Makalu Trip Report
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 3:54 amI thought this was a well-written Trip Report.
http://www.jagged-globe.co.uk/news/reports_read.html?id=854
Bunter and I had been on Everest the year before. There we were standing on the tallest peak in the world and a bit like Ed Hillary, who would visit Makalu twice, we looked out and saw Makalu and thought – that is really the most beautiful peak - we really should go climb that.
And so we did. Along with Ron and Adele, who had been on Everest before too, but in 2010 had been on Makalu. And then Mark joined us from South Africa, also a victim of looking across from the top of Everest at Makalu, and then Jim signed on from the UK. And James came in from Australia. He’d been the first to raise his hand for this expedition so we blamed him. No one had really run an expedition like this before to Makalu, it is a long ways into the mountain, and then a long ways up. It tended to attract the bold, adventurous sort with a lure for something more remote and challenging than a trek up the Khumbu would offer or something that would appear in a travel catalogue.
Ron brought the statistics to Base Camp – while the Himalayas are filled with peaks high on objective danger – those avalanches, collapsing icefalls and storms that plague the high peaks, the most common reason for getting in real trouble on Makalu seemed to be falling off. We didn’t thank Ron for the statistics; we just passed them around and didn’t say anything..............
http://www.jagged-globe.co.uk/news/reports_read.html?id=854
Bunter and I had been on Everest the year before. There we were standing on the tallest peak in the world and a bit like Ed Hillary, who would visit Makalu twice, we looked out and saw Makalu and thought – that is really the most beautiful peak - we really should go climb that.
And so we did. Along with Ron and Adele, who had been on Everest before too, but in 2010 had been on Makalu. And then Mark joined us from South Africa, also a victim of looking across from the top of Everest at Makalu, and then Jim signed on from the UK. And James came in from Australia. He’d been the first to raise his hand for this expedition so we blamed him. No one had really run an expedition like this before to Makalu, it is a long ways into the mountain, and then a long ways up. It tended to attract the bold, adventurous sort with a lure for something more remote and challenging than a trek up the Khumbu would offer or something that would appear in a travel catalogue.
Ron brought the statistics to Base Camp – while the Himalayas are filled with peaks high on objective danger – those avalanches, collapsing icefalls and storms that plague the high peaks, the most common reason for getting in real trouble on Makalu seemed to be falling off. We didn’t thank Ron for the statistics; we just passed them around and didn’t say anything..............