The Everest season is pretty much over now for the Spring Season, and most of the climbers have departed Kathmandu for home. Throughout this very odd season I kept remarking in my Everest updates that we probably wouldn't know the whole story until weeks after the climbers had returned home. The silence from base camp this season made for a very strange year to cover the teams that went to the mountain, and the restrictions made it even more strange and interesting for them I have no doubt.
Well, seems like my prediction is starting to come true. Alan Arnette has released an extensive debrief on some of the events that occurred while he was at the South Side Base Camp. The document is available here as a PDF document.
Alan discusses the original plan for his climb, which was to have taken place on the North Side, and the events that lead to the Chinese electing to monopolize the North following protests in Tibet. Those protests seem like a lifetime ago now since the country is still closed off, and we're still not receiving much information about conditions there.
With the North shut down, Alan and his team from Mountain Professionals switched to the South, sending them scrambling for permits and adjusting their logistics as needed. On March 27th of this year, Alan was off to Nepal, where he quickly learned that this would be a very different trip to that country.
The rest of this debrief has to be read to get the true impact of it all. Alan was actually in Nepal when rumors began to break about the the "Rules of Everest" for 2008 that included no cameras or sat phones in BC. It was almost too odd to be believed, but it came to be true, and the worst fears of the teams were finally realized.
Alan promises that this is just the first of his dispatches that will tell us the story of Everest 2008 from his personal perspective. If you want to know what really happened, this will be sure to be an interesting and informative read.
Welcome home Alan and thanks for the update!
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