we believe we are unattached from in this life.

Our first rotation up Everest took us through Camp 1 and 2 reaching nearly 23,000 feet. We beheld the massive mountain making a snow covered tent seem miniscule and stopped to soak in Everest’s summit serenely standing still thousands of feet above us with clouds caressing it. We ascended and descended vertical ice and snow walls, digging crampons in and using ropes to navigate our way through a maze of natural obstacles, literally tying us to the glacier and mountain and symbolically tethering us ever more to this place and one another through this shared experience.

Safely back in Everest Base Camp now for some needed rest, I do not look at the mountain nor those around me the same. We exposed ourselves to Everest with humbleness and made ourselves vulnerable to its dangers – and will many times more before the end of May – but because we put ourselves in the position we did we eternally now are a part of this place and all those who have known or know of this sacred and special site.

Into the Khumbu

Posted on by Andrew in Everest

Practice can only go so far, in the end you must put yourself on to the stage to discover the reality of where you stand in the endeavor you have worked so long and hard to realize.

This was our dress rehearsal. Waking early, we moved in the early morning light into the theater of ice known as the Khumbu Falls. Two heavy days of snow deterred others from entering and so we laid first tracks in the snow which blanketed the ground and buffered our movements in a heightened silence.

Through a foggy mist, we slowly worked through the initial ladders and fixed lines. Crampons kicking into ice and hands gripping ascenders and rope – patiently we progressed. The ice falls embodied the full spectrum of glacial blues and seemed formed in abstraction.

The awe inspiring design of the ice though can lull you momentarily into forgetting the formidable nature and danger of it. Two of us stood as we began to descend only to heard a boom and feel a drop beneath us – driving home that the Khumbu Falls are alive and we are but guests within it. A Venus flytrap, it opens to us and yet at its discretion can also end us.

With gratitude we one by one exited safely the Falls, as a rainbow ringed the ridge line overhead. Confidence increased for our return, but also great reverence and respect for our next time entering upon this stage.

Training for the Khumbu Icefalls

Posted on by Andrew in Everest

Proximity to a dream can also be deceiving as to the realization of that dream. A dream within reach still requires the requisite commitment to fully become one with one’s heart’s desires.

You have come so far, but like any love driven dream – proximity is simply a humbling and thankful point at which the most meaningful work and acknowledged risks must be undertaken to realize the full depth of the love – be it a mountain summit or someone who you would move mountains for.

Waking each morning the Khumbu Falls greet me with their brutal and dangerous beauty through which I must pass in order to reach the summit of Everest. Acknowledging them I do not remain frozen and fixated upon them. Instead I train on how best to hone my skills to soon humbly enter them.

Simulating what will be asked of me to pursue this beloved dream, I climb higher to acclimate, I clarify my skills to mirror what will be presented before me, and I ceremoniously open myself to the traditions and spirit that are interwoven into the tapestry of this dream.

In the end, I choose to let the hope and risks fortify one another and give me courage to reach each day ever closer to my heart’s truth, which holds this summit and so much more.